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Actress Kirsten Dunst at the 2024 Oscars: Didn't get out at the dentist

Photo: Sarah Meyssonnier / REUTERS

Former child stars often have complicated relationships with their parents. After all, they are the ones who drag their children to castings and often put them under pressure so that the little ones live the dream of the older ones.

It was similar with actress Kirsten Dunst, 41. She filmed her first commercial when she was just three years old, and it was about muesli. When her parents separated, she moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles with her mother and older brother. Dunst was ten then. Her mother, a former flight attendant at Lufthansa, would have loved to be in show business herself, Dunst told the Daily Telegraph.

Nevertheless, she is grateful to her mother. Because it was she who protected her daughter from the dark sides of the industry. "Wherever I went, my mother was there too, literally." That was also the case during an unpleasant encounter with a director. Dunst was 16 and said he wanted to cast her in his film, but asked her a "totally inappropriate question" during the conversation. "I remember sitting there knowing it was wrong, but having no idea what to do." After the casting, she told her mother everything. And she quickly decided that Kirsten Dunst would not appear in the film. Dunst does not want to reveal which director it is or what the conversation was about.

Later it was another woman who supported her throughout her career: the director Sofia Coppola, whom she met on the set of "The Virgin Suicides" and with whom she later filmed "Marie Antoinette" and "The Seduced." . Coppola gave her a lot of confidence in front of the camera as a teenager. “I know how rare and valuable it is to find a mentor like that,” said Dunst in the Daily Telegraph.

It is also thanks to Coppola that she had enough self-confidence to stand up for her own, not quite Hollywood-perfect teeth. Several people tried to persuade her to have her teeth done. A producer of the blockbuster “Spiderman” even drove her to the dentist. However, she refused to get out of the car. This is how her natural smile has survived to this day.

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