In fact, it was meeting Coppola in her mid-teens, during the casting of 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, that gave her one of her steadiest friends and staunchest allies in the business.
“The way Sofia made me feel about how I looked on camera gave me so much confidence in my teenage years,” she remembers. “It’s a weird age to be working in Hollywood, and I know how rare and valuable it is to find that kind of mentor.” The pair made two more films together after that, Marie Antoinette and The Beguiled.
She also credits Coppola with instilling the confidence to turn down the various industry types who in the years ahead tried to persuade her to straighten her teeth – including a Spider-Man producer who had her physically driven to the dentist when she was 19 years old.
On that occasion, she refused to get out of the car, her natural smile survived – and of course, the film was all the better for it. Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson might have been countless millennial males’ dream teen crush, but the fact she wasn’t an impossible pin-up gave those early Spider-Man films a very human sensuality and warmth.
“All I can say is that when I was 19, I was not thinking in those terms at all,” says Dunst of that time.
Dunst has been around for long enough to have seen Hollywood repeatedly shape-shift, but since the Spider-Man days, has anything meaningfully changed?
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
