The filmmaker right at the top of Kirsten Dunst’s bucket list: “He’s my dream director”
Being in Hollywood since she was a kid, Kirsten Dunst has appeared alongside big names, whether it involved turning into a vampire alongside Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire or being the brattish younger sibling in the star-studded 1990s version of Little Women.
From Jumanji to Drop Dead Gorgeous, Dunst continued to appear in successful movies across the decade, but when she was 16, she met Sofia Coppola, who changed everything for her. The 29-year-old first-time director dedicated her debut, 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, to the troubles of girlhood, with Dunst playing the tragic Lux Lisbon.
One of five sisters, she struggles against the traditionalism and restrictive conservative home life pushed on her by her parents, and she rebels by sleeping with boys on the roof of the house, with the movie ending on a bleak note, and for the first time, Dunst had chosen a role that really felt grown-up, especially since she had to film some rather intimate scenes with male actors that required plenty of onscreen kissing.
Coppola ensured that Dunst felt protected and respected on set, and clearly, her closely collaborative and reassuring shooting process worked well, with the actor returning to work with the director multiple times over the years, most notably reuniting for Marie Antoinette in 2006, with the actor playing the young queen in the anachronistic biopic, soundtracked by new wave and indie rock tracks.
Dunst will perhaps always be most closely associated with Coppola, but she has also appeared in movies directed by other notable filmmakers who many actors long to have on their resumé, from Jane Campion to Lars von Trier.
She might have worked with big names, but she’s not done ticking off her bucket list yet, though, only in her mid-40s, so she still has decades left to work her way through the list of filmmakers she’s most keen on being directed by, and one of these is actually an ex-boyfriend of Coppola’s, Quentin Tarantino.
While the pair might have dated briefly in the early 2000s, that’s all in the past now, and they have both since emerged as some of America’s most impressive and idiosyncratic modern talents, similarly getting their start in the realm of independent filmmaking before becoming mainstream icons. Both directors take an interest in the violence of the modern world, but they take strikingly different aesthetic approaches to bring these ideas to life.
“I wouldn’t do a film that I didn’t have a good reason to talk about. I think if I’m falling in love with it, then other people will, too… I would love to work with Quentin Tarantino, he’s my dream director,” the actor told Vogue.
For Tarantino, it was 1992’s Reservoir Dogs which catapulted him to acclaim, although he seems to be reaching the end of his filmmaking career now, with the director recently cancelling his proposed tenth, and final, project, The Movie Critic. He still wants to make one more movie, so perhaps he can rope Dunst into it, that’s if Tarantino can make up his mind about what he wants his latest film to be about.
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