This is one thing I just DON’T understand about parent’s of child actors.  How can they be okay with this?  Erin and I were watching The Parent Trap last night (the Lindsay Lohan one) okay, so we like that movie – back off!  But we were saying how it’s just so sad that kids start off so innocent – then end up… well, Lindsay Lohan.  Enough said.  But from the looks of it, our little Dakota will be treading in the same water.

Dakota Fanning Ventures Into Dark Territory, Scares Away the Money

Kid phenom Dakota Fanning is going the way of Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster – and then some – as she tackles a dicey, but potentially award-worthy role in which she endures a sexual assault and appears naked in several scenes.

The 12-year-old thespian is starring in “Hounddog,” a dark story, as Lloyd Grove puts it, of “abuse, violence and Elvis Presley adulation in the rural South,” in which her character gets raped in an explicit scene and appears nude or wearing only undergarments in others. Fanning’s mom and agent apparently see the film as Oscar material for Dakota, but potential investors apparently shied away from its creepy material. Production shut down briefly, but filming will wrap tomorrow in North Carolina.

“It’s not just the rape scene,” says Fanning agent Cindy Osbrink. “The whole story is challenging Dakota as an actress…I’ve seen the dailies, and in every scene she gets better and better.”