Dakota Fanning

Dakota Fanning

Dakota Fanning will never "parade" her personal life.

The 20-year-old actress believes she's managed to stay grounded despite her childhood stardom because she doesn't divulge too much information about herself.

Speaking to Town & Country magazine, Dakota - who doesn't use Facebook or Twitter - said: "I'm just never going to parade my personal life. If you choose to not do it, it's not hard to not do it ... Any part of an artistic business is made better by there being a little mystery."

However, the blonde beauty - who has been dating model Jamie Strachan, 32, for the past year - admits she can't seem to grasp why her fans feel they have a "weird sort of ownership" over her.

She explained: "People don't know me as much as they think they do. I'll be walking down the street and someone will say hello, and I'll go, 'Oh, hi!,' and I'll think I must know this person if they said hello, but then you realise, you don't know them."

Although, despite feeling owned by her adoring fans, Dakota appreciates the sacrifices her mother Heather made for her and her 16-year-old sister Elle's career.

She said: "[My mother] realised I had the potential to do things that were bigger than the life she knew. And she recognised that in Elle, too. When she made that initial move with me to LA, she completely gave up her own dreams and started over in a place she never imagined living. I mean, Los Angeles, to a person from 20 minutes southeast of Atlanta, might as well be Africa."