Dakota Fanning

She has won MTV awards and Kid's Choice awards. She has been nominated for S.A.G. awards. And she is 13 years old!

This young woman has quite an impressive resume; do you realize she has worked with Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Reese Witherspoon, Helen Mirren, Kate Hudson, Joaquin Phoenix, Brittany Murphy, al Pacino and Sean Penn just to name a handful?

This precious, talented child has the look of a sweet angel, but she has tapped into her great acting abilities to pull off some weighty roles. Most recently she has been the subject of controversy over an independent film called Hounddog. In the film, Fanning portrays a little girl in 1950's Alabama who loves blues music. It gets her through the poverty and abuse in her life. There is a scene in the movie where she is raped by an older boy, and when audiences found out they went crazy. Groups were protesting that the film be shut down and that the director be sued for inflicting this experience on an actress who is so young. (Read more about the controversy here)

Fanning took an extremely mature stance on the whole project. "You have to prepare your children for things that happen in the world. Everything isn't rosy."

This beautiful, talented and intelligent individual deserves the immeasurable praise she has received for her craft, and I hope she is an inspiration to little girls everywhere.