Kirsten Dunst on Why She Dispels Hollywood Beauty Standards: 'I'd Rather Get Old and Do Good Roles'

Kirsten Dunst isn’t worried about chasing her youth — or aligning with archaic Hollywood beauty standards.

“I still know to this day, I’m not gonna screw up my face and look like a freak. You know what I mean? I’d rather get old and do good roles,” the actress, 41, told British GQ in a new interview published on Tuesday. 

For Dunst, this realization came at a young age, but certainly not without spoken pressures to look a certain way.  

She told the publication that when she was filming Spider-Man, a producer on the 2002 movie took her to the dentist to encourage her to get her teeth straightened, unbeknownst to her. “I was like, ‘No, I like my teeth,’” she said. 

She also shattered any expectations placed on her image when she attended the Spider-Man London premiere dressed in a “goth” black Rodarte gown and dark lip, which apparently wasn’t favorable in the eyes of Sony, the behemoth studio that financed the film.

"Probably because they wanted me to look like a sexy young woman who would appeal to a broader range of whoever gets seats in the theater," guessed Dunst, who added that she was “never that girl."

Fortunately, there was one particular director who embraced Dunst for who she genuinely was. “I had Sofia [Coppola] at 16, who thought I was so cool and pretty when I didn’t. She was like, ‘I love your teeth!’” she remembered of her interactions with the director on the set of The Virgin Suicides.

It’s that brand of empowerment that Dunst has taken with her as her career has evolved. “I realized it [later] in decisions I had made. Not to change teeth, not to blow up my lips, or whatever it is that everyone wants to look like."

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Back in March, Dunst spoke with Marie Claire about the box she was put into when it came to acting because of her age. In the two years that followed her Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in 2021's The Power of the Dog, Dunst recalled only being offered roles for “the sad mom” — until Civil War came along. 

"To be honest, that's been hard for me...because I need to feed myself. The hardest thing is being a mom and...not feeling like, I have nothing for myself," Dunst said of her two-year gap away from the screen. "That's every mother — not just me."