Kirsten Dunst had to fall in love with acting again after the first Spider-Man trilogy

On the last day of August 2021, Kirsten Dunst traveled to Italy for the Venice International Film Festivalwhere it premiered “The power of the dog”, the Netflix movie directed by Jane Campion which has one of the best performances of the 39-year-old actress. Dunst arrived in Venice after months at home raising a newborn and an entire year confined at home due to the pandemic, you know.

Dunst donned an Armani Privé dress that made her feel bulletproof and accompanied Campion and the film’s leading man, benedict cumberbatch, to the premiere in the Sala Grande. At the end of the film, the audience gave a standing ovation for “The Power of the Dog” for several minutes, and Campion and his cast wore big smiles. Things couldn’t have turned out better. Was Dunst feeling excited?

“I was so happy and excited about the experience”he said later, “with paralyzing internal exhaustion.”

Even when he smiles, Dunst can suggest that there is something much more complicated below the surface. That gift came in handy in “The Power of the Dog,” based on the novel by Thomas Savage and starring Cumberbatch as Phil, a sadistic ranch owner in 1925 Montana. Throughout his life, Phil has supported his younger brother, George (Jesse Plemons)under his yoke, but when George meets the brooding Rose (Dunst) and impulsively marries her, Phil is annoyed with this woman’s meddling and sets out to destroy her.

So, he sets a trap for poor Rose: George adores his new girlfriend and encourages her to come clean, but Everything Rose shows about herself is a point of vulnerability that Phil can use against her.. Even when Rose turns to alcohol to deal with dominant attitudes of Phil, we hear her mutter, “He’s just a man,” but the way Dunst pronounces the phrase, as if he hardly believes what he’s saying, it suggests that Rose knows all too well the damage men can do.

Fall in love with acting again

in his twenties, by the time she finished three “Spider-Man” movies, Dunst had begun to feel empty. Although she had found an important collaborator in Sofia Coppola, who explored the subversive aspects of the blonde-naive image Dunst with “The Virgin Suicides” and “Marie Antoinette”, the shoots that really satisfied her were few and far between each. Acting no longer brought him joy; With a lot of frequency, his life’s work had become a technical task with which he felt no real connection.

In 2008, after checking into the Cirque Lodge rehab center for depression, Dunst realized that her profession as a child had affected her personality as an adult.

“For a long time, I never got mad at anyone,” he said. “I just swallowed a lot of things. When you’re on set, it’s acting, it’s nice. At a certain point, you have to get angry, and I think that ends up building up in a person. You can’t survive like this. your body stops you”.

That is why, after entering the thirties and working for the last few years with acting coach Greta Seacat, Dunst has found a new cathartic connection with his work: he wants take all the difficulties that people repress and let us see them in their interpretations.

“That’s what acting should be about,” he concluded. “Those are the interpretations that I love, the ones that are most revealing about human beings and the hardest things we experience in life.”