Kirsten Dunst

• 1. Introduction

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  Kirsten Dunst was ten years old when she shared a screen kiss with Brad Pitt, an actor two decades her senior, and her verdict was blunt. "I thought it was gross, that Brad had cooties. I mean, I was 10," she recalled. Dunst, an American actress born on the 30th of April 1982, has been working in front of cameras since she was a small child. Along the way she has collected nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and four Golden Globe Awards. How does a girl from commercials become the performer directors trust with a vampire, a superhero's love interest, a doomed queen and a war photographer? And why did she step away from acting for two years right after one of her most celebrated roles?

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• 2. Vampire Breakthrough

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  Point Pleasant Hospital in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, is where Dunst was born, the daughter of a German father and an American mother. Her father, Klaus Dunst, came from Hamburg and worked for Siemens as a medical services executive. Her mother, Inez, worked for Lufthansa as a flight attendant and was also an artist who once owned a gallery. A brother, Christian, arrived about five years after Kirsten. Until she was eleven, the family lived in Brick Township, and she attended Ranney School in Tinton Falls.

  At age three, Dunst began working as a child fashion model in television commercials, signed with Ford Models and Elite Model Management. In 1988 she appeared on Saturday Night Live as the granddaughter of George H. W. Bush. Later that year she made her feature film debut in a minor role in Oedipus Wrecks, a Woody Allen short. It was released in 1989 as one-third of the anthology film New York Stories. In 1990 she played the daughter of Tom Hanks' character in The Bonfire of the Vanities, adapted from Tom Wolfe's novel.

  In 1993 her parents separated, and Dunst moved to Los Angeles with her mother and brother. That same year she made a guest appearance in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then came 1994 and Interview with the Vampire, adapted from Anne Rice's novel, with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in the leads. Dunst played Claudia, a child vampire who becomes a surrogate daughter to the characters played by Cruise and Pitt.

  The film as a whole earned mixed reviews, but many critics singled out the young actress. Roger Ebert counted her Claudia among the creepier elements of the film and noted how well she suggested great age inside a young body. Todd McCarthy of Variety judged her "just right" for the family. She won the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and the Saturn Award for Best Young Actress. She also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the first of several. Before 1994 ended, she would appear opposite Winona Ryder in a very different kind of story.

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• 3. Growing Up On Screen

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  Winona Ryder and Claire Danes were Dunst's co-stars in Little Women, released in 1994 to critical acclaim. Janet Maslin of The New York Times hailed it as the greatest adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel. Maslin praised Dunst as a scene-stealing Amy, whose vanity and mischief made more sense in an 11-year-old than in the grown-up Joan Bennett who played her in 1933. Maslin called her "a little vamp with a big future."

  Jumanji arrived in 1995, a loose adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's 1981 children's book about a supernatural board game. Animals and other jungle hazards appear with each roll of the dice. The ensemble included Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt and David Alan Grier, and the film was a financial success. That year People magazine named Dunst one of its 50 Most Beautiful People, and it did so again in 2002.

  From 1996 to 1997 she had a recurring role in season three of the NBC medical drama ER. She played Charlie Chemingo, a child prostitute cared for by the pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross, played by George Clooney. In 1997 she also voiced Young Anastasia in the animated musical Anastasia and appeared in the black comedy Wag the Dog, opposite Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.

  The year 1998 brought Small Soldiers and a voice role as the title character in the English Disney and GKIDS dub of Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service. She also starred in Sarah Kernochan's period comedy All I Wanna Do, playing a student at an all-girls boarding school in the 1960s. Her co-stars included Gaby Hoffmann, Rachael Leigh Cook and Lynn Redgrave. A. O. Scott of The New York Times found the film surprisingly pleasant, crediting smart, unstereotyped performances, especially from Hoffmann and Dunst.

  In 1999 she moved into leading roles in teen films, beginning with Drop Dead Gorgeous. This satirical mockumentary about a small-town beauty pageant co-starred Ellen Barkin and Allison Janney. She also co-starred with Michelle Williams in Dick, a parody that retells the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. That same year, at fifteen, she turned down the role of Angela Hayes in American Beauty, which went to Mena Suvari. She did not want to appear in the sexual scenes or kiss the lead character, played by Kevin Spacey. "When I read it, I was 15 and I don't think I was mature enough to understand the script's material," she later explained.

  In 2000, Dunst played Torrance Shipman, captain of a cheerleading squad, in Bring It On. The film earned mostly positive reviews, and many critics saved their praise for her. Scott called her "a terrific comic actress, largely because of her great expressive range, and the nimbleness with which she can shift from anxiety to aggression to genuine hurt." Charles Taylor of Salon wrote that she had become "the sunniest imaginable parodist" among contemporary teenage actresses.

  In 2001 she co-starred with Jay Hernandez in the coming-of-age romance Crazy/Beautiful. Roger Ebert called it an unusually observant film about adolescence and said the conviction of its two leads made viewers care about them as people. Dunst also played the actress Marion Davies in Peter Bogdanovich's historical drama The Cat's Meow. Derek Elley of Variety called it her best performance to date and credited her with giving a potentially lightweight character depth and sympathy. It earned her the Best Actress Silver Ombu award at the 2002 Mar del Plata International Film Festival. Her next film that year would be directed by Sam Raimi.

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• 4. Spider-Man Years

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  Sam Raimi directed Spider-Man in 2002, with Dunst as Mary Jane Watson, love interest of Peter Parker, played by Tobey Maguire. At that point it was the most financially successful film of her career. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly noted her knack for lending even the smallest line "a tickle of flirtatious music." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt that she and Maguire made a real connection onscreen. He wrote that their relationship "involved audiences to an extent rarely seen in films."

  The success of the first film brought her back for Spider-Man 2 in 2004. Critics acclaimed it, and it set a new opening-weekend record for North America. It became the second highest-grossing film of 2004. Spider-Man 3 followed in 2007 and drew a mixed reaction after the rave reviews for its predecessors. Ryan Gilbey of the New Statesman complained that the film-makers could not find much for Mary Jane to do other than scream a lot. Even so, it was the most commercially successful film in the series.

  Dunst had initially signed on for three films. She said she would consider a fourth, but only if Raimi and Maguire returned. In January 2010 it was announced that the fourth film was canceled and the series would restart, dropping the trio.

  Between the sequels, her choices were wide-ranging. In 2003 she co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman and Holly Hunter in the drama Levity, about a paroled man seeking redemption. She also appeared with Julia Roberts in Mona Lisa Smile, which Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times called "smug and reductive." In 2004 she played Mary Svevo in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, alongside Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet and Tom Wilkinson. Critics acclaimed it, and Entertainment Weekly described her subplot as "nifty and clever."

  Also in 2004, Wimbledon cast her as a rising tennis player opposite Paul Bettany as a fading former star. Claudia Puig of USA Today praised the chemistry between them and called her "sassy and self-assured." In 2005 she played the flight attendant Claire Colburn opposite Orlando Bloom in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. She found working with Crowe enjoyable but more demanding than she had expected. The Chicago Tribune gave the film 1 star out of 4 and called her character "cloying," and it disappointed at the box office. In 2008 she co-starred with Simon Pegg in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, which holds a 37% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

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• 5. The Coppola Collaborations

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  Jeffrey Eugenides' novel The Virgin Suicides became Dunst's first film with Sofia Coppola in 1999. She played Lux Lisbon, one of the troubled teenage daughters of Ronald Lisbon, played by James Woods. The film was screened as a special presentation at the 43rd San Francisco International Film Festival in 2000. Metacritic records generally favorable reviews. Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Dunst "beautifully balances innocence and wantonness."

  Antonia Fraser's book Marie Antoinette: The Journey was the basis for their second film, Marie Antoinette, in 2006. Dunst played the title role. The film was screened as a special presentation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was reviewed favorably.

  The Beguiled in 2017 marked their third collaboration, with Coppola writing and directing. It remakes Don Siegel's 1971 film about a wounded Union soldier who seeks shelter at an all-girls school in the Confederate States of America. Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning joined Dunst in the cast. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 79% approval rating, and Matthew Norman of the Evening Standard called the acting "impeccable." He wrote that Dunst lent her prim spinster "the ideal measure of coiled physical longing." She had two film releases in 2017, and The Beguiled was only one of them.

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• 6. Darker Independent Roles

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  Bastard, a short film co-written with Sasha Sagan, marked Dunst's screenwriting and directorial debut. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010 and was later featured at that year's Cannes Film Festival. Also in 2010 she co-starred with Ryan Gosling in All Good Things, a mystery drama based on the true story of the New York real estate developer Robert Durst, whose wife disappeared in 1982. It earned fair reviews but failed commercially. Roger Ebert praised her portrayal of a woman at a loss to understand who her husband really is. The San Francisco Chronicle called her "the only one worth watching."

  Lars von Trier's Melancholia in 2011 cast her as a woman suffering depression as the world ends. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Rampling co-starred. The film premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and drew positive reviews, particularly for her performance. Sukhdev Sandhu of The Daily Telegraph found her exceptional and convincing as a figure both serene and fierce, calling it a career breakthrough. She won the Best Actress Award at Cannes and the Best Actress Award from the U.S. National Society of Film Critics.

  In 2012 she appeared in the romantic comedy Bachelorette as Regan Crawford, and in Walter Salles' adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road as Camille Moriarty. Salles had first approached her about the role several years earlier. On the Road premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and reached the United States on the 21st of December 2012. Reviews were mixed and it under-performed at the box office, though Richard Corliss of Time praised her performance. Two years later she played Colette MacFarland, the wife of a con artist, in Hossein Amini's The Two Faces of January. Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac co-starred, and the thriller was based on Patricia Highsmith's 1964 novel.

  Throughout 2015 Dunst worked solely in television. She played the hairdresser Peggy Blumquist in the second season of the FX series Fargo. The role brought nominations for a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2016 she co-starred with Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton in Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special, about a father and his eight-year-old son on the run after the boy's mysterious powers are discovered. She also had a supporting role in Hidden Figures, about the African-American mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race. Elise Nakhnikian of Slant Magazine praised her portrayal of a white supervisor. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, and its cast won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

  That year she also served on the main competition jury of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. She planned to direct an adaptation of Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, starring Dakota Fanning, but stepped down before production.

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• 7. Late Career Acclaim

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  Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the founders of the Rodarte fashion label, wrote and directed Woodshock, the psychological thriller that was Dunst's other 2017 release. The friends approached her personally for the lead role of a woman sinking into paranoia after taking a deadly drug. She said this gave her an "emotional safety net." She prepared for a year, running dream experiments to try to inhabit the character's state of mind. Critics were unkind. Katie Rife of The A.V. Club admired the cinematography but found the character development nearly nonexistent.

  Showtime premiered the dark comedy On Becoming a God in Central Florida in August 2019. It brought Dunst a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress and a Critics Choice Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. That same month she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Showtime renewed the series in September 2019 but canceled it the following year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog, distributed by Netflix, reached limited American theaters on the 17th of November 2021. Dunst co-starred with her then-fiance Jesse Plemons. She received Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress. She also earned two Critics' Choice nominations, one for Best Supporting Actress and one for Best Acting Ensemble. The Academy Award nomination came at the 2022 ceremony and was her first.

  Afterward she took a two-year hiatus. She was only being offered the role of "the sad mom," and she said roles that resonated with her became harder to find as she aged. Alex Garland then approached her about his dystopian thriller Civil War, and she signed on in 2022. She said she agreed eagerly because she had "never done anything like" it before. The film arrived in 2024 as a critical and commercial success. Critics particularly praised her as Lee Smith, a world-weary war photojournalist.

  Derek Cianfrance's Roofman followed in 2025, co-starring Channing Tatum. It tells of the criminal Jeffrey Manchester, who hid inside a Toys "R" Us store for six months after escaping prison. Dunst played Leigh Wainscott, a divorced mother who falls in love with him. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025 to positive reviews. Mark Hughes of Forbes called her work one of the best performances of her career.

  More is on the way. She and Mikey Madison will star in Alejandro Landes Echavarria's thriller Reptilia. She will play Alex in A Minecraft Movie Squared, a sequel directed by Jared Hess and set for release in summer 2027. Paul Feig will direct her in The Housemaid's Secret, with Sydney Sweeney. Ruben Ostlund's satirical comedy The Entertainment System Is Down and Charlie McDermott's drama Rhubarb are in post-production.

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• 8. Songs And Private Life

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  Marc Shaiman wrote the two songs Dunst performed in the 2001 comedy Get Over It, her singing debut. She said she took the role for the chance to show off her voice. She later recorded the jazz standard "After You've Gone," by Henry Creamer and Turner Layton, which plays over the end credits of The Cat's Meow. In Spider-Man 3 she sang two songs as Mary Jane, one in a Broadway performance and one as a waitress in a jazz club. She recorded them in advance and lip-synced on set.

  Music videos became another outlet. She appeared in Savage Garden's "I Knew I Loved You," the first single from their second and final album, Affirmation. She also appeared in Beastie Boys' "Make Some Noise" and R.E.M.'s "We All Go Back to Where We Belong." In 2011 she made a cameo in the Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right Revisited," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. On Jason Schwartzman's 2007 solo album Nighttiming she sang "This Old Machine" and "Summer Day." In 2007 she said she had no plans to release albums, adding: "It worked when Barbra Streisand was doing it, but now it's a little cheesy, I think. It works better when singers are in movies."

  The artist Takashi Murakami and the director McG made the short Akihabara Majokko Princess, in which Dunst plays the magical princess Majokko. She sings a cover of The Vapors' 1980 song "Turning Japanese" while dancing around Akihabara, a Tokyo shopping district. It was shown in the "Pop Life" exhibition at London's Tate Modern from the 1st of October 2009 to the 17th of January 2010.

  In her teens, Dunst found it hard to cope with rising fame, and for a period she blamed her mother for pushing her into acting. She later said her mother "always had the best intentions." Of her childhood she said: "Well, it's not a natural way to grow up, but it's the way I grew up and I wouldn't change it." In early 2008 she was treated for depression at the Cirque Lodge treatment center in Utah. She left in late March 2008 and began filming All Good Things. Two months later she went public to dispel rumors of substance abuse. "Depression is pretty serious and should not be gossiped about," she said.

  Her causes include the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, for which she helped design and promote a necklace whose proceeds went to the foundation. She joined the Stand Up to Cancer telethon in September 2008 and the Teleton in Mexico on the 5th of December 2009. Politically, she endorsed John Kerry in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in 2020. For Obama's election she directed and narrated the documentary Why Tuesday, about the tradition of voting on Tuesdays and low turnout in the United States. In 2011 she acquired German citizenship, which let her "film in Europe without a problem." She now holds dual American and German citizenship. In a 2001 interview she described herself as "Aryan. Like a Swedish milkmaid." Her mother is of German and Swedish descent.

  She dated Tobey Maguire in 2001, and they split the next year but stayed friends and co-stars. From 2002 to 2004 she was with Jake Gyllenhaal. She was with her On the Road co-star Garrett Hedlund from 2012 to 2016 and was briefly engaged to him. In 2016 she began a relationship with her Fargo co-star Jesse Plemons, and they became engaged in 2017. They married in July 2022 at a resort in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Dunst is a practicing Christian and had both of their sons baptized. The boys were born in May 2018 and May 2021, and the family lives in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles.

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