Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982) is an
American actress, model, and singer. She made her film debut in
Oedipus
Wrecks, a
short film directed by
Woody Allen for the anthology
New York Stories (1989).
At the age of 12, Dunst gained widespread recognition playing the
role of vampire
Claudia in
Interview
with the Vampire (1994). She was nominated for a
Golden
Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for this performance.
That same year she appeared in
Little Women, to further
acclaim.
Dunst achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of
Mary Jane Watson in the
Spider-Man trilogy. Since
then her films have included the romantic comedy
Wimbledon (2004), the science fiction
drama
Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and
Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy
Elizabethtown (2005). She played
the title role in
Sofia Coppola's
Marie
Antoinette (2006), and she starred in the comedy
How
to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008).
In 2001, Dunst made her singing debut in the film
Get Over It, in which she performed
two songs. She also sang the jazz song "
After You've Gone" for the end
credits of the film
The Cat's
Meow (2001). In early 2008 Dunst confirmed she was
suffering from depression, checking into a treatment center before
discharging herself in March and resuming her career.
Early life
Dunst was
born in Point Pleasant, New Jersey
to Klaus and Inez Dunst. She has a younger
brother, Christian (born 1987). Her father worked as a medical
services executive, and her mother was an artist and one-time
gallery owner. Dunst is of German descent on her father's side, and
Swedish on her mother's.
Until the
age of six Dunst lived in New Jersey, where she attended Ranney School
before moving with her mother and younger brother
to Los Angeles, California in 1991. In 1995, her mother
filed for divorce.
The following year Dunst began attending
Notre Dame
, a private Catholic high school in Los
Angeles. After graduating from Notre Dame she continued the
acting career that she had begun at the age of eight. As a
teenager, Dunst found it difficult to deal with her rising fame,
and for a period blamed her mother for pushing her into acting as a
child. However, she later expressed that her mother "...always had
the best intentions". When asked if she had any regrets about the
way she spent her childhood, Dunst said: "Well, it's not a natural
way to grow up, but it's the way I grew up and I wouldn't change
it. I have my stuff to work out [...] I don't think anybody
can sit around and say: 'My life is more screwed up than yours.'
Everybody has their issues."
Career
Early work
Dunst began her career when she was three years old as a child
fashion model in
television commercials. She was
signed with
Ford Models and
Elite Model Management. At the age of
eight she made her film debut in a minor role in
Woody Allen's
Oedipus Wrecks, a short
film that was released as one-third of the anthology
New York Stories (1989). Soon after,
she landed a small part in
The Bonfire of the
Vanities (1990), as
Tom Hanks's
daughter. In 1993, Dunst played Hedril in "
Dark Page", the seventh episode of
the seventh season of
Star Trek: The Next
Generation.
Critical success
The breakthrough role in Dunst's career came in
Interview
with the Vampire, a 1994 film based on
Anne Rice's novel, in which she played the child
vampire
Claudia, a
surrogate daughter to
Tom Cruise and
Brad Pitt's characters in the film. The
film received generally unfavorable reviews, but many film critics
complimented Dunst's performance.
Roger
Ebert commented that Dunst's creation of the child vampire
Claudia was one of the "creepier" aspects of the film, and
mentioned her ability to convey the impression of great age inside
apparent youth. Todd McCarthy in
Variety noted that Dunst was "just
right" for the family. The film featured a scene in which Dunst
received her first kiss from Brad Pitt, who was 18 years her
senior. In an interview with
Interview magazine, she revealed,
while questioned about her kissing scene with Pitt, that kissing
him had made her feel uncomfortable: "I thought it was gross, that
Brad had
cooties. I mean, I was 10." Her
performance earned her the
MTV Movie
Award for Best Breakthrough Performance, the
Saturn Award for Best Young Actress, and her
first
Golden Globe Award
nomination.
Dunst during the 2005 Toronto Film
Festival
She then appeared in the adaptation of the drama
Little Women (1994), Dunst
portrayed Amy March, opposite
Winona
Ryder and
Claire Danes. The film
received favorable reviews; critic
Janet
Maslin of
The New York
Times wrote that the film was the greatest
adaptation of the novel and remarked on Dunst's
performance: "The perfect contrast to take-charge Jo comes from
Kirsten Dunst's scene-stealing Amy, whose vanity and twinkling
mischief make so much more sense coming from an 11-year-old vixen
than they did from grown-up Joan Bennett in 1933. Ms Dunst, also
scarily effective as the baby bloodsucker of
Interview With the
Vampire, is a little vamp with a big future."
In 1995, she appeared in the fantasy movie
Jumanji, loosely based on
Chris Van Allsburg's 1981
book of the same name. The story is about a
supernatural and ominous board game which makes animals and other
jungle hazards appear upon each roll of the dice. She was part of
an ensemble cast that included
Robin
Williams,
Bonnie Hunt, and
David Alan Grier. The movie grossed
$100 million worldwide. That same year, and again in 2002, she
was named one of
People
magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People. In 1996, Dunst had a recurring
role in the third season of
NBC's medical drama
ER. She portrayed a child
prostitute, Charlie Chiemingo, taken under the guidance of
Dr. Doug Ross, played by
George Clooney. In 1997, she was the voice of
Young Anastasia in the animated musical film
Anastasia. Also in 1997, Dunst
appeared in the political satire
Wag the
Dog, opposite
Robert De Niro
and
Dustin Hoffman. The following
year she was the voice of the title character, Kiki, a 13-year-old
apprentice witch who leaves her home village to spend a year on her
own, in the
anime movie
Kiki's Delivery Service
(1998).
Dunst was offered the role of Angela in the 1999 drama film
American Beauty, but
turned it down because she did not want to appear in the film's
suggestive sexual scenes or kiss co-star
Kevin Spacey. She later explained: "When I read
it, I was 15 and I don't think I was mature enough to understand
the script's material." That same year, she appeared in the comedy
Dick, alongside
Michelle Williams. The film is a
parody retelling the events of the
Watergate scandal which lead to the
resignation of U.S. president
Richard
Nixon.
In
Sofia Coppola's independent film
The Virgin
Suicides (1999), Dunst played the role of troubled
adolescent Lux Lisbon. The film was screened as a special
presentation at the 43rd
San Francisco
International Film Festival in 2000. The movie received
generally favorable reviews, and
San Francisco Chronicle critic
Peter Stack noted in his review that Dunst "beautifully balances
innocence and wantonness".
In 2000, she played Torrance Shipman, the captain of a cheerleading
squad in
Bring It On.
The film generated mostly critical reviews, with Charles Taylor of
Salon.com writing that the film had failed
to provide Dunst with as good a role as she had either in
Dick or in
The Virgin Suicides. However, Jessica
Winter of
The Village
Voice complimented Dunst, stating that her performance was
"as sprightly and knowingly daft as her turn in
Dick. She
provides the only major element of
Bring It On that plays
as tweaking parody rather than slick, strident, body-slam
churlishness." The movie grossed $68 million worldwide.
The following year, Dunst had the lead in the teen comedy
Get Over It (2001). She
later explained that one of the reasons for accepting the role was
that it gave her the opportunity to sing. Also in 2001, Dunst
depicted the late American actress
Marion
Davies in
The Cat's Meow
(2001). The film, directed by
Peter
Bogdanovich, was described by Derek Elley of
Variety
as "playful and sporty", saying of Dunst that this was her best
performance to date. "Believable as both a spoiled ingenue and a
lover to two very different men, Dunst endows a potentially
lightweight character with considerable depth and sympathy." In the
Esquire review, Tom
Carson called her performance "terrific". For her work, she won the
Best Actress Silver Ombú category award at the 2002
Mar del Plata Film
Festival.
Spider-Man and after
In the 2002
superhero film
Spider-Man, the most successful film
of her career to date, Dunst played
Mary Jane Watson, the best friend and love
interest of the title character, played by
Tobey Maguire. The film was directed by
Sam Raimi.
Owen
Gleiberman of
Entertainment
Weekly remarked on Dunst's ability to "lend even the
smallest line a tickle of flirtatious music." In the
Los Angeles Times review, critic
Kenneth Turan noted that Dunst and
Maguire made a real connection on screen, concluding that their
relationship involved audiences to an extent rarely seen in films.
Spider-Man was a commercial and critical success. The
movie grossed $114 million during its opening weekend in North
America and went on to earn $822 million worldwide.
Following the success of
Spider-Man, Dunst appeared in the
independent drama
Levity
(2003), where she had a supporting role. In this same year she
starred in
Mona Lisa Smile
(2003), part of an ensemble cast that included
Julia Roberts,
Maggie Gyllenhaal, and
Julia Stiles. The film generated mostly
negative reviews, with
Manohla Dargis
of the
Los Angeles Times describing it as "smug and
reductive". She next appeared in the supporting role of Mary Svevo
in
Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), alongside
Jim Carrey,
Kate
Winslet, and
Tom Wilkinson. The
latter film received very positive reviews, with
Entertainment
Weekly describing Dunst's subplot as "nifty and clever". The
movie grossed $72 million worldwide.
The success of the first
Spider-Man film led Dunst to
reprise the role in the 2004 sequel,
Spider-Man 2. The movie was well received
by critics, and it proved to be a big financial success, setting a
new opening weekend box office record for North America. With
revenue of $783 million worldwide, it became the second
highest grossing film in 2004.
Also in 2004, she appeared in the romantic
comedy Wimbledon, a film
in which she portrays a rising tennis player in the Wimbledon
Championships
opposite Paul Bettany,
who plays a fading former tennis star. Reception for the
movie was mixed, but many critics enjoyed Dunst's performance;
Claudia Puig of
USA Today
reported that the chemistry between Dunst and Bettany was potent,
with Dunst doing a fine job as a sassy and self-assured
player.
In 2005, she appeared as flight attendant Claire Colburn alongside
Orlando Bloom, in
Elizabethtown, a movie written and
directed by
Cameron Crowe.
The film
premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival
. Dunst revealed that working with Crowe was
enjoyable, but more demanding than she had expected. The movie
garnered mixed reviews, with the
Chicago Tribune rating it one out of
four stars and describing Dunst's portrayal of a flight attendant
as "cloying". It was a box office disappointment.
Dunst's next film role was the
title
character in the 2006
biographical
film Marie
Antoinette. Adapted from
Antonia
Fraser's book
Marie Antoinette: The
Journey, the film was Dunst's second with director Sofia
Coppola. The movie was screened at a special presentation at the
2006 Cannes Film Festival,
and was reviewed favourably. International revenues were
$45 million out of $60 million overall.
In 2007 she again played Mary Jane Watson, in
Spider-Man 3. In contrast to the previous
two films' positive reviews,
Spider-Man 3 was met with a
mixed reception by critics. Nonetheless, with a total worldwide
gross of $891 million, it stands as the most successful
film in
the series, and Dunst's highest grossing film to the end of
2008. Having initially signed on for three
Spider-Man
films, she revealed that she would do a fourth, but only if Raimi
and Maguire also returned.
In the 2008 movie
How to Lose
Friends and Alienate People Dunst appeared alongside
Simon Pegg. The movie is an adaptation of
the
memoir of the
same name by former
Vanity Fair contributing editor
Toby Young. Dunst signed on to the film,
later revealing that she had joined the project because Pegg was
scheduled to appear in it.
She agreed to appear in
All
Good Things, in a leading role opposite
Ryan Gosling, portraying a woman from a
run-down neighborhood who goes missing. She also signed to appear
in
Sweet Relief as
peace
activist Marla Ruzicka, a U.S.
relief worker killed by a suicide bomb in Baghdad. She has
expressed interest in playing the role of
Blondie frontwoman
Debbie Harry in
Michel
Gondry's upcoming biographical film about the band. She is set
to star opposite
Jim Sturgess in
Upside Down with a
scheduled release in 2011. In addition, Dunst will appear in a
fourth
Spider-Man film, set for a release in 2011.
Music
Dunst made her singing debut in the 2001 film
Get Over It,
performing two songs written by
Marc
Shaiman. She also lent her voice to the end credits of
The
Cat's Meow, singing
Henry Creamer
and
Turner Layton's
jazz standard "After You've Gone".
In Spider-Man
3, she sings two songs as part of her role as Mary Jane
Watson, one during a Broadway
performance,
and one as a singing waitress in a jazz club. Dunst revealed
that she recorded the songs earlier and later
lip-synced to it when filming began. She also
appeared in the
music video for
Savage Garden's "
I Knew I Loved You", and she sang two
tracks, "This Old Machine" and "Summer Day", on
Jason Schwartzman's 2007 solo album
Nighttiming. In an interview
with
The
Advertiser, Dunst explained that she has no plans to
follow the steps of actors such as
Russell
Crowe or
Toni Collette's in
releasing an album, saying: "Definitely not. No way. It worked when
Barbra Streisand was doing it, but now it's a little cheesy, I
think. It works better when singers are in movies."
Personal life
As of 2009 Dunst remains unmarried, and has not been identified
with a long-term partner. She has reportedly been involved in
short-term relationships with playwright Jeff Smeenge, actor
Jake Gyllenhaal, and musician
Johnny Borrell of
Razorlight.
Dunst supported
Democratic candidate
John Kerry in the
2004 U.S. presidential
election. Four years later, she supported Democrat
Barack Obama in the
2008 presidential
election. Dunst revealed that she supported Obama "from the
beginning" of the presidential campaign. In support of this, she
directed and narrated a documentary entitled
Why Tuesday,
explaining the United States tradition of voting on Tuesdays. Dunst
explained that Tuesday is "not a holiday, and [the United States
is] one of the lowest democratic countries in voter turnout". She
felt it important to "influence people in a positive way" to vote
on November 4.
Her charity work includes participation with the
Elizabeth Glaser
Pediatric AIDS Foundation, in which she helped design and
promote a necklace, for which all proceeds from sales went to the
Glaser foundation. She also has helped with breast cancer
awareness; in September 2008 she participated in the
Stand Up to Cancer telethon, to help
raise funds to accelerate cancer research.
Dunst has confirmed that she was treated for
depression in early 2008.
She sought
treatment at the Cirque Lodge treatment
center in Utah
.
Dunst explained that she had been feeling low in the six months
prior to her going to rehab. In late March she checked out from the
treatment center and began filming
All Good Things. In May she went
public with this information, she said, to highlight the struggle
faced by so many other successful women and to dispel false rumors
that had been very painful for her friends and family.
Filmography
References
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