Mary Elle Fanning was born on April 9, 1998, in Conyers, Georgia to Heather Joy, a professional tennis player, and Steven J. Fanning, a minor league baseball player turned electronics salesman. Her grandfather is football player Rick Arrington and her grandmother is ESPN reporter Jill Arrington. Elle followed in her older sister, Dakota Fanning, footsteps in becoming an actress. By age 21, she had already sealed her place firmly in the Hollywood scene, having already worked with directors J. J. Abrams, Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola, Woody Allen, David Fincher, Ben Affleck, Sally Potter, Nicolas Winding Refn, Cameron Crowe, John Cameron Mitchell, Reed Morano, Mike Mills, Tony Scott, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.