Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning will soon film a movie titled 'The Nightingale,' the first time the sisters have acted for the screen together
Elle Fanning/Instagram
NEED TO KNOW
- Elle Fanning and Dakota Fanning both shared posts on Instagram in celebration of Dakota’s 32nd birthday
- Dakota and Elle often share loving social media posts about each other on their birthdays
- The Fanning sisters are currently preparing to film their first-ever movie in which they act opposite each other, titled The Nightingale
Elle Fanning is celebrating her older sister Dakota Fanning's birthday.
Dakota turned 32 on Monday, Feb. 23. Elle, 27, marked the occasion by sharing a short video of her and her sister dancing together and embracing one another to Instagram. "Our song. Your birthday. My sister. 🥳🥳," Elle wrote in a caption to her post. "She is the coolest person anyone will ever meet and I’m the lucky one who gets to call her mine! 💗 I love you @dakotafanning."
"Love you the most!!!!!" Dakota wrote in a comment to Elle's post, in response. The All Her Fault actress also shared a baby photo of herself sitting in front of a birthday cake to her own Instagram page in celebration of her birthday, where she wrote, "making a really good wish this year 🎂" in her own caption.
"Love you more than anything 💗," Elle wrote in a comment to Dakota's own post. Dakota also received birthday well-wishes from famous friends like Reese Witherspoon, Andy Garcia, Christina Hendrix and Abigail Breslin, among others, in the comments of Elle's Instagram post. "Awww! Love this💕Happy Birthday Dakota !!" Witherspoon, 49, wrote in a comment.
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Elle and Dakota, who have each been acting since they were small children, frequently post about each other and hype each other up, particularly on each sister's birthday. When Elle turned 27 in April 2025, Dakota shared the pair's "first photo together," snapped with their mother Hannah in the hospital shortly after Elle's birth.
"I was asleep in the delivery room during Elle’s birth, so I can really say we have been together from the start," Dakota wrote in the caption to that Instagram post. "What an honor that has been, and I can’t wait for the rest."
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Dakota's birthday comes as she and Elle prepare to film an upcoming movie together titled The Nightingale, which will mark the first time the sisters have worked together on the big screen.
“She’s promised me that she’s not gonna boss me around,” Elle said on the red carpet at the Golden Globes in January, when asked by E! about how she expects she and Dakota will behave on set together. “That’s what she’s promised . . . the older sister. You can’t! You have to treat me like a fellow actor.” The Nightingale, which is expected to release in theaters in February 2027, is based on Kristin Hannah’s historical fiction novel of the same name, which follows two sisters in France during World War II.
“In a couple months we are about to go film,” she added at the time. “It’s taken a couple years in the making, but . . . we are finally, really doing it this time.”
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