Abigail Breslin vs. Dakota Fanning
Battle of the Masterly Moppets

Well, we probably should have known on the day the Oscar nominations were announced -- when we conceived of writing this very story you are reading now as part of our 2007 Oscar coverage -- that we wouldn't be the first to note Abigail Breslin's nomination and conjecture that it would really piss off Dakota Fanning, Breslin's only demographic rival. And sure enough, we weren't. Sigh. At least the SNL skit confirmed what we have long suspected: many of us harbour the basically unfounded belief that Fanning is probably a pompous little brat. Everything about the skit drives it home -- how rude Fanning is to her bandleader, how perfunctory Fanning is with her assistant/mother, how effortfully Fanning strains to prove that she is clever beyond her years, and how painfully jealous Breslin's Oscar nomination grates on Fanning's never-nominated nerves. "That should be me!" Fanning must have screamed to her handlers that fateful day, perhaps throwing a sugar-free granola bar at them. "Why was I fucking around with talking animals when I could have been grinding to 'Superfreak'?!"

The thing is, Fanning's not wrong. As we commented in her Fame Audit a few years back, Fanning has a near-total monopoly on the market of little-girl roles. Any time there's a part for a child who has more than ten lines, it's going to go to Fanning -- and if the role is written for a boy, then that's an inconsequential little detail that can easily be remedied. Whether Fanning is the best actor of her generation is debatable; that she is the most ubiquitous is not. So how did a little-girl role -- age ten, age twelve; whatever! -- in Little Miss Sunshine even go to someone who wasn't Fanning? We'd be willing to bet she was offered it, but asked for too much money. If a production that tiny couldn't even afford a VW bus with A/C, it almost certainly couldn't cough up the kind of cash Fanning is used to getting when she stars opposite Tom Cruise, or Denzel Washington, or a creepily made-up Mike Myers.

And what of this Abigail Breslin? Well, she'd been doing just fine -- as fine as anyone can do when she's living in the dark and cold of Dakota Fanning's shadow. She started strong as the adorable Bo in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, but that was the same year Fanning did Trapped and Sweet Home Alabama and Taken, so Breslin was swiftly eclipsed, and left to satisfy herself with guest-star slots on TV series of second-tier prestige: Fanning did C.S.I., Breslin Navy NCIS; Fanning did Friends, Breslin The Ghost Whisperer. (Breslin did eventually land a Grey's Anatomy, but in 2006, when Fanning's TV days were far behind her). If Fanning was the Oreo of child actors, Breslin was the Hydrox -- very similar, almost as good, and far more affordable.

But now, after this Oscar nomination, the balance of power has shifted. The best roles are going to be offered to Breslin first; the promising boy roles will be rewritten with Breslin in mind; the trailers for No Reservations will tout "Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin," while those for the infamous Hounddog won't even manage good buzz from Sundance, where it was widely reviled. Fanning has probably had a few anxious nightmares in which she's running as fast as she can but can still feel hot breath on the back of her neck: her sister Elle, gaining on her. At least she won't have to revise that dream to include Abigail Breslin, who's already lapped her. To Fanning, we extend our most heartfelt "Choke on Breslin dust, you little snot!"

Advantage: Breslin