Kirsten Dunst Breaks Down Her Career, from 'Jumanji' to 'Spider-Man'

Spider-Man was kind of being treated

as an indie almost at first with the creatives.

It was Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire.

So I thought, Wow, this is cool.

They're gonna try and make something

really interesting and meaningful.

And I knew it would be life-changing.

[upbeat music]

Hi, I'm Kirsten Dunst and this is a timeline of my career.

[upbeat music]

Don't make me do this, I cannot!

Yet you could do it to me.

Snatch me from my mother's hand

like two monsters in a fairytale and now you weep!

You haven't tears enough for what you've done to me.

You give her to me, Louis!

I was three years old in the grocery store.

And people would come up to my mom and be like,

Your kid's cute.

You should put her in like child acting or modeling.

And we were in New Jersey.

And so, I signed with the Ford Modeling Agency

as a little girl.

I went out for a Kix cereal commercial and I booked it.

And then Interview With The Vampire came around

and that's, you know, was my big break.

[horror music]

Which one of you did it?!

One of you did it!

Which one of you made me the way I am?

I guess I must have had something.

A quality that probably caught up to itself eventually,

but as a young girl, I probably maybe had

a look in my eyes.

That, you know, a more old soul quality

than most young girls maybe.

[Louis] You see the old woman?

That will never happen to you.

[Kirsten] I had to kind of give a look of longing.

[Louis] You will never grow old

and you will never die.

I remember working with my acting coach a lot.

He kind of would make things more relatable for me.

He was like, You know when you steal your brother's toy

and you know where it is and he's asking for it?

He's like, That's the look for this.

The only time I remember complaining to Neil Jordan was

I had to bite this woman's neck and she was sweating,

like sweating, and I was like, Ugh.

I was like, Neil!

So that was the worst thing I did

and also having obviously to kiss Brad Pitt at that point.

I was a little girl, and he was like a brother to me,

and it was very weird.

Even though it was a peck, I just was very not into it.

Other than that, I was treated

like a total princess on that set, so.

And it means something else too, doesn't it?

[melancholic music]

She'll never ever grow up.

Limes? Are limes the fashion now?

Of course they are.

It's nothing but limes now.

Everyone keeps them in their desks,

and trades them for beads and things,

and all the girls treat each other at recess.

If you don't bring limes to school, you're nothing.

You might as well be dead.

I had just come from Interview With The Vampire,

which is a very male set.

And then to go from that to Little Women

was such a fun difference for me.

I was with all these older actresses

that were so cool and like

I looked up to Claire Danes and Winona Ryder,

and Gillian Armstrong was directing,

so it was, it couldn't be more polar opposite

to the Interview With The Vampire.

It was great for a young girl,

like I just had the best time working with all those women.

Now I want you to do all the pages that I've marked.

I won't have a sister who's a lazy ignoramus.

Oh, don't sulk, you look like a pigeon.

[Amy cooing]

I also remembered auditioning for Gillian Armstrong

for Little Women and I think I had to audition

for Beth and Amy.

I think I still had like a little

Interview With The Vampire Claudia in me,

'cause she was like, her read was like a little,

like maybe like dark or something.

I probably still had

Interview With The Vampire mojo on me.

You'll be sorry for this, Jo March!

[lighthearted music]

Somebody roll a five or an eight?

He did.

[Alan laughs]

Being on the set of Jumanji watching Robin Williams

was so exciting for me.

When you're a kid, you don't appreciate things

as much as when you look back as an adult.

It was really special to be on that set with him.

[water rushing]

[kids screaming]

Just wet, I just remember

being in these water tanks for weeks

with like a wetsuit underneath and all our clothes on.

My mom would send me sandwiches on a raft.

It was a little bit scary too.

I remember standing on the steps

and they'd be like, Three, two, one.

And there's like a gush of water

that comes down these stairs,

and we kind of float back, and it was kind of terrifying.

[kids screaming]

[Alan screams]

[upbeat music]

I was 16, it was the first time I was kind of seen

in a more womanly light.

Working with Sofia, she always made me feel very beautiful

for exactly all of my quirks and exactly who I was.

Just being 16, it's just a hard time

and to have a woman who I thought was so cool

to look up to think that I'm pretty

like kind of set me up for the rest of

dealing with Hollywood and dealing with like

producers, directors, or critiques of myself.

I was like, Well, Sofia thinks I'm pretty, so I'm good.

You know what I mean?

Like I kinda had that like whatever,

like I never felt like I had to look too sexy,

or do anything other than what was authentic to me.

[Trip] This was around the time we began to see

Lux making love on the roof with random boys and men.

Will you stop?

Wait your turn. What are they doing?

[Trip] They're rolling around out there.

It was written in the script that I like have to make out

with a bunch of different boys on the roof.

It freaked me out.

I hadn't, I was a very innocent 16 year old,

and finally I was like I'm kind of nervous.

Sofia was like, You don't need to kiss any of them.

Just like bury your head in their neck

and like we'll put a jacket or just like

he'll put his arm around you here and stuff.

So she always made it comfortable for me.

In the atmosphere she created on set,

it always felt very authentic,

which helps lend itself to the realness

of the way we were all feeling during the actual scenes.

[woman humming]

♪ I'm strong and I'm loud ♪

♪ I'm gonna make you proud ♪

♪ I'm T-T-T-Torrance ♪

♪ Your captain Torrance ♪

♪ Let's go Toros ♪

Making Bring It On, I was making it

at an age range of my peers who would watch this movie.

It's probably like seven, 16, 17?

It's age appropriate and I feel like

there was some movies that I did that weren't.

Like things that I did that adults only watched

and this was like something for people my age.

Gee, now I'm confused.

Well, I hope you're not too busy to hear this.

Kiss my ass, Aaron, it's over.

[door slamming]

What convinced me to do Bring It On

was talking to Peyton Reed, the director.

He's so smart.

He had done a bunch of Mr. Show's

and I just knew that he was gonna take this script

and like elevate it in a really fun way.

And to be honest, like none of us knew

that this is gonna be a huge hit.

We were like having a fun summer in San Diego.

That way when we beat you,

we'll know it's because we're better.

I'll bring it, don't worry.

[dramatic music]

[Mary Jane] Wait.

You have a knack for getting in trouble.

You have a knack for saving my life.

Honestly, I never think about it while I'm making it,

but I just knew that, I just felt like it was special.

The cast that was coming together always.

It was like Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina,

and like we always had amazing actors.

You are amazing.

Sam always wanted the quality, the heart and soul.

That was always the most important

and the way he talked about Spider-Man and movies,

he just got you excited.

Like I remember when we did do the upside down kiss,

he had given me a book of like famous kisses,

like Sam was so romantic about this movie.

And so making it with him didn't feel like a huge movie.

It felt like we were making a tiny movie on a bigger scale.

[people arguing indistinctly]

Mary Jane, you kind of like, you kind of know

what she is when she runs out of her house

like a fight going on in her house,

and she sees Peter there, and you're like,

Oh, Mary Jane has this whole really hard childhood

that like you just got a glimpse of.

She kind of represents every girl next door,

kind of everyone has problems.

She represents first love.

[dramatic music]

Hello, my dear. [Mary Jane screams]

Sam Raimi wanted me to try out a stunt,

so he took me to the top of a Sony Studio,

which is very, very, very high.

And they just free fell, like I bungee jumped basically.

I was like, You should've shot that,

'cause I'm never doing that again.

I was like, That's never happening.

I was terrified!

We are who we choose to be, now choose!

[Spider-Man] No! [Mary Jane screams]

[classical music]

Sofia just gave me Antonia Fraser's novel

and she's like, I want you to play Marie Antoinette

I was like, Oh God.

It was like a 500-page novel.

I was like, Cool, thanks, Sof.

I was very nervous.

I was like, Do I need to get like accent coaches

and all this stuff?

She's like, No, no, no, we're gonna do

a different kind of approach to a period film.

♪ Do it for pleasure ♪

[rock music]

We shot at Versailles every Monday,

which was pretty unreal.

I got to see her like private bathroom.

I think just crazy to dance with Jason Schwartzman

in the Hall of Mirrors.

We had a really good time,

but I definitely always felt like overwhelmed,

because it's an intimidating person to play

even though I feel like at the end of the day,

I almost played like an essence of her

in Sofia's interpretation.

It almost felt like, yeah, I was playing like her perfume,

not necessarily her.

It was Sofia's version, which I think is so cool

and people really appreciate now.

It's nice to see her influences

now being made into other movies,

and shows, and things like that.

[people shouting indistinctly]

[melancholic music]

I'm very director-driven, so like

if Lars von Trier calls you to, well,

sometimes you gotta be careful

about that actually, nevermind.

A bad example.

You definitely gotta read that one first. [laughs]

It's mostly about the director

and not necessarily about the role for me,

but Paul Thomas Anderson suggested me

for Melancholia to Lars.

So yeah, that was a no-brainer.

I had such a good time.

It's interesting having such a good time

when you're playing someone so depressed,

but I felt like it was, you don't really get to see,

depression's kind of hard to be portrayed on screen,

and Lars did such a beautiful job of

portraying like how hard it is

to take a shower when you're depressed,

or how hard it is to eat something.

And he turned it into like a really beautiful,

intense movie that I feel like will be

one of the more special things I'll have done.

[melancholic music]

Hon, listen to me.

I ran over him, hit and run,

and then you stabbed him with a gardening tool.

The cops, do you think they're gonna believe us?

I don't know, but people are gonna look for him.

But look, I was careful.

I drove the back way all the way home.

You drove the, hon, a man's dead.

This was the first T.V. I had done in a long time

and now T.V.'s amazing.

I think they gave me like two or three episodes to read

and I just knew like, Oh wow, this woman is gonna

go through some crazy things.

Do you think, I know there's a lot of questions,

but I just, I gotta, I got this seminar tomorrow,

Lake Spring, and I gotta drive up to Sioux Falls

first thing, so.

I work really intensely with someone on all my roles,

and we do a lot of dream work.

So whatever my unconscious kind of gives me,

I incorporate into the role that I'm playing.

Actually, my dream gave me something funny for Peggy

that I remember in my dream, there was a tape

and it said Scooby-Doo on it,

and I was talking to my acting lady,

and she's like, Well, what do you think about Scooby-Doo?

I was like, Well, they all like scurry around

kind of funny, right?

They're always like la-la-la,

like they have a funny run, or like a funny walk.

And she's like, There you go.

So like Peggy had this like funny, little walk.

I got five dead since Saturday,

including the one tonight in the burned down butcher shop,

and your husband is currently in jail,

so I wouldn't count on getting there early.

There was definitely something written about

Peggy avoiding, and like cleaning up,

and doing kitchen things instead,

because obviously, she's guilty.

So in her Peggy-esque way, she just was busying herself.

I like that combo of dark comedy,

and Ted's such a great actor to work with and so sweet.

He should run for president really.

These are modern times, you know?

And a woman, well, she just doesn't have to

be a wife and a mother no more.

She can be, there's nothing she can't be.

You're a little touched, aren't ya?

What?

[Rose] It's just a man, only another man.

[dramatic music]

Jane Campion's always been one of my favorite directors.

I would play any role for her.

Her female leads and their performances

have always inspired me as an actress.

I just like take her in sometimes,

because I'm getting to have this experience with a legend.

There's something in acting you always chase.

A feeling of like, that you're like flying in a scene.

There's no cameras and it feels so free.

And I've definitely felt that with certain actors

like Jesse Plemons for instance.

You are marvelous, Rose.

Where you're just like on the same page,

and it's just like trying things, and it feels so alive,

and I think that's what we all kind of

aspire to feel in scenes

that you don't, you don't always get it.

Peter! [dramatic music]

Rose is really not a fun person to play.

She is just, you just have to like go to like

all the old pain of like feeling insecure,

feeling bad about yourself,

and just like let it etch away at your brain.

And allowing that to happen to yourself

is just a very painful place to work in.

And yeah, I just had to like dig up

some old things and. [laughs]

[piano music]

[banjo music]

Benedict and I didn't talk to each other on set.

But to be honest, we weren't really in the scenes together.

We rarely interacted, so for me,

it was just like, oh, just seeing him across

the like plains of Montana in the distance

would get to my brain,

which is exactly what's amazing about it

is like someone can just, their presence can affect you.

You kind of have to manage your career

and keep working with like interesting filmmakers

or just like working with the people

who allow you to express yourself in like the deepest way.

I'm in a lucky position.

I've been doing this for so long.

I can wait and pick and choose projects that I really,

that mean something to me.

[upbeat music]