In the early days of getting a new, significantly shorter haircut, that's all I can think of. I can't resist the compulsion to run my fingers through my hair or do a double (or triple) take a mirror and make me feel how light Elle Fanning, who debuted Bob just below the length of a bouncy chin at the Cannes Film Festival, is currently in that stage.

"It's never been this short," Fa in a video call from the L'Oréal Paris Suite at the Hôtel Martinez in Cannes, France, where she fluffes a slightly curled edge and throws her head left and right to show off the length - she's seen on screen (in period dramas like The Great) and on TV. Off (her favorite de "very pleasant."

Most people do a hair makeover like Fanning when they like it. But the actress, who says she always wants to have a dramatic rob, had to consider her character. She just wrapped up a run on Broadway with Sarah Paulson in a proper play, and her alter ego had long hair with grown roots.

By the time the play was over, her roots were "up here" — she gestured half the length of the current chop — "and my hair had not been cut for a while.""(What we do for art!But her next role would not keep her from the haircut she always wanted.

Starting production of Bob Dylan's biopic A Complete Unknown, Fanning, along with Timothy Chalamet, found a workaround this spring. "I knew I was wearing a wig in a movie I'm doing now," he said. So I think I was free to do anything," she says. "I wasn't embraced by the characters, so I thought I'd do it for the summer.

In the age of her short hair, Fanning discovered a whole new outlook on style. "This haircut has also informed so many different costume decisions that you can wear things that you didn't necessarily wear before

for Cannes, Fanning says that Bob enhances the "preppy" aspect that she didn't know she had. She leaned into it with a black bow fastened to a lace, vintage Chanel dress and a half-up, half-down hairstyle, which was teased for her first day of the festival.

Even when she's out of character, Fanning sees beauty as a story she builds with the help of her clothes. "I really think it's all about the story you're trying to tell," she explains. For the Met Gala, she literally asked for a glass dress from Balmain because she wanted to look like glass, and "Then on my body, I really seemed shiny.""In southern France, we want to be old Hollywood with a preppy twist, so we combine spring suits and sundresses with fresh new cuts.

"One thing signals the other," Fanning says. And no matter how she styling her hair, that's exactly what she wants.