TMS Muse of the Week: Kirsten Dunst

(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)

I used to joke that Sofia Coppola might secretly wish she was born a thin blonde from Malibu. While the famous filmmaker has her distinct Italian-American features, including dark hair and a round nose, her most famous leading ladies are all blonde waifs [Kirsten Dunst, Scarlett Johansson and Elle Fanning]. Assuming Sofia might be self-aware enough to know the light color might not work for her own features, she sure seems to like giving her protagonists that shade. Sofia’s big breakthrough as a director was her dreamy 1999 adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ coming of age tale The Virgin Suicides, which was also the beginning of Kirsten transitioning to more grown-up roles after starting her career as a child star. As a film lover and a former ‘90s kid, it’s hard to imagine a time where Kirsten wasn’t on my radar. She co-starred in so many movies I watched throughout my childhood, such as Gillian Armstrong’s Little Women (1994), Joe Johnston’s Jumanji (1995), Sarah Kernochan’s All I Wanna Do (1998), Michael Patrick Jann’s Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), Andrew Fleming’s Dick (1999), Peyton Reed’s Bring It On (2000) and Sam Raimi’s Spider-man trilogy (2002-07). She was also featured in Don Bluth’s animated hit Anastasia (1997) and voiced the title character in the 1998 English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime classic Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989). To those who were too old for Kirsten’s popular family and teen movies, she also had memorable supporting roles in Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1997).

Kirsten’s casting in The Virgin Suicides made the 16-year-old starlet a figure in indie features alongside studio pictures. Almost instantly the writer-director and actress hit it off and naturally meshed as collaborators. An artist’s muse and alter ego were born overnight, essentially. After their first project together, Kirsten began starring in artsier and edgier films in between her comedies and blockbusters. Like Peter Bogdanovich’s The Cat’s Meow (2001), one of my favorite movies and where Kirsten portrays old Hollywood star Marion Davies; as well as appearing in Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

(Randall Michelson)

And of course, Sofia and Kirsten’s cinematic partnership continued to grow with the anachronistic Marie Antoinette (2006), the period ensemble The Beguiled (2017), a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by Kirsten in The Bling Ring (2013) and various photoshoots. Marie Antoinette was a particularly divisive experience. It was one of the first movies to add modern pop and rock songs intentionally and effectively to a costume drama; on top of Sofia allowing Kirsten and male lead Jason Schwartzman to keep their SoCal/Valley accents as the French king and queen. But while Sofia was the target of naysaying by critics and fans, Kirsten still managed to win viewers over with her performance, and the film has grown to have a strong following since its initial release. As noted by most reviews, the two ladies bring out the best in each other on screen.

After taking a brief break from the spotlight in the late 2000s, Kirsten made a big splash as the lead in Lars von Trier’s artsy sci-fi drama Melancholia (2011), and has grown to be quite a good character actor with performances in the second season of FX’s “Fargo” (2015), Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special (2016), Theodore Melfi’s Hidden Figures (2016), Showtime’s “On Becoming a God in Central Florida” (2019) and Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021). Outside of her career, she’s also had a family with husband and fellow actor Jesse Plemons since 2018 following past relationships with acting peers like Jake Hoffman, Ben Foster, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire and Garrett Hedlund. And her history with Sofia? Kirsten completely credits the slightly older woman for her smooth transition into adulthood in an industry that can easily swallow up young artists. During a 2017 People Magazine article, she shared that the film director “gave me a lot of confidence that I carried throughout my career in terms of producers wanting to fix me. That was a pivotal time in my life to feel that way and to be given that. She made me feel beautiful for who I was.”