In the small town of Conyers, Georgia, Dakota Fanning’s parents were kind of a big deal, but not in the world of show business. Per Baseball Reference, her father, Steve Fanning, was a minor league baseball player, and her mother, Heather Joy Arrington, a successful tennis player. When Dakota was growing up, her father had moved on to a job in sales and her mother stayed home to care for the family, but sports remained very important in the Fanning household.
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Dakota’s parents didn’t pressure her to pursue acting, but they did hope she would excel in athletics. Alas, Dakota was not particularly interested in taking that road. “I would be disowned if I said I didn’t like sport. My mom would be like, ‘How could you say something like that?!’ It’s true, I do like it, I just can’t play because I don’t have the drive or passion to be a professional athlete. Or the talent… let’s be honest,” the actor told Marie Claire. While she may have not followed in her parents’ footsteps, she sure did inherit their tenacity and work ethic. “I have the sports drive,” she said in The Guardian. “It’s in my blood; I can’t help it.
