Why The Runaways Is a Smart Step for Kristen & Dakota

After achieving superstar status as a teen star, at some point young actors and actresses need to shed the adolescent image to achieve the next level of success as young adults. Hollywood is certainly a stereotypical world when it comes to age as young celebrities get older and form completely new identities as adults. We all know the teen actor horror stories of those who could never shed the image of pervious work when they were kids. For many young stars growing into adulthood, growing older means barely being able to work again due to a firmly embedded public image from their teen years. Now that actress Kristen Stewart has been catapulted into the echelons of superstardom thanks to her role as the enigmatic Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga, will Stewart be able to break away from her teen Twilight image with her latest film, The Runaways, in which Stewart plays female rocker Joan Jett? It's an interesting question given how Stewart stars in The Runaways with Dakota Fanning who is now an acting veteran at the age of 16. Although the question is still up in the air over which Twilight Saga actor may become pigeonholed as "that Twilight girl or guy", Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner are all busy with other projects beyond The Twilight Saga. Although Kristen Stewart, who did start acting as a child, has worked with a variety of eliteactors and actresses like Jodie Foster, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, and more, Dakota Fanning had already garnered more fame by the age of 12 than most adult actors have achieved in their careers. On screen, Fanning was poignant and moving with marquee roles opposite some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Sean Penn, Denzel Washington, Charlize Theron, Tom Cruse, Sissy Spacek, Glenn Close, Robert De Niro, and the A-list goes on and on.
After landing a role in the Twilight Saga: New Moon as the young Volturi vampire Jane, some Twilight fans expressed their outrage over the Fanning casting, saying that the fame of Dakota would overshadow rising stars like Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, and Kristen Stewart. Obviously Dakota Fanning in New Moon only helped The Twilight Saga since it went on to bring in over a billion dollars in worldwide box-office receipts.
Then news broke that both Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning had been cast in The Runaways, the upcoming film based on the rise of iconic '70s female rockers Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, with Kristen Stewart in the role of Jett and Fanning playing Currie. When The Runaways first hit the music scene back in 1975, they paved the road for women as viable figures in the punk music scene. As young women in a male-dominated music industry, it was a tough road for the girls of The Runaways.
Interestingly, in 2004 former Runaways bassist, Victory Tischler-Blue, went on to release a documentary called Edgeplay in which Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Lita Ford and other members revealed just how difficult their musical journey was at the time. Dealing with issues like sexual and verbal abuse from their own label and management were very real and raw problems that continue to exist in the current music scene today.
So the question soon became, can Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, two teen stars in a much less gritty celebrity world than that of The Runaways, do justice to the real life characters of Jett and Currie?
Although Stewart and Fanning have been riding the wave of teen popularity, The Runaways is much more of a step in the adult direction for both Fanning and Stewart. Kristen Stewart is enigmatic as Joan Jett, tough but with a heart made of pure rock n’ roll whileDakota Fanning is alluring but certainly not the innocent Dakota Fanning we've seen in the past. Just like Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, Fanning and Stewart grew up in an industry that's difficult to maneuver. Although they grew up in front of a camera and not a microphone, a few parallels can be found. However, despite the fact that Kristen Stewart is about to leave her teens behind when she turns 20 in April and Fanning still has four more years to go,The Runaways very well may be the film that marks when both Stewart and fanning grew up as adult actresses.
Portraying someone as iconic and honest as Joan Jett is a task of mammoth proportion, no doubt, and Stewart already shares an uncanny resemblance to Jett not only in the physical aspect but also in her attitude towards fame (which we applaud). The Runaways may only be the first step in breaking away from teen perception and roles for Kristen Stewart, but the film is a smart move for both Stewart and Dakota Fanning . Dakota has already played with the best of them and has more acting chops than people twice her age. By not shying away from the reality of truths like drug and alcohol abuse, sexual harassment, and even the breakdown of childhood innocence, The Runaways certainly helps both come of age as actresses. As well, Stewart and Fanning got the chance to test out their singing abilities, which oddly gives each more threat weapons in their talent arsenals. The Runaways is, without question, a smart step for Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanningsource
~Robstenfan