Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst (born April 30, 1982, Point Pleasant, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American actress whose long career began when she was a child, stealing scenes from actors Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994). She remained a popular actress in her teens and 20s, starring in such movies as The Virgin Suicides (1999), Bring It On (2000), and Spider-Man (2002). Dunst later took on more-complex roles, including in the films Melancholia (2011) and The Power of the Dog (2021).

Early life and career

Dunst was born to parents Inez (née Rupprecht) and Klaus Dunst; her mother owned an art gallery, and her father was a medical services executive. At age three, she began modeling and acting, and, when she was six years old, Dunst had an uncredited role in Woody Allen’s New York Stories (1989). She followed that up with her first credited film role, in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Dunst’s breakthrough, however, was playing the precocious and heartbreaking child vampire Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. Her performance garnered her, at the age of 12, a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a supporting role in a motion picture. She then played the young Amy March in Gillian Armstrong’s adaptation of Little Women (1994) and a kid who discovers a magical board game in Jumanji (1995). In the latter half of the 1990s, Dunst had guest appearances in TV shows, including ER (1996–97), supporting roles in movies, including Wag the Dog (1997), and lead parts in independent films, including Strike! (1998).

Playing a teen

In 1999 Dunst received widespread acclaim for playing Lux Lisbon in Sofia Coppola’s first feature film, The Virgin Suicides. “I loved working with Kirsten,” Coppola told Vanity Fair in 2018. “I mean, obviously I guess. That’s when we met and had our first connection. We just clicked right away, and she knew what I had in mind…she was really there for me.” Dunst then assumed several roles in movies that satirically thwarted teen film tropes, including a competitor in an increasingly absurd beauty pageant in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), one of a pair of ditsy teenage girls (alongside Michelle Williams) who live in the Watergate building during the 1970s in Dick (1999), and a cheerleading captain in Bring It On. She followed those up with a teenage love story in Crazy/Beautiful (2001).

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Spider-Man and other roles from the 2000s

In her 20s Dunst had a high-profile role as Mary Jane Watson, the love interest of Peter Parker (played by Tobey Maguire), in Spider-Man and its two sequels (2004 and 2007). In between these big-budget action films, she also had parts in Mona Lisa Smile (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Wimbledon (2004), and Elizabethtown (2005). In addition, Dunst reunited with Coppola in the opulent Marie Antoinette (2006), playing the notorious queen.

Struggle with depression and films from the early 2010s

By 2008, after two decades as an actor, Dunst had started noticing that she felt a lack of joy in her profession. She struggled with depression and checked herself into Cirque Lodge treatment center in Utah. “There was a point where I was like, the way I’m doing [acting] isn’t exciting to me anymore,” Dunst told W Magazine in 2022. “My process [stopped being] fulfilling. And then I switched it up. I took a script to a bunch of different acting teachers, and I found one who I really love working with—who changed acting to something I do for myself rather than for anyone else. It made it personal, and it made it exciting. It was all about looking inward and satisfying yourself in your [own] creativity.” She started taking roles playing complicated women, including a bride suffering from debilitating depression in Melancholia, for which she won the best actress award at the Cannes film festival, and as a loathsome bridesmaid in Bachelorette (2012). Other movies from the early 2010s include On the Road (2012), Upside Down (2012), and The Two Faces of January (2014).

Fargo, marriage, and other work from the late 2010s

In 2015 Dunst played hairdresser Peggy Blumquist in the second season of the FX hit series Fargo, alongside Jesse Plemons, who played Peggy’s husband, Ed Blumquist. The two actors eventually had two children together, Ennis (born 2018) and James (born 2021), before wedding in 2022. In the meantime, Dunst appeared in Hidden Figures (2016) and had a lead role in The Beguiled (2017), her third film with Coppola. In 2019 she starred and executive produced the TV series On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

The Power of the Dog and other films from the 2020s

Dunst began the 2020s with rave reviews for her performance as a troubled woman in the Netflix film The Power of the Dog. She and Plemons, who played a ranch owner who marries Dunst’s character, both received Academy Award nominations for their performances. On the red carpet, she recalled when she learned they had both been nominated: “I screamed. To be nominated together is the craziest thing. We just feel so lucky. We already won, you know?” The two also appeared together in Dunst’s next film, Civil War (2024). The thriller imagines a dystopian United States after 19 states secede.

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