The weather is warm, the sun is shining, and it feels good to be alive. Must mean one thing: It’s Kirsten Dunst season. The actor recently began her press tour for Showtime’s deliciously titled On Becoming a God in Central Florida, and for her second or third or 15th stop so far, she got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There, before her fiancé, Jesse Plemons, their son, Ennis, plus a line of photographers, she added her name to the momentous sidewalk.
Isn’t that something? Especially when, just a couple days before, she told Larry Flick for his show on Sirius, “I know that all you have is your work at the end of the day, and that’s all people really care about, and I’m intelligent enough to know that and have perspective. But sometimes you’re like, Mmm, it’d be nice to be recognized by your peers.” So it’s nice she got this star, at least. It really is about time.
Dunst’s longtime collaborator Sofia Coppola said some words at the Walk of Fame event, and Dunst got teary-eyed and it was all terribly sweet. So sweet it made me rue the day that someone decided not to give Dunst an Oscar, which seems to be on her mind as well. “Of the things that people like, remember when Marie Antoinette—y’all panned it? And now you all love it. Drop Dead Gorgeous? Panned. Now you all love it,” she told Flick. “It’s interesting for me. I feel like a lot of things I do people like later. And also I’ve never been recognized in my industry. I always feel like nobody—I don’t know, maybe they just think I’m the girl from Bring It On.”
Think of the Oscar speech she would have given! Think of the Oscar speech she would give now, after all this time! She’s been a working actor since she was just a young girl in short pants! That’s a lot of time to craft the most charming speech!
Dunst is definitely known for Bring It On, a classic, but the idea that she’s only known for the teen film is completely untrue, and if you or I had been sitting there when she said that, she would have almost certainly had to walk it back. We wouldn’t have let her get away with that kind of negative self-talk. Then we would have reminded her gently that she is also the girl from this photo series alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, and we would have all laughed and laughed.
Dunst has still not been nominated for an Oscar, but she is starting to get her due, partly because those with the clear eyes and full hearts to see her genius at work are now old enough to holler about it on the internet or for America’s most revered critical institutions. Jia Tolentino, who wrote about Drop Dead Gorgeous coming to Hulu for the New Yorker, recasting critical attention onto the film 20 years later, was around 10 when it came out. Tolentino didn’t argue that it was Oscar-worthy necessarily, just that it deserved more recognition for being extremely good. Amanda Dobbins’s “In Defense of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette” came out seven years after the film did, in 2013. Dobbins argued a mere eye roll from Dunst deserved the highest film award there is to give, and I gotta say, she was onto something.
We were all just biding our time, young kids with stars over our eyes, mooning over the best-actress award winner in our hearts, and lying in wait to publish polemics on how Dunst deserved a little positive feedback here and there from critics and peers. Justice for Kiki and all that.
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