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Meet the next Millie Bobby Brown: who is Logan star Dafne Keen?

Millie Bobby Brown may have charmed Hollywood last year with her memorable talk show appearances, immersion into the fashion world, and scene-stealing role as the telekinetic Eleven on Stranger Things, but she's about to face a cruel celebrity law. To quote that imitable cinematic landmark Showgirls, there's always someone younger and hungrier coming down the stairs after you.

2017's preternaturally talented kid in a sci-fi spectacle is Dafne Keen, the 11-year-old actress looking likely to run circles around Hugh Jackman in the eagerly anticipated Wolverine spin-off Logan.

As Wolverine's clone daughter X-23, bred in a lab and trained to kill, Keen has already been compared to the Stranger Things standout, with lucky fans who got a glimpse at the film back in December declaring that she practically runs away with the movie.

But who is Dafne Keen? Not much is known about the actress (for now), but we did some digging...

Her father is an actor

Dafne grew up in an acting household, the daughter of British actor Will Keen. The Old Etonian has become a recent mainstay in costume dramas, playing Michael Adeane in Netflix's The Crown, Thomas Cranmer in Wolf Hall and Perales in The Musketeers. He also appeared alongside Natalie Dormer in the BBC drama The Scandalous Lady W.

Dafne's mother, Maria Fernández Ache, is similarly gifted in the creative department. A Spanish actress, writer and theatrical director, she has appeared in four episodes of Holby City, and last year costarred in the Brit gangster flick Anti-Social, which just so happened to feature Prince Harry's girlfriend Meghan Markle.

She's bilingual

As a result of her international parentage, Dafne grew up between both the UK and Spain, and is fluent in Spanish. Her ease with the language can be seen in this YouTube video from the set of one of her father's TV series...

She only has one other credit to her name

Dafne made her screen debut alongside her father in the Spanish BBC Worldwide co-production The Refugees. The sci-fi drama ran for eight episodes in 2015, and followed a Spanish family who take in a group of refugees from the future, the group having time travelled to the past seeking help from an imminent global catastrophe.

Dafne played Ani Cruz, the daughter of the central family, her father Will playing her on-screen dad.

She's not active on social media... yet

Keen has an (unverified) Instagram profile, monitored by her parents, but she has yet to post any images on it. That hasn't stopped over 2,000 people following her, though, presumably hoping she'll drop Logan images once promotional obligations kick in.

Keen also has an (unverified) Twitter profile under the same username, where she refers to herself in her bio as an "actor and very creative mind". She has tweeted little since she registered her name in July 2016, but has retweeted a Logan trailer as well as a photograph of a kitten posing with two ducklings.

Neither accounts are verified, however, so it's uncertain whether the real Keen is genuinely behind both of them.

X-23 was designed to steal the show in Logan

According to director James Mangold, one of the major factors in drawing him to the X-Men spin-off was the X-23 character. Speaking to Moviefone, he revealed, "What's interesting to me is the idea that so many times in these films, and not just X-Men films but other ones, when you see a young hero or a young mutant or a superhero on the young side, it's always the kind of super-attractive 19-year-old actor... clearly post-puberty, kind of looking sultry and shiny-skinned.

"I [didn't] want that energy, I wanted something more like what I saw in Little Miss Sunshine, or Paper Moon, or even one of my favourites, the great old Bad News Bears with Walter Matthau, or The Cowboys with John Wayne.

"How do you make an adult, intense movie, but you involve the issues of children coming to terms with the darkness of the adult world?"

Audiences will see X-23 in action when Logan hits cinemas March 1.

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