When Spider-Man got the girl

10 April 2012

For a while, Hollywood was a confusing place. A place monopolised by a mishmash of teen starlets with interchangeable names and indistinguishably pretty features. Blonde, lithesome, psychotically perky, and serial stars of the new wave of teen flicks, it was impossible to know where one ended and the next began. Were Reese Witherspoon and Michelle Williams the same person? How could you know for sure who was Mena Suvari and who was Julia Stiles?

But over the past couple of months, one actress has pulled away from the babe rabble, grown a distinguishable celebrity identity of her own, and gone completely stellar. Prepare yourself. The summer will belong to one 20-year-old, LA-based, limpid-eyed blonde: Kirsten Dunst.

'OK, I suppose you want to talk about Spider-Man,' Dunst says, smiling wearily. 'It hasn't even come out yet and already I feel like it might haunt me for the rest of my life.'

She's probably right. Spider-Man, the maniacally hyped blockbuster, is the movie that will transform Dunst into Hollywood's hottest new property. Accordingly, Dunst will be forever associated with Mary Jane Watson, aka Spider-Man's girlfriend, and the role that secured her celebrity.

'Of all the films I've done, Spider-Man is the biggest deal. Biggest budget, biggest profile, biggest everything,' she says, with a combination of relish and resignation.

Today, tucked away in the corner of a chic coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard, clad in a bright pink top and prim, below-the-knee denim skirt ensemble, Dunst doesn't look like a star teetering on the brink of major league international celebrity. She looks more like a sensible high-school chick on a latte break from a shopping trip.

There's something about her wholesome beauty that translates into anonymous sweetness off screen. The effect is intensified by her sniffly state - Dunst is suffering from a post-shoot cold, and is working her way through a pot of Yogi green tea in the hope that it will help. She's in a philosophical mood, weighing up the impact of her fame on her public persona carefully. 'Everyone perceives me as sweet,' she observes, between measured, pretty sips. 'I guess it's because I played a cheerleader. But I have a dark side, too.' When pressed on this, she explains: 'Oh, your depression usually passes. Just go to therapy, and you're all good. I did!'

Sunny or dark, Dunst was always destined to become extremely famous. Her star has been in the ascendancy for years. A child actress who started out in cereal commercials at the age of three, she has now made more than 30 movies, and has supported her family for over a decade on the profits.

At eight, she was cast as Tom Hanks' daughter in The Bonfire of the Vanities. Three years later, she shared her first kiss with Brad Pitt in An Interview with the Vampire. 'It was only a light kiss,' she protests. 'And no, there were no tongues. I was only 11! Boys are kind of gross when you're that young.' In her mid-teens, George Clooney taught her how to drive golf carts during her brief stint on ER.

Regardless, there can be no question that Spider-Man is the biggest deal of Dunst's life so far. She has two sequels locked down already, and has just bought a house on the proceeds, a cottage in the Hollywood Hills. 'I had to have a girlfriend sleep over, at first,' she says. 'I was a bit scared to be in the house by myself.'

For the first time in her career, she has had to think about merchandise. 'They would bring me the heads of the dolls,' she says drily, as though such voodoo rituals were an everyday affair. 'I'd have to make notes about them. You know: cheekbones too high, nose too wide, that sort of thing. My doll has kind of big boobs, but I guess that's OK. I have plenty of boobs, too.'

Give or take the action-scene requirements - which had Dunst dangling from a chafing harness - the role of Mary Jane Watson, definitive high-school honey, does not exactly represent a departure for the actress. Dunst has profiteered unapologetically from the teen-flick renaissance. She grew into her roles while she was, conveniently, still in high school. There was the pom-pom blonde cheerleader captain of the corny feel-good Bring It On, and at the other pole, in Crazy/Beautiful, the pill-popping rebel who skips class and throws tantrums.

Dunst and Mary Jane Watson share certain characteristics. Mary Jane is a brainy high-school girl who falls for the school dweeb, Peter Parker, and Dunst was - until June 2000 at least - a brainy high-school girl who, if you believe the industry gossip, fell for the dweeb actor Tobey Maguire. She's certainly in awe of her co-star. 'He can cry just like that,' she told Vanity Fair. 'When I have a crying scene, I have to listen to sad music.' Dunst vehemently denies the rumours, however. 'We're just friends,' she says. 'I swear to God.' Is she telling the truth? Hard to say, and the rumours persist.

A further parallel between Dunst and her on-screen alter ego is that Dunst fancies geeks, too, an admission custom-designed to delight legions of sweaty Spider-Man anoraks the world over. 'If it's between a geek and a hot- looking dumb guy, then obviously the geek wins,' she says, with an incredulous look. 'Anyway, I'm a geek myself. I used to collect old-fashioned Barbie dolls, and I hang around with my mom a lot. That's pretty geeky.' When she starts listing the records that she and her mum listen to at home - 'Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the soundtrack from Les Mis?rables' - I suggest that perhaps she's a young fogey rather than a geek. 'Yeah, I guess,' she nods.

Dunst also describes herself somewhat disingenuously as a 'spiritual person' from the San Fernando Valley, who 'totally believes in karma and reincarnation. I think that in a past life, I was a struggling actress who didn't make it,' she says. 'So when I popped out of my mom I was like' - she holds her hands out in a determined gesture - 'right, this is what I'm going to do. I don't know. Everyone says I'm an old soul.'

Skulking in the background of Dunst's anecdotes is Kirsten's mother, ex-model Inez. By all accounts, Inez is the architect of her daughter's celebrity. She qualifies as the stereotypical pushy stage mum - all projected ambition and drive. It was Inez who took baby Kirsten to commercial auditions and encouraged her to act. And when Kirsten's parents divorced, it was Inez who whisked her 'Kiki' off to Los Angeles and has groomed her for stardom to this day. Inez drove her to every audition and shoot, while Dunst did her homework in the back of the car. It's her mother that Dunst credits for her unflagging work ethic. It's hard not to suspect that all manner of resentment and bitterness characterises this particular mother-daughter dynamic, but Dunst insists this isn't the case. 'My mother is a life force walking into the room,' she says. 'She's the one who should have been an actress.'

Dunst is a classically reluctant sex symbol. She has no choice, of course; these things are thrust upon you. 'I'd much rather be recognised as an actress than a hot chick,' she says. 'Because your looks fade eventually, and then where will you be?'

Admittedly, today, she looks more like an affable cherub with a cold, but even when the role demands a bit of sizzle - she turned it on in The Virgin Suicides, for example - Dunst has her boundaries. 'I'd never appear naked, it's not necessary,' she says flatly. Not even if Scorsese were directing her in a stormy love scene with George Clooney? 'Never.' And she means it. When she saw the first cut of Crazy/ Beautiful with her mother, she demanded that certain racy scenes be excised. Still, her reluctance to strip doesn't seem to be blocking her career trajectory.

Dunst is a huge fan of Meryl Streep, an icon nonpareil for all serious actresses, and judging from her oeuvre (imagine having an oeuvre at 20), Kirsten has all the makings of a future Streep. High-school roles aside, she has been a vampire, a Russian peasant, a beauty queen, an intern, a brat... the list goes on. This year, she tests her range some more. In The Cat's Meow, set in the Twenties, Dunst plays Marion Davies, the 27-year-old actress and mistress of media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

Interestingly, even Dunst quantifies her evolving celebrity in terms of her looky-likey Hollywood contemporaries. 'Oh my God, do you know what's funny?' she says. 'Last year, people would come up to me and think I was Reese Witherspoon. Or Dido. Now I'm starting to get people who say: "You look like Kirsten Dunst".'

I tell her that her days as a Hollywood clone are definitely over. She looks especially crestfallen at the prospect of never being confused with Dido again. 'I guess,' she sighs. 'Maybe if I do my hair?' Then she takes another sip of Yogi tea, and smiles her sunny, signature smile.