Kirsten Dunst’s horrified face was one of the defining images of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The actress’s latest film, Melancholia, was a favourite to win the Palme d’Or until its director, Lars von Trier, joked during a press conference that he "understood Hitler", adding, "Israel is a pain in the ass."
Dunst, who made a fruitless attempt to stop his ramble, eventually turned to him with a look of dread and disappointment. The film’s celebrity-studded party was cancelled and von Trier was ejected from the festival.
Then, a few days later, Dunst won the best actress award for her extraordinary performance in Melancholia. Shimmering in a silver feathered haute couture Chanel dress, Dunst accepted the trophy from Robert De Niro. "What a week it’s been!" she exclaimed, looking a little stunned.
"It was like watching your friend have a meltdown – they just keep talking," she says of the director’s comments today. "I was so embarrassed about what [von Trier] was saying. It came from a very dark and twisted sense of humour."She smiles ruefully. "Obviously it’s not something that he actually believed. I knew he was trying to be provocative. He felt really embarrassed afterwards because they took away our party and our dinner."
We are sitting in the patio garden of De Niro’s hotel, the Greenwich, in New York, though it feels more like a tranquil Tuscan trattoria with its arched porticos and reclaimed terracotta tiles.
The city is in the middle of a heat wave. It is oppressive – 36°C in the shade – but Dunst looks cool, pretty and fresh as a daisy in crisp blue Acne shorts, a striped short-sleeved top and sling-back ballet flats. Her blonde hair is pulled into a ponytail, which accentuates her dramatic sloping cheekbones.
Dunst got to know De Niro when she starred in the political satire Wag the Dog (1997) but last saw him on the podium in the Riviera. "That was a pretty magical moment," she smiles. "I had never been given anything like that before."
Dunst’s last trip to Cannes could hardly have been more different. Five years ago the festival screening of Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette (2006), in which Dunst was the star, was booed by critics.
There had been high expectations of the visually sumptuous, highly stylised retelling of the French queen’s life, but it tanked at the box office. "The movie was so personal to me and it was kind of like everyone was stomping on my heart," she said at the time.
The 29-year-old is not new to the vagaries of the industry. Dunst, who is probably best known for playing Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man films, has been acting almost all of her life. By the time she made her first appearance on the big screen aged 12, opposite Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with a Vampire (1994), she already had years of experience behind her.
"My mother told me that when I was born a wave of feeling came over her," she says. "She just knew that I was destined to be an actress. Every time we’d go to the grocery store everyone would come up to her and say, 'Your daughter is so animated, she’s such a happy child, she has such a light, you should put her in commercials.' My mum thought, 'OK, we’ll try acting and put away some money for college.' I booked my first commercial and that was it."
Dunst has no regrets about spending her childhood in front of the camera. 'I was a very extrovert kid,’ she says. 'It felt normal to me to act. I always went to regular schools. I’ve never been catty or a prima donna so I never had problems.
"I always had my seat at the cafeteria when I came back from acting. I had, and still have, a great best friend, Molly [who arrives at the hotel to meet Dunst for lunch after our interview]. She was into theatre, too, and we would put on plays together."
She hasn’t always been so enthused about the demands of a Hollywood career. Last time I met her, when she was promoting Spider-Man 3 four years ago, she was having serious doubts about acting. 'I don’t remember saying that,’ she says when I remind her of the comment.
"Maybe when I said that, I needed something artistic that was personal to me. For whatever reason, at that time in my life I felt that maybe I didn’t have anything that was my own, which I didn’t have to share with other people. But I don’t feel that now."
At that time Dunst was emerging from a period of depression, which led to a stint in rehab in 2008. "I have to be open and sensitive as an actress and maybe there’s an aspect of me that takes on too much. Who knows?" says Dunst.
"I’ve always been someone who is pretty hard on herself. But I’ve lightened up a lot." She pauses in thought for a long moment, something she does frequently throughout our interview. Her conversation is a curious mix of tumbling sentences and sudden halts. "Well you’re always going to deal with stuff," she says eventually, wrapping her arms around her bare legs. "I don’t think it’s easier."Though she may still struggle at times, Dunst is clearly in a better state of mind than she was the last time I saw her. The actress tells me, she was "in a good space" when she made Melancholia. "It’s not something I think I could have done if I wasn’t happy. It was very intense."
The title of the haunting, apocalyptic film refers to both the fictional planet Melancholia, which is on a collision course with earth, and to Dunst’s character’s state of mind.
'Not many movies can portray depression,’ says Dunst. 'Watching depressed people is not interesting. They are tired, they don’t want to take a shower. They don’t want to sleep or eat. Lars took something that’s not very easily done in cinema and made it interesting.’
Von Trier is notorious for making his female characters suffer. Charlotte Gainsbourg’s grief-stricken character in Antichrist is subjected to a series of unimaginable ordeals (including genital mutilation), Emily Watson’s bedridden husband in Breaking the Waves encourages her to sleep with other men.
In Dogville Nicole Kidman’s character is raped and enslaved. Kidman asked von Trier outright whether he hated women – not the first time the director has been accused of misogyny. Did she have any concerns about working with the controversial director?
"I was a little scared because everyone made such a big deal about how he tortures actresses," admits Dunst. "But what I found was a really sensitive, funny and kind director, who was emotionally intuitive."
Melancholia is also a portrait of a dysfunctional family. "No wonder my character has issues," says Dunst,
laughing. "Her parents are horrible! Your family really affects everything about who you are."
Dunst says she had a happy childhood: "I grew up on a river in New Jersey. I would make up my own stories with my Barbie dolls. I would swim in the ocean, I danced around. I had my own world." But, she adds, "My Dad was very strict. He grew up in Germany and his father was in the Second World War. He could be harsh, like if you got an A minus, he’d want to know, 'Why didn’t you get an A plus?'
"He tried not to be like that and loosened up later. But he worked all week and on the weekend would say, 'Let’s go to church.'" She laughs. "His work ethic got passed down to me alongside the feeling that, even if you have great success, it’s never good enough. You have to do better." Her mother took a more carefree approach. "She’d say, 'Let’s watch Saturday Night Live and eat dinner in bed.'"
When Dunst was in her early teens her father, Klaus, a German businessman, and her Swedish mother, Inez, split up. "It wasn’t surprising to me. I wasn’t delusional. Even at 13 you can tell. I’d rather see my parents happy than together and unhappy."
Dunst’s mother was a driving force in the early years of Kirsten’s career. "My mum was never my manager but she was always with me on set. She would bring the pasta machine and make home-made pasta wherever we went!" she remembers.
The acting has meant she has been able to give financial support to her family since she was a small child. "'It’s amazing that I can do that," she says with genuine enthusiasm. "My grandmother lives with my mother in a gorgeous house in the San Fernando Valley [bought by the actress]. I am afforded these luxuries and I’m very young."
Dunst herself says she "hates going to Beverly Hills. LA is just a vampire city! There’s a bubble there with only one type of industry going on and it just gets to me". She relocated to New York a few years ago and bought herself a flat in Manhattan.
"You know I feel very lucky that I don’t have to rely on a man to give me financial security," says Dunst. "That’s a big deal. I have the confidence as a 29-year-old to know that I can work and make money."
The actress is currently involved with the musician Jason Boesel. "I think it’s best to date someone who doesn’t do what you do," she says. "It’s important to have your own life. As soon as things get enmeshed and you give up too much of yourself it just gets bad," she says.
The last actor Dunst had a serious relationship with was Jake Gyllenhaal, whom she was with for two years. They split up in 2004 after which she had a reportedly tempestuous affair with Razorlight’s frontman, Johnny Borrell, which ended in 2008.
"Do you go for the sexual chemistry or for the friend who treats you well?" she asks of choosing the right partner.
"It’s hard to find the balance. You want the marriage of both and that’s not going to come with the instant-chemistry kind of people. Getting older, you try to pick a partner you are friends with. At least that’s my experience. There obviously has to be some sort of attraction, but not the kind that will be destructive and make you crazy. I like someone who’s pretty chilled. I know my life gets hectic and it’s nice to have someone who grounds and centres me."
Has she found that balance with Boesel? "Listen," she says with a sigh. "We’re not married. I don’t think I’ll talk about anything until I get married and even then…" She trails off, lost in thought. "I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to get married and have kids."
Dunst’s best actress award for Melancholia – which is likely to lead to an Oscar nomination – has cemented her position as a leading actress of her generation. Her next film is an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, by Walter Salles (the director of The Motorcycle Diaries) and she has started shooting a comedy with Isla Fisher.
"I think the best thing about my job is that I have my life documented, which not many people get to have. They have a photo here and there and maybe some video footage from a birthday. My kids will be able to see me growing up." A life on film that is unfolding with every role Dunst undertakes. It is, in the actress’s own words, "a pretty big deal".