Kirsten Dunst‘s latest onscreen avatar, a hardened war photographer named after the iconic Lee Miller, doesn’t have much time to waste. In Alex Garland’s heart-pounding actioner “Civil War,” Dunst and her Lee are at the center of a fractured America that isn’t quite done combusting just yet, as she (plus Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, all playing fellow journalists) head through a bombed-out, terrifying Un-United States in a bid to get to Washington, D.C. before everything really falls apart. There’s not a lot of time for artifice or florid conversation or icing over the tough stuff.
As the Oscar nominee recently explained to IndieWire, the film isn’t exactly what people might be expecting, and while that kind of chatter might sound like standard press tour fare meant to drum up audience interest, Dunst is so straightforward in her interviews — so free of artifice, of saying stuff just to say it — that the message feels even more resonant. And Dunst feels even more reasonable. What a concept for a movie star!
On social media, film fans and entertainment reporters alike have celebrated Dunst’s straight-shooting nature this media cycle go-round, from her thoughts on Method acting (“What, am I gonna be like that with my kids when I get home?”) to “Zone of Interest” filmmaker Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar speech (“My interpretation was he was saying genocide was bad”).
A tweet recirculating her 2016 appearance on one of The Hollywood Reporter’s actress roundtables shows the rest of her sistren bemoaning the lack of female filmmakers in Hollywood. But Dunst gamely jumps in to name all the female filmmakers she’s worked with. Now, she’s being hailed on social media for showing off her “common sense.” As of this writing, the tweet has over 64,000 likes.
None of that stuff should be refreshing in any arena where adults are asked their thoughts on life and work — superhero movies make money? genocide is bad? there are female filmmakers in the industry? — but Dunst’s brand of reasonable chatter is precisely that in the Hollywood milieu.
Ahead, Dunst tells IndieWire about how her hard-won sensibility fits into “Civil War,” why she loves female filmmakers, if directing is still on the table for her, if she really wants to be in another “Spider-Man” movie, Twitter, the “Marie Antoinette” resurgence, and the one thing she really wants to do next.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: You’ve been very busy with this press tour, so I’m not sure you’re aware of this kind of groundswell of affection online for you and your recent interviews, in which you’re doing something kind of revolutionary, which is just being very reasonable and straight-forward and honest with your answers.
Kirsten Dunst: It’s just who I am. I don’t know how to put on a facade, so I just say how I feel. But also, doing press these days is also kind of nerve-wracking because [there’s a lot of] clickbait. We have a very politically charged movie. Even though it’s an anti-war movie, it still brings up a lot of questions. It is the kind of movie that you want the audience to just put their feelings and anxieties [into] and fill it in for themselves.
There’s this clip resurfacing of you on a Hollywood Reporter actress roundtable, and the rest of the women are complaining about the lack of female directors in Hollywood. And you are, again, just being reasonable, and you go ahead and name some of them in pretty quick order. What does it feel like to know that’s a still-relevant topic?
Right after “Interview with the Vampire,” I worked with Gillian Armstrong on “Little Women,” and to me, at a young age, it was never a thing. That was a lesson that I learned very young [that there are female filmmakers in Hollywood].
Also, I just love women, and I love working with them. I have very strong female relationships in my life. I just really appreciate their work. It never was a thing, “They’re a male director” or “They’re a female director.” I never had that, and I think it was because I was influenced so young in that way.
Speaking of “Little Women,” I found a few articles where you talked about being excited about Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” but I don’t think I found an answer if you ended up actually seeing the film.
Yes, I did! And I loved her “Little Women.” It was very different than ours, but I appreciate her take on it as well.
You and Sofia Coppola are one of Hollywood’s great contemporary partnerships. Is there something else that you two would like to do together that you haven’t yet had a chance to do?
Sofia and I are talking. We definitely are going to work together again, and we’ll see. She’s thinking of things right now.
A few years ago, your “Marie Antoinette” went through a reconsideration after being critically maligned during its release. What was that experience like for you?
I think, that [as] we grew up, our age group, we watched it [for enjoyment]. We just weren’t the reviewers, and I think at the time, it was a lot of older men, and it [was] them being threatened by this woman, too. So I think Sofia was ahead of her time.
In recent years, you’ve talked a lot about being picky with your projects. At what point did that feel possible for you? Did you worry about this industry, which can be extremely fickle, forgetting about you if you weren’t suddenly so visible in new projects?
No, I never felt that way. I’ve been doing this for so long now and it’s like, I really put my total heart into the project I’m doing, so it needs to mean a lot to me. I can’t just act to act. It’s just not in my body to do. I think I can’t do it. I have to be so passionate about what I’m doing. I think that’s just growing up and learning your own taste.
As I’m growing up in this industry, I’m learning about what kinds of films I like and directors and what inspires me. So I educated myself as I was growing up in the industry, so I figured that out, what kind of career I want to have.
The actors that I like don’t work all the time, to be honest. You don’t want to oversaturate your career. In the terms of longevity, you want to choose. Everything’s a risk. You don’t know how people are going to take things.
You’ve also recently mentioned that had you known you could produce “Bring It On,” you would have. That absolutely seems to be changing for some of our recent female stars, from Margot Robbie, who I know you’re working with, to Zendaya or Sydney Sweeney. What’s that like to see?
It’s amazing. It’s important. It’s like your face is on the screen, you know what I mean? If you’re able to, do it. It was just a different time. Like, age 17, I’m not thinking, “I’m going to produce this as well!” Just putting yourself in it, it was a risk, we didn’t know that movie was going to do as well. It was a little low-budget, Universal film we shot in San Diego. No studio head was there, you know what I mean? No one knew the success that film would bring.
That film was also such a good early example of your comedic chops. And then stuff like “Dick” or “Bachelorette,” female-centric two-handers that were ahead of their time. I know you’re working on a dark comedy with Jessica Elbaum. Could I hazard a guess that it might be like those films?
It’s in the zeitgeist, and I jumped on it early. It seems like now there’s more and more articles about it [being made], so we’re really on it. It’s going to be fun and dark, for sure. Female-centric, very female-centric.
You’re producing a lot these days, but for a long time, many of us were anticipating your feature directorial debut, which was meant to be an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar.” Even with that no longer happening, is directing a feature still in the cards for you soon?
No. I’ll direct one day. I have two very small children. It’s like very all-encompassing, directing, and I just don’t have the drive to be the leader of a film right now. It is different than acting. I get to go home and not think about the shot list, what we didn’t get, what we did. I’m not in the zone of wanting to do that at this point in life.
You’re directing at home, I assume. You’re the director of your home.
Yeah, you’re right. I just spent the entire morning cleaning up Easter stuff and putting toys away.
Another possibility that keeps getting floated is you returning to “Spider-Man” in some way, and I’ve read a lot of your recent interviews when the topic is mentioned, and I have to ask: Do you want to do another “Spider-Man” movie, because I honestly can’t tell?
[Laughs] You’re so funny. I can’t tell either! Depends. It would depend. I don’t know. Honestly, do we need it?
What do we need? Do we need anything?
I don’t think we need that. I don’t know. It was so long ago. I just don’t know how they would, what the story would be. I don’t know. It seems like … I don’t know! It would really depend on the script, and also, I don’t know, you’re really putting yourself out there in a way that … let’s maybe leave things when they were good. You know what I mean?
Yes. It makes me think of one of those questions I like to ask: What would you like to do you haven’t done yet? Would you like to do a musical? “I don’t know. It depends on if it’s a good script and who’s directing it.” Those answers are always like, “It depends.”
Well, it’s true. I would like to do it, I’d love to do a musical. But, like, a musical with Charlie Kaufman. You know what I mean? I would like something to be very different. “Les Misérables” is my favorite musical, and that’s been done already. It would be fun. Honestly, what I want to really do next is a comedy.
In that vein, are there other young stars that you’d like to work with on your next projects?
Well, two of my friends are Dakota and Elle Fanning. They’re like sisters to me. I love those two. I love them so much. They’re also a lot like me. Very straightforward, very much themselves, and very grounded.
Reasonable! It’s what people want to see. I just like seeing endless tweets about “Here are things that Kirsten is saying that make sense.”
It’s not tweets anymore, right? It’s X. I don’t even know how to sign into my old Twitter that became X.
You’re so lucky. Keep it that way.
I’m happy that people like what I’m saying. Great. It’s better than the opposite. I am a Jersey girl. You can’t really put that away.
An A24 release, “Civil War” hits theaters on Friday, April 12.
