Kirsten Dunst covers the latest issue of Marie Claire, and this is a great interview. She’s promoting Civil War, her first role since The Power of the Dog, for which she received her first Oscar nomination. She didn’t work for two years after that. Apparently, she was offered some scripts in that two-year period, but they were all “sad mom roles.” Typecasting, ageism and sexism has come to Kirsten’s career now, at the age of 41. Kirsten chatted about all of that and more with Marie Claire, and there’s some really nice stuff about her husband Jesse Plemons and their two sons, James and Ennis. Some highlights:
Life as a mom: “I’m, like, a Volvo soccer mom right now. Selfishly, I was just like, I want to go shopping.”
Not working for two years: “I haven’t worked in two years…every role I was being offered was the sad mom… To be honest, that’s been hard for me…because I need to feed myself. The hardest thing is being a mom and…not feeling like, I have nothing for myself. That’s every mother—not just me. There’s definitely less good roles for women my age. That’s why I did Civil War.”
Working with writer/director Alex Garland: “When I read the script, I thought, I’ve never done anything like this. I just love that he’s someone who pushes boundaries.”
She was really affected by the film shoot: She “had PTSD for a good two weeks after. I remember coming home and eating lunch and I felt really empty.” It seemed to Garland that she “let herself live inside the film, and feel the reality of the moments.”
Garland wrote the script before January 6. It’s not clear which factions are “good” or “bad,” and that’s precisely the point. Landing this April in a hotly divided election year, “I think it’s a cautionary tale,” Dunst says, “a fable of what happens when people don’t communicate with each other and stop seeing each other as human beings.”
What if Donald Trump is reelected. “He can’t win. I honestly feel like…we just need a fresh start. We need a woman,” Dunst says, although speaking generally and not as an endorsement of any particular candidate. “All the countries that are led by women do so much better.”
Working with her husband again on ‘Civil War’. “Because we fell in love on a set, we fell in love creatively first. I think we’ll always come back to that, in a very not-involving-our-real-life way. And also, listen, we don’t talk to each other on set. I left him alone, he left me alone. I love working with him. What’s nice is that we trust each other so much. He sent me a scene last night of this miniseries he’s working on to get my opinion. If I’m having a hard time deciding on something, I’ll have him read it. I trust his opinion more than anyone, and he cares about me more than anyone.” Crucially, “we hate the same things.”
On the Oscars: Dunst agrees that Greta Gerwig should have been nominated for directing Barbie, but she isn’t swept up in the overall horse race. If anything, she lowers her voice again, “There are too many award shows.”
Maybe she doesn’t want to win an Oscar: “I think it’s good to be an underdog. If you [win] Academy Awards, sometimes it’s not always good for your career.” It seems characteristically, morbidly Hollywood that Oscars are given all-consuming weight for a season, but the shine quickly fades. For example, Dunst shrugs, “I don’t know who won last year.” For what she really wants to do—make interesting film with European directors—quality acting matters more than Oscars anyway.
She’s worked with a lot of female directors: “I saw the power in women very young. I think that’s helped with…not needing male attention in my career.” A younger Dunst told her manager, “I feel like I get hired because I’m someone that they might want to sleep with,” even if only in theory. “I think that’s probably why I migrated to so many female directors at a younger age, because I didn’t want to feel that way.” She grapples with different concerns for her career now. In her early 40s, “no one cares” about her looks, Dunst laughs.
Would she ever do another superhero movie? “Yes,because you get paid a lot of money, and I have two children, and I support my mother.”
There was something which reminded me of my evolving opinion of Chloe Sevigny – both Chloe and Kirsten were It Girls in the 1990s and early ‘00s, both were cool girls who worked with offbeat indie directors and both prioritized the art rather than the paycheck. And now both of them would love to book big studio films or a lucrative TV show because, frankly, they need the money. It’s just a reminder that these are really “working actresses” too, not necessarily rich movie stars. The one thing I won’t defend is that Kirsten doesn’t know who won Oscars last year… um, it’s your industry, and it was a historic year because Michelle Yeoh won, hello???
Covers courtesy of Marie Claire.