Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982) is an American actress and singer who has starred in many film and television productions. Her accolades include the Cannes Film Festival Award For Best Actress and nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and four Golden Globes.
As a child, Dunst made her acting debut in the anthology film New York Stories (1989). She gained recognition as the child vampire Claudia in the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), which earned her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other roles in her youth include Little Women (1994), Jumanji (1995) and Small Soldiers (1998). Dunst moved into leading roles in teen films of 1999: the satires Dick and Drop Dead Gorgeous, as well as the drama The Virgin Suicides, the first of her several collaborations with filmmaker Sofia Coppola. After starring in the comedy film Bring It On (2000), she gained wider attention for her role as Mary Jane Watson in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007). She played supporting roles in Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), followed by lead roles in Wimbledon (2004), Elizabethtown (2005), and Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006).
In 2011, Dunst starred as a depressed newlywed in Lars von Trier's drama Melancholia, which earned her the Best Actress prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. In 2015, she played the hairdresser Peggy Blumquist in the second season of the FX series Fargo, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Dunst had a supporting role in the film Hidden Figures (2016) and leading roles in Coppola's The Beguiled (2017) and in the dark comedy series On Becoming a God in Central Florida (2019). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as a troubled wife in Jane Campion's psychological drama The Power of the Dog (2021). Following a two-year hiatus from acting, she starred in the dystopian thriller film Civil War (2024) and co-starred with Channing Tatum in the true-crime drama Roofman (2025). Dunst is married to actor Jesse Plemons and they have two sons.
Dunst was born on April 30, 1982, at Point Pleasant Hospital in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Her father, Klaus Dunst, worked for Siemens as a medical services executive, and her mother, Inez (née Rupprecht) worked for Lufthansa as a flight attendant. Inez was also an artist and a one-time gallery owner. Dunst's father is German, originally from Hamburg, and her American mother is of German and Swedish descent. Dunst has a younger brother. Until the age of eleven, Dunst lived in Brick Township, New Jersey, and attended Ranney School in Tinton Falls.
In 1993, Dunst moved to Los Angeles with her mother and brother, after her parents separated. In her teens, she found it difficult to cope with her rising fame, and for a time she was angry with her mother for pushing her into acting as a child. However, she later said her mother "always had the best intentions". When asked in 2005 if she had any regrets about her childhood, Dunst said, "Well, it's not a natural way to grow up, but it's the way I grew up and I wouldn't change it."
Dunst began her career at age three as a child fashion model in television commercials. She was signed with Ford Models and Elite Model Management. In 1988, she appeared on Saturday Night Live as the granddaughter of George H. W. Bush. Later that year, she made her feature film debut with a minor role in Woody Allen's short film Oedipus Wrecks, which was released as one-third of the anthology film New York Stories (1989). Soon after, Dunst performed in the comedy-drama The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), based on Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, in which she played the daughter of Tom Hanks' character. In 1993, Dunst made a guest appearance in an episode of the science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation.
1994–2001: Career breakthrough
Dunst's breakthrough role came in 1994, in the horror drama Interview with the Vampire, based on Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire. She played Claudia, a child vampire who is a surrogate daughter to the characters played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. The film included a scene in which Dunst shared her first onscreen kiss with Pitt, who is two decades her senior. She stated that kissing him had made her feel uncomfortable: "I thought it was gross, that Brad had cooties. I mean, I was 10," she recalled. Roger Ebert considered her portrayal of Claudia to be one of the "creepier" aspects of the film, and praised her portrayal of great age inside apparent youth. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said Dunst was "scarily effective" in her role and called her a "little vamp with a big future." For her performance, Dunst won the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and the Saturn Award for Best Young Actress, in addition to receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Interview with the Vampire received mixed reviews. Later in 1994, Dunst co-starred in the drama film Little Women. It received positive reviews, with Maslin calling Dunst's performance "scene-stealing".
In 1995, Dunst starred in the fantasy adventure film Jumanji, a loose adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's 1981 children's book Jumanji. The story is about a supernatural board game which makes real animals and jungle hazards appear with each roll of the dice. Dunst was part of an ensemble cast that included Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt and David Alan Grier. The film was a financial success and grossed $262 million worldwide. In that year, and again in 2002, Dunst was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People.
In 1996–1997, Dunst had a recurring role in season three of the NBC medical drama series ER. She played Charlie Chemingo, a child prostitute who is being cared for by the pediatrician Dr. Doug Ross, played by George Clooney. In 1997, Dunst voiced Young Anastasia in the animated musical film Anastasia and appeared in the black comedy film Wag the Dog with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. The following year she starred in Small Soldiers and voiced Kiki in the English Disney/GKIDS dub of Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service. She also starred in Sarah Kernochan's period comedy All I Wanna Do (1998), playing a student at an all girls' boarding school in the 1960s, alongside Gaby Hoffmann, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Lynn Redgrave. Writing for The New York Times, A. O. Scott called Dunst's performance "smart" and "unstereotyped".
Dunst turned down the role of Angela Hayes in American Beauty (1999) because, at 15 years old, she did not want to appear in the film's sexual scenes, and she did not fully understand the mature themes of the script. In 1999, she appeared in three films: Drop Dead Gorgeous, a mockumentary about a small town beauty pageant in which she starred; Dick, a comedic parody which retells the events of the Watergate scandal, in which she co-starred; and Sofia Coppola's drama The Virgin Suicides, based on Jeffrey Eugenides' 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides, in which Dunst played the troubled teenager Lux Lisbon. The Virgin Suicides received generally favorable reviews, with Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle writing that Dunst "beautifully balances innocence and wantonness". The same year, Dunst appeared in Savage Garden's music video "I Knew I Loved You", the first single from their album Affirmation (1999).
In 2000, Dunst starred in the comedy Bring It On as Torrance Shipman, the captain of a cheerleading squad. The film garnered mostly positive reviews, with A. O. Scott calling Dunst "a terrific comic actress, largely because of her great expressive range, and the nimbleness with which she can shift from anxiety to aggression to genuine hurt". Charles Taylor of Salon wrote that "among contemporary teenage actresses, Dunst has become the sunniest imaginable parodist". Jessica Winter of The Village Voice said Dunst was "as sprightly and knowingly daft" as she was in Dick. Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle praised Dunst for her willingness "to be as silly and cloyingly agreeable as it takes to get through a slapdash film".