GROWING UP ON SCREEN

Dakota Fanning discusses her 25-year career and the anxieties of modern womanhood in new HBO thriller All Her Fault

- STORY: TATAT BUNNAG

Dakota Fanning is one of the rare child stars who never disappeared and never stopped working.

Instead, she grew up in front of us — quietly, steadily — transforming from the intense little girl in I Am Sam (2001) and Man On Fire (2004) into a thoughtful, grounded performer whose career has now stretched over 25 years.

For HBO Max audiences in Thailand, her latest project offers a fresh glimpse into that evolution. Fanning appears as Jenny Kaminski in All Her Fault, a new suburban-thriller series based on Andrea Mara’s bestselling novel. All eight episodes of the first season are streaming now and the show has already earned praise for its layered mystery and for Sarah Snook’s magnetic, unsettling performance at the centre of it.

The premise is simple on the surface — Marissa Irvine, played by Snook, arrives to pick up her young son from a playdate, only to find that the woman who answers the door has never heard of him. That single moment spirals into a nightmare, unravelling secrets in a seemingly perfect suburban community.

The series, produced by Universal International Studios with episodes directed by Minkie Spiro and Kate Dennis, also stars Jake Lacy, Michael Peña, Sophia Lillis and, of course, Fanning, who plays one of the mothers caught in the widening web of suspicion and fear.

The show shifts between domestic drama, psychological tension and a portrait of modern parenthood — its fragile expectations, its anxieties and the cracks that appear when tragedy threatens the illusion of control.

At the recent press conference for All Her Fault, Fanning received the kind of attention that only comes with two decades of public familiarity. Fans feel as if they've watched her grow up.