Krsten Dunst may have been part of the Hollywood firmament for almost 30 years, having started acting at the age of six, but she is without doubt the most un- celebrity celebrity I have ever met.
It is Sunday and we are sitting outside a cafe near her Toluca
Lake home in Los Angeles, flinching from dive-bombing
wasps, people-watching the locals (Dunst is a big fan of the lady with a clowder of cats who lives on the corner of the next block) and sharing stories about our mothers. The actress went for a workout before our meeting (“I thought I should, since I’m doing your shoot tomorrow,” she laughs) and is still dressed in cropped black running tights and a sleeveless T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of Cher. Once I’ve finished questioning her, she is off to her mother’s house (they live six houses apart from each other) for Sunday dinner, a weekly date that often includes Dunst’s boyfriend, actor Garrett Hedlund, and their mutual friends.
To describe her most succinctly – I ask the actress to do it herself, but it’s the one question that she struggles to answer – I would say that the 33-year-old is smart, emotive, content. She knows herself, knows the basics of what makes her feel happy and acts accordingly. It’s a quality that makes spending time with her feel akin to relaxing in a sun-bathed, fragrant garden, the sound of flowing water lapping at your consciousness – you could do it for hours and not have enough.
“I feel much more confident in myself, in life... I don’t stress as much now,” elaborates Dunst. “I’ve grown more sensitive though. The older I get, the more sensitive I’ve become. I don’t know why. I think it’s that age where death is more around you... I appreciate things more. I mean, I’ve always been very
grateful, but I feel far more grounded than I did 10 years ago.”
Ten years ago, Dunst’s CV already listed the likes of Interview with the Vampire, The Virgin Suicides, Bring It On and Spider-Man. But her mid-twenties brought dissatisfaction and self-doubt, including a short spell in rehab for depression and stress. “When I was younger, I actually felt anxious when I wasn’t working. Then there was a moment where I was kind of sick of [acting],” she says. “But then it shifted for me and I re-loved it in a different way.”
She would rather take a few months off, she says, than work on something unexciting. “Most things are crap and it’s not like I get all the best roles,” she says. “So you just have to wait.”
Indeed, this year has been unusually busy for the actress, who has just finished working with her friends, Rodarte designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy. She is the star of their first film project, Woodshock, and, in this instance, working with friends did not make for a relaxing time.
“[It was] the hardest shoot I’ve ever had in my life,” says Dunst. “I was in every scene and it was very emotional. [Kate and Laura] were great directors and visually it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, but emotionally it was the hardest movie I’ve done.” Even Melancholia, Lars von Trier’s powerful movie about depression, for which Dunst won the Best Actress prize at Cannes in 2011? “That one was still fun for me,” she says. “This one was just plain hard.”
Filming on the Mulleavys’ project came hot on the heels of the actress’ first lead television role, joining the second season of the award-winning Fargo as beautician Peggy Blomquist. “Making a TV show is long hours. Even if you’re not in every scene of the show, all your scenes get compiled into intense days. And Peggy goes through all these emotions all the time so she’s exhausting to play.”
It wasn’t just the schedule of TV that tested Dunst. As an actress who prepares forensically for each role she plays, not knowing the detailed fate of her character was unnerving. “Acting, to me, yes, you live in the moment, but you better prepare for that moment real hard and know what is going on emotionally with that person,” she explains. “So I like to know [my character’s trajectory] and it was difficult signing onto something where I didn’t. There was a really good description of Peggy in the beginning, but once you’re given a role it’s yours; I know her better than anyone, even the creator.”
Her previous co-stars, some of Hollywood’s most esteemed names among them, attest to Dunst’s exceptional professionalism. She follows the same method for each role, working with a coach to flesh out her character. “It’s almost like therapy between the character and me, that’s how I work it out,” says the actress. “I go really... [Laughs] I don’t want to say esoteric, because that seems like it’s far away from you, but when I’m making a character I feel like a witch making a brew. So on set the first day I’m confident; I have all the tools, all my notes, everything I need. You can have so much more freedom and more fun with what you do because it’s so engrained that you can’t fail.”
She seems disappointed that not everyone approaches the job with as much diligence as she does. “I notice when people don’t put in the work,” she says, shaking her head. “Actors can be really lazy.”
Despite her decades in the public eye, Dunst largely manages to stay off-radar. “Thank God!” she smiles. “I want to be able to do good work and I think the more that you’re out there, it starts to take away from your artistry. I don’t want to be a movie star who needs to live behind a big cape because I’m so in the public eye all the time.”
Since playing Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy, Dunst has done her best to choose off-kilter roles. She’s not a fan of action-packed blockbusters – “I’ll go and see one when my boyfriend drags me there” – but is grateful for the financial security that Spider-Man afforded her. She is “smart” with her finances, but the projects that appeal to her are not ones that get accountants excited. “To be an independent artist, the only way you really make money is by getting a beauty campaign,” she says. Doesn’t sound too painful. “No! I’m like, ‘Thank God, they’re the reason why I can do my art.’”
On these smaller projects, says Dunst, stars need to contribute to the ‘glam’ budget for the promotional tours. “I chip in for certain things because [studios] won’t [pay]. But it’s my job to look nice and wear a good dress, right? No one cares about a boy in a suit; they’re like, ‘He’s hot,’ that’s it, done. It’s all about dresses.”
The next challenge for Dunst is a big one. Right now, she is working with a friend on a script, for which she’ll take on the role of director. Is she excited to be entering Hollywood’s far-too select group of female film directors? “Yeah. I think it’s easier for mediocre male directors to be in this industry,” she says. “As a female you can be a director, but you have to be amazing – that’s the disparaging part to it. You have to be really great to get in there.” Is there an on-screen part for her in the project? “No, it’d be distracting,” she demurs. “I want to continue acting, but I also want to have kids. I think I’ll be ready to have them in two years or something.”
She seems to be in the right place romantically for such a step. She and Hedlund have been quietly dating for four years, after meeting on the set of On the Road in 2010, and Dunst talks about him with a smile tweaking at her lips. It’s testament to her lack of ego that Hedlund had to pursue her before she realized he might be interested in more than friendship. “Even though we had worked together, we didn’t connect until over a year and a half later. We stayed in touch and he’d text me and I’d be like, “Oh, I’m having a birthday, come if you want.”
They have a good dynamic, she says, as Hedlund has something of the chivalrous gentleman about him. “I appreciate old-fashioned manners,” explains Dunst. “I want a guy to pay for dinner and open the door for me. I love the masculine; I’ve dated men who had more of a feminine side and it didn’t work.”
She is breaking her own rule not to date an actor, but all that seems unreal to her anyway. “I was at the movies with a friend recently and there was a Pan poster up [Hedlund plays a young Captain Hook]. It’s just funny to me that that’s even him; I don’t associate him with acting at all. My friend was like, ‘Now you know how I’ve always felt!’”
It is indeed hard to connect the fly-swatting woman in front of me with Fargo’s Peggy, Spider-Man’s Mary Jane or Bring It On’s perky cheerleader, Torrance Shipman. In part, that’s down to her talent for becoming someone else so entirely that her own character is completely subsumed. But more than that, it’s because Dunst is an actress, not a celebrity. And an even brighter star because of it.
She couldn't have picked a better show to make her tv debut.
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