Dunst first gained recognition for her role as the child vampire Claudia in the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination 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 (2002โ2007).
She played a supporting role in 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 Cannes Film Festival Award For Best Actress. 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), for which she received her third Golden Globe nomination.
She earned her fourth Golden Globe nomination and first Academy Award nomination for her performance as a troubled wife in the psychological drama The Power of the Dog (2021). In 2024, following a two-year hiatus from acting, she starred in the dystopian thriller film Civil War 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.
Early life
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 (nรฉe 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. 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."
Acting career
1988โ1993: Early work
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.
1994โ2001: 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 the 10-year-old Dunst shared her first onscreen kiss with Pitt, who is two decades her senior.
She later said that kissing him had made her feel uncomfortable. 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 described Dunst as "scarily effective" in her role. 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 1996โ1997, 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 film about a small town beauty pageant in which she starred; Dick, a 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 she 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 second and final 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 she 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".
In 2001, Dunst starred in the comedy film Get Over It. She later explained that she took the role for the opportunity to showcase her singing. The same year, she co-starred with Jay Hernandez in the teen romance film Crazy/Beautiful. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "an unusually observant film about adolescence", and "because of the real conviction that Dunst and Hernandez bring to the roles, we care about them as people, not case studies." Dunst also starred as actress Marion Davies in the historical drama The Cat's Meow, directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
Derek Elley of Variety deemed Dunst's performance the best of her career: "Believable as both a spoiled ingenue and a lover to two very different men, Dunst endows a potentially lightweight character with considerable depth and sympathy". For her performance, Dunst won the Best Actress Silver Ombรบ award at the 2002 Mar del Plata International Film Festival.
2002โ2009: Stardom with Spider-Man
In 2002, Dunst starred opposite Tobey Maguire in Sam Raimi's superhero film Spider-Man, the most financially successful film of her career at the time. She played Mary Jane Watson, the love interest of Peter Parker (Maguire). Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly said Dunst had the ability to "lend even the smallest line a tickle of flirtatious music".
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan thought Dunst and Maguire made a genuine connection onscreen which "involved audiences to an extent rarely seen in films". Spider-Man was a critical and commercial success, grossing $114 million during its opening weekend in North America and earning $822 million worldwide.
Dunst next co-starred with Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman and Holly Hunter in the drama Levity (2003), a story of a man who is released on parole and returns to his hometown seeking redemption. The same year, she co-starred with Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julia Stiles in the drama Mona Lisa Smile (2003), which received mixed reviews; Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times described it as "smug and reductive".
Dunst then co-starred with Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet and Tom Wilkinson in Michel Gondry's film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), which received positive reviews and grossed $72 million worldwide. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described Dunst's subplot as "nifty and clever".
The success of the first Spider-Man led Dunst to reprise her role as Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man 2 (2004). The film received generally positive reviews and was a commercial success, setting a new opening weekend box office record for North America. With a total gross of $783 million worldwide, it was the second highest-grossing film of 2004.
The same year, Dunst co-starred opposite Paul Bettany in the romantic comedy Wimbledon, in which she portrayed a tennis player competing in the Wimbledon Championships. The film received mixed reviews. Claudia Puig of USA Today described the chemistry between Dunst and Bettany as "potent", and that Dunst did a "fine job as a sassy and self-assured player".
In Dunst's sole project of 2005, she starred opposite Orlando Bloom in Cameron Crowe's romantic tragicomedy Elizabethtown as a flight attendant. The film premiered at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and garnered mixed reviews, with Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune describing Dunst's performance as "cloying".
After Elizabethtown, Dunst collaborated with Sofia Coppola again, starring as Marie Antoinette in the historical drama Marie Antoinette (2006), based on Antonia Fraser's book Marie Antoinette: The Journey. The film was screened at a special presentation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and was reviewed favorably. It grossed $60 million from a budget of $40 million.
In 2007, Dunst reprised the role of Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man 3, which received a mixed reaction from critics. Ryan Gilbey of the New Statesman criticized Dunst's character, remarking that "the film-makers couldn't come up with much for Mary Jane to do other than scream a lot". With a worldwide gross of $891 million, it is the most commercially successful film in the series, and was Dunst's highest-grossing film to date.
In 2008, Dunst starred opposite Simon Pegg in the comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, based on Toby Young's memoir of the same name. The film received generally negative reviews. Robert Wilonsky of The Village Voice was critical of Dunst's performance, writing that she seemed to be "speaking in four different accents at once, none of them quite of the English variety".
2010โ2016: Independent films
Dunst made her screenwriting and directorial debut with the short film Bastard, which she co-wrote with Sasha Sagan. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010 and was later featured at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Dunst co-starred opposite Ryan Gosling in the mystery drama All Good Things (2010), based on the true story of New York real estate developer Robert Durst, whose wife disappeared in 1982.
The film mixed reviews and earned $640,000 worldwide. The critic Roger Ebert praised Dunst for her ability to portray "a woman at a loss to understand who her husband really is, and what the true nature of his family involves". Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said her performance was the only one worth watching in the film.
Also in 2010, Dunst co-starred with Brian Geraghty in Carlos Cuarรณn's short film The Second Bakery Attack, based on Haruki Murakami's short story.
In 2011, Dunst co-starred with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Rampling in Lars von Trier's drama film Melancholia as a woman suffering depression as the world ends. The film premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and received generally positive reviews, with Dunst's performance earning praise.
Steven Loeb of Southampton Patch said the film brought the best out of Dunst, who plays "a character unlike any other she has ever attempted". He felt her performance alone was enough to recommend the film, which he called "an incredible work of art". Sukhdev Sandhu of The Daily Telegraph wrote: "Dunst is exceptional, so utterly convincing in the lead role ... that it feels like a career breakthrough." Dunst won several awards for her performance, including the Best Actress Award at Cannes and the Best Actress Award from the U.S. National Society of Film Critics.
Dunst made a cameo in the Beastie Boys' 2011 music video "Fight For Your Right Revisited", which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. A year later, she starred in Juan Diego Solanas' science fiction romance Upside Down with Jim Sturgess. The film received generally negative reviews, with Peter Howell of the Toronto Star writing that it had no character development and that Dunst brought "competence but no passion to her underwritten roles".
Next, Dunst had a role in Leslye Headland's romantic comedy Bachelorette (2012), which starred Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson and Lizzy Caplan. Dunst played Regan Crawford, one of three women who reunite for the wedding of a friend who was ridiculed in high school. The same year, Dunst played Camille Moriarty in the drama On the Road (2012), an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road.
Dunst had been approached for the role several years prior by the film's director Walter Salles. The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and underperformed at the box office while earning mixed reviews.
