Fanning says she first caught Winding Refn’s films when she was in South Africa for work – “There were only two channels on the TV and one was all in Afrikaans and the other one played movies; they only played Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Drive, which I loved.” When she got back home to California, she “heard he [Refn] was making a movie set in the fashion world, with models and girls as the lead” and thought it sounded so different to his usual “ultra-masculine” style that she couldn’t contain her interest. “I went to his house and there were princess clothes everywhere because he has daughters, and I realised: ‘This is why he wants to make this movie’”.

No stranger to role playing, Fanning tells me that, from a young age, she would spend her days “dressing up around the house and putting on characters”. This is, she thinks, how she always knew that acting was what she wanted to do. Her parents were both sportspeople – dad minor league baseball, mum tennis professional – so by her own admission, acting was something that was “foreign” to her. Luckily, though, she had older sister Dakota Fanning’s footsteps to follow in; “When my sister started acting I knew I wanted to try it too,” she tells me.

Elle Fanning played the role of the younger version of her sister in Steven Spielberg’s extra-terrestrial TV series Taken when she was just four years old, before going on to catch what was arguably her big break in the film Super 8 in 2011, when she was 13. The film, directed by JJ Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, is a sci-fi thriller set in 1979, and was a commercial success. Since then, Fanning has played a broad range of roles – from Ginger in British auteur Sally Potter’s indie flick Ginger & Rosa, through to a part in blockbuster Maleficent alongside Angelina Jolie.

When asked whether she’s keen to continue doing indie films, or take the more mainstream, Hollywood route, Fanning is on the fence. “I think it’s about a balance of both,” she says, citing Nicole Kidman as a role model she looks up to in that respect (and “as a fellow tall girl!”). She continues: “When films come to you, you’re drawn to the character or the story of it rather than thinking ‘this film is this or that’. I just like playing different roles, and I like experiences – so I want to experience everything. I enjoyed doing Maleficent as much as I enjoyed doing Neon Demon.”