The grudge Kirsten Dunst waited 20 years to settle: “It really bothered me”
It doesn’t feel right that Kirsten Dunst has been making movies for over three decades.
She still feels so fresh, but she’s actually a veteran of the industry, having made her film debut in 1989, playing a young child in New York Stories. Then, she broke out as a 12-year-old in Interview with the Vampire alongside undead player Tom Cruise, and it was off to the races from then on.
These days, Dunst is a highly respected and decorated performer. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and was named ‘Best Actress’ for her performance in Melancholia. She’s forged strong creative relationships with Sofia Coppola, Lan von Trier, and her husband Jesse Plemons, but it hasn’t always been easy.
Speaking to GQ about her career, Dunst explained that she feels very differently about acting than she did at the start of her run. “Now, I can enjoy being an actress in this industry,” she admitted, “But before, I felt insecure. I didn’t feel like I had a place.” These insecurities were fuelled by a number of unfortunate incidents she experienced on set, including during the making of the first of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies.
According to Dunst, who was a teenager at the time, an assistant director on the project repeatedly referred to her as a “girly girl” during filming, which was meant to be a joke but as a female actor trying to make it through an industry full of temperamental weight-pullers, even though she didn’t find it funny, she was too afraid to let on. It wasn’t until she was making the A24 movie Civil War 20 years later that she finally had the courage to confront him. “I was like, ‘It really bothered me that you guys did that’,” she told the AD, who was also working on Civil War. “He was like, ‘I’m so sorry’. Because they thought it was endearing. But it doesn’t sound endearing”.
Dunst never named the individual involved, so she clearly doesn’t want his name out there, in a gesture of goodwill. However, if you look hard enough, I’m sure you’ll be able to find out who it is. She also revealed that a director on a movie asked for “something inappropriate” during a meeting, but once again didn’t want to name names. She may not feel comfortable singling these people out, and while one indiscretion is clearly more severe than the other, her testimonies paint a grim picture of what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood during this time.
It’s highly possible that these experiences, paired with the burnout a lot of child stars experience, contributed to Dunst falling out of love with acting in the noughties. It wasn’t until she starred in the crime drama All Good Things that her passion was reignited, but sadly, film history is littered with other examples of exceptionally talented women who could never reignite their fire.
Being called “girly girl” might seem like small potatoes when compared to some of the other horror stories that have come from Hollywood, but it’s constant, condescending digs like this that can erode someone’s confidence to the point of collapse. The fact that Dunst not only lasted another two decades in the business but also had the courage to confront her former tormentor speaks volumes to her character. We need more people like her.
