Kirsten Dunst wants people to expect less from actors. The Fargo actress opened up to Town & Country in its September issue cover story, where she went into detail about why being in the spotlight is so hard.
“What people expect of an actor is totally ridiculous,” Dunst, 33, told the mag of growing up in Hollywood. “It’s unfair that an artist is expected to speak really well in public and have skin tough enough to withstand sometimes really hurtful criticism, but also, in order to do the job, be really sensitive and in touch with their feelings. So all you can do is be yourself — just be who the hell you are.”
The Virgin Suicides star, a child actress since age 3, checked into Cirque Lodge in 2008 at age 27 to treat depression. “I know some young actresses who are better at it,” Dunst mused. “Dakota Fanning reminds me a lot of myself, but she’s wiser than I was at her age.”
Following her stint in rehab, Dunst returned to California to be close to family. The actress told T&C that she needs to constantly be surrounded by people. “It’s not big or anything, but I still don’t like sleeping alone in my house,” she said, adding that she enjoys certain guilty pleasures like The Bachelorette.
“I like a lot of sh-tty shows,” Dunst noted. “I like to zone out when I watch TV.” But you won’t catch her Keeping Up with the Kardashians. “Oh, no,” the star said of the world-famous reality stars. “I can’t do them.”
In her career, Dunst is focused on channeling intense characters, currently as Peggy Bloomquist in FX’s Fargo. “She is very much like me at my craziest, my mother at her craziest, my grandma at her craziest,” Dunst said. “I could really combine the nutsiest parts of the women in my family. Some of the things [my grandma] would say, how she said them—I had a lot of that inside me already.”
Series creator Noah Hawley praised Dunst’s talent and passion for the craft. “I felt like Kirsten had her movie-star moment, and then she made a deliberate choice to become a character actor,” he told T&C. “It has always astonished me how much is going on behind her eyes and how quickly she can move between feelings.”
The typically private actress also dished details on her relationship with boyfriend Garrett Hedlund. “We’ve been together for three-and-a-half years, so, yes, it’s going really well,” she said of her beau, whom she met on the set of On the Road in 2011. “We’re the same age. We have similar backgrounds. He feels like family to me.”
“After working all my life, I’m very good at relaxing. The older I get, the more I don’t want to be away from my mother and my friends,” the Bring It On star explained. “I have really strong girlfriend relationships.”
And friendships with Hollywood hunks, too. “You know what? I felt [discouraged] when I was younger, particularly being on the Spider-Man sets, which was pretty much all guys,” she noted of costarring in the blockbuster franchise with Toby Maguire and James Franco. “But the older I get, the less I feel that way. What I’ve found is that the cool guys now want to hang out with the cool girls.”
The September issue of Town & Country hits stands on Aug. 11.
