Kirsten Dunst said in a new interview with Marie Claire that she’s finally at a stage in her career where she no longer feels “nervous” speaking her mind, adding: “I feel at home sharing everything on set now.” It’s a big change from Dunst’s experience on the “Spider-Man” set decades ago. As a young actor, Dunst didn’t have the confidence to speak up when things bothered her. Case in point: Being repeatedly called a “girly-girl” on the Marvel set.
“It was a joke, but on ‘Spider-Man,’ they would call me ‘girly-girl’ sometimes on the walkie-talkie. ‘We need girly-girl.’ But I never said anything,” Dunst said. “Like, don’t call me that!”
Dunst added that “you didn’t say anything” on sets at that time, especially before the #MeToo movement, and “you just took it.” She also said that it was a conscious choice not to “capitalize off the ‘Spider-Man’ thing” and become a “movie-star-movie-star.”
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“That’s great for some people. It’s not the artist that I want to be,” said Dunst, who decided to go the indie route and team up with auteur filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Lars von Trier. “It was just growing up and migrating to things that spoke to me. I always just navigated with my heart.”
That’s not to say Dunst would turn her back on superhero movies today. Would she ever go back to the comic book world? “Yes,” Dunst said, “Because you get paid a lot of money, and I have two children, and I support my mother.”
Next up for Dunst is Alex Garland’s buzzy action drama “Civil War,” which A24 is releasing in theaters and Imax this spring. She plays a photojournalist covering an escalating war in a divided America.
“There’s definitely less good roles for women my age,” Dunst said, noting that “every role I was being offered was the sad mom” after she earned her first Oscar nomination for “The Power of the Dog” in 2022. “That’s why I did ‘Civil War.’ When I read the script, I thought, ‘I’ve never done anything like this.'”
“Civil War” will have its world premiere a SXSW before opening in theaters April 12. Head over to Marie Claire’s website to read Dunst’s latest profile in its entirety.
