Kirsten Dunst: revisit the Civil War star’s 2004 Dazed cover shoot

“It’s so nice to be a part of a good movie, you know? A real movie with real human beings, real women who are bitches and sweethearts and funny – all at once.”

Dunst is sitting under a warm, blue LA evening, clutching a vodka tonic and grinning. She’s wearing a pink shawl/sweater thing that somehow comes off as both comfortable and glamorous, and her hair is cut like a boy’s. She does not look like a movie star.

In Eternal Sunshine, the hair is longer, but the effect is the same. The film is a brilliant study of the nuances of love and memory and arguably one of Kaufman’s finest scripts. His trademark ingenuity is on full display here, the labyrinthine narrative snaking through a slightly skewed reality, but in Eternal Sunshine, the cleverness has finally been imbued with a sincerity of emotion. As director, Gondry provides the perfect match to Kaufman’s abashed inventiveness, utilising a purely imaginative style that is sweet without being cloying. Gondry is humble enough to balance his own vision with that of his cast, and the result is that the film’s characters rise above cliche. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet fit snugly into the starring roles, with Dunst supporting as an adoring young woman obsessed with an older man, equally confused and thrilled by her own desire.

“All the characters feel authentic,” Dunst says. “Michel has really good intuition. Everyone gave a good performance in this film because I think he captures the personality of the person. He doesn’t want just flat characters, he wants to find a sort of truer version than that. That’s why he sometimes kept the camera rolling when we didn’t know it was on, just to get used to it being there, to allow us to be more impulsive and honest in front of it.”

This public display of vulnerability is something at which Dunst is adept, in part due to a lifetime spent in front of the camera. Born in New Jersey to a German father and a Swedish mother, Dunst began to work at about the same time she began to walk.

As a child actor and model, she made nearly a hundred commercials and countless print ads. Her first film role came in 1989, when she made an unaccredited appearance in the Woody Allen-directed segment of New York Stories. This debut would be followed by parts in films such as Bonfire of the Vanities and Jumanji and a season as guest star on the television series ER. 

“Thank God I still like this and want to do this!” she exclaims. “I can’t imagine if I had grown up doing this and didn’t like it. That’s a whole other thing – to be a child actress and to hate it.” She shakes her head.

“I’m proud of Bring It On! I think it’s the perfect example of a teen movie that doesn’t condescend. In general, filmmakers really disrespect their audience” – Kirsten Dunst

“I would never push my child into doing this. When you grow up, the reasons why you did it while you were younger – to please your parents, to get love, to please everyone – it’s hard to realise these things. But I’m growing up and I do realise them. But it’s painful as a child. It’s so complicated and I don’t wish that on anyone. Just go to college and do your thing and if you want to be an actress, do it after you’ve lived a little. It’s complicated enough just to grow up.”

Nevertheless, Kirsten has managed to come of age in Hollywood with her integrity intact, sidestepping the usual landmines of early fame. There were no drug overdoses, no scandalous affairs, no petty theft, not even a really terrible film to mar her reputation. Somehow Dunst has gone directly from “child actor” to “delicate ingenue” honing her own particular style in a business where individuality is difficult to attain.

“I’ve been lucky with my films but I have some bad ones too,“ Dunst admits, “But pretty much everybody has bad ones. My friends and I were talking the other day about how there should be an award show for people who are good in bad movies, because it’s so much harder to be good in a bad movie. In general, you have to give it your all, or you’ll just sink in it. And sometimes it’s hard to be proud of your performances, because the film isn’t so great, or because it reminds you of a certain time in your life and it’s just difficult to watch. It’s hard to look back on movies that you wish you hadn’t done, or that you did for the wrong reasons, other people needed things from you or whatever. Sometimes, your intuition gets boggled by all these other influences.”

Despite this, Dunst’s strength has been her adaptability and her own inner duality. She seems, in person, a combination of opposites, the kind of girl you’d invite round for a sleepover, for pillow fights and giggling, but also the type of woman who can swear in German and hold her vodka tonics. Dunst brings exactly this quality to her film roles, gullibility mixed with an unexpected wisdom. These characteristics served her well in her breakout performance in Interview and a few years later in Sofia Coppola’s debut The Virgin Suicides. In the latter, as the doomed and beautiful Lux Lisbon, Dunst perfectly embodied a humid adolescent brooding, that hothouse atmosphere of longing, confusion and unfulfilled desire.

“Eternal Sunshine and Virgin Suicides are the two movies that I’m most proud of so far,” Dunst says firmly. “Sofia is so fucking good. She’s so good at capturing the atmosphere of a place. It’s even on the set. You walk on and it’s just there, in the music she’s playing, in the people she chooses to work with. She just sets a tone. She gets people to want to make a good movie. And with most of these big movies… let’s admit it, they just want to turn out one after the other to make a lot of money. Watching Sofia’s films and Michel’s films – you hope that maybe they inspire other directors and actors, who have talent but have maybe lost their barometer, to rethink what they’re doing.”

Dunst followed up Suicides with the political satire Dick and the now semi-legendary cheerleader drama Bring it On, a film where she managed to take what might have been stale teen exploitation and elevate it to high camp. “I love that film!” Dunst laughs, taking a long pull of vodka. “People always ask me ‘You liked that movie?’ And I’m like, “Fuck yeah! I’m proud of that movie!’ I think it’s the perfect example of a teen movie that doesn’t condescend. In general, filmmakers really disrespect their audience. People are so smart, they know when someone is bullshitting them on the screen. People are always aware of that, teenagers especially. It’s hard to find good teen scripts and it’s even harder to find good roles as a teenage girl. For the most part, there are not so many great scripts or great characters. It’s hard to find things that you can give everything to.”

“You have to be living your own life outside of work to be good at that. There’s really a lot you can avoid by working. I know I have”

Dunst sighs and glances around her, pulling her sweater close. She has a way of looking at once very young without looking too soft or too sweet. Dunst in person is beautiful in a way that is somehow less vulnerable than the Dunst on screen, more woman than girl.

“But I love what I do,” she continues after a long moment. “Acting is the kind of job that pushes people to explore everything about themselves. It has with me, for sure. It’s interesting, because I think a lot of things you choose, they mirror things that are going on in your life and certain directors are drawn to you more than other actors, because they sense something that’s in you that can be this person, that can make that character come to life. You have to be living your own life outside of work to be good at that. There’s really a lot you can avoid by working. I know I have. But you really need a life outside of this.”

That said, Dunst’s own life seems fairly enviable. She’s recently bought a house in the Hollywood hills, she’s in a longstanding relationship with the actor Jake Gyllenhaal and she’s got a full slate of upcoming films. Later this year, she’ll star in Working Title’s latest romantic comedy, Wimbledon, opposite Paul Bettany and in the summer blockbuster Spider-Man 2. She’s also booked for the new Cameron Crowe film and a still-under-wraps Sofia Coppola project.

“I’m happy where I’m at,” Dunst says suddenly, smiling, “but it’s hard to say where you’re headed when you’re 21, 22. I just hope that I have a clear enough sense of what I’m doing, that kind of clear intuition, that keeps me working on things with cool people who I really respect and who respect me, people who want to make good movies like Michel and Sofia.”

Dunst also plans on doing what every smart actor in an age of celebrity worship and bloated salaries should be doing: attempting to midwife a few films herself. Dunst and her mother Inez have a production company of their own, and in the future, Dunst hopes to develop projects that are suited to her particular talents and tastes.

“I’m dying to make things that I’m truly interested in,” she says brightly. “I think, in the end, that’s how you can best invest yourself. You find the roles that are right for you, you make them happen and then, ultimately, you give yourself to performances that really mean something.”

hair GIOVANNI GIULIANO for BUMBLE & BUMBLE NY / CELESTINEAGENCY.COM, make-up JILLIAN DEMPSEY using DELUX BEAUTY photographic assistants ALISA CONNAN and NADYA WASYLKO