Elle Fanning Recalls Losing Role in Father-Daughter Film at 16 for Being "Unf--kable"

Elle Fanning is opening up about the inappropriate reason she once missed out on a role.

While reflecting on her career as a young actress, The Great star revealed a shocking bit of feedback she learned after missing out on a role in a "father-daughter road trip comedy."

"I didn't hear from my agents because they wouldn't tell me things like this," Elle explained during The Hollywood Reporter's Comedy Actress roundtable published June 6. "That filtration system is really important because there's probably a lot more damaging comments that they filtered, but this one got to me. I was 16 years old, and a person said, 'Oh, she didn't get the father-daughter road trip comedy because she's unf--kable.'"

The admission promoted a cry of outrage from fellow roundtable attendees Jenna Ortega, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Ayo Edebiri, Devery Jacobs and Natasha Lyonne, with the Abbott Elementary star exclaiming, "Whoa, at 16?!"

Elle, who noted she didn't think the project ultimately made it to film, echoed Sheryl's sentiments, adding, "Yeah, it's so disgusting. And I can laugh at it now, like, 'What a disgusting pig!'"

And on how she digested the incident at the time, Elle noted, "I don't feel like it damaged me, but it definitely made me very aware of myself."

"I was always immensely confident, but of course you're growing up in the public eye, and it's weird," the 25-year-old continued. "I'll look at paparazzi photos from when I was 12 and think, 'Is that a good thing to see such a mirror of yourself at that age?'"

And after so many years in Hollywood, the Maleficent actress is coming into her own as more than "a child actor or a Disney princess."

"The Great, again, it's like a blond royal," Elle conceded of her character Empress Catherine, "but it's so turned on its head because it's raunchy and violent and we're saying the C-word every other word. I am grateful for the show, because I don't feel I'm fighting against the child actor thing anymore."