The actor and director talk about their longstanding collaboration and Dunst's latest role in Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog.
Kirsten Dunst was just sixteen when she was cast in Sofia Coppola’s 1999 feature debut, The Virgin Suicides. That film marked the start of a fruitful, lifelong partnership between actor and director that saw Dunst starring in 2006’s Marie Antoinette and 2017’s The Beguiled, for which Coppola won Cannes’s Best Director award. “People perceived me in a different way after Virgin Suicides,” Dunst said. “The environment you create is always very open. You let everyone do their thing. You want a safe environment for your actors, for them to be vulnerable, for them to express. I don’t think that always happens.”
Dunst most recently portrayed Rose, in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, a widowed innkeeper who marries a wealthy Montana rancher named George (played by her real-life partner Jesse Plemons) and finds herself both out of place and insecure in her new surroundings. Joining Rose is her son, aspiring surgeon Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who begins to form an unlikely bond with George’s domineering brother, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). The film allowed Dunst to tap a vast range of emotions, as her character transitions from the drudgery of making ends meet as a single mother, to an uneasy life with her new husband and Phil, who mocks her relentlessly, and drives her to a heartbreaking unraveling.
Amidst strong critical reception of Dunst’s scene-stealing supporting role as Rose, the actor sat down with her friend and longtime collaborator, Sofia Coppola, for a live conversation about getting into character for The Power of the Dog and the importance of director-actor relationships for American Cinematheque. Here is an edited version of their discussion.
Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst
Sofia Coppola: I’m excited to see you and talk about this movie. I was so excited when I heard that you were doing a movie with Jane Campion, one of my favorite directors, who I admire, and you as my favorite actress. How did this come to be?
Kirsten Dunst: She first actually approached me in my early 20s about working together on this Alice Munro short film that never came to fruition. [For The Power of the Dog], first the script came to Jesse, and Jane was such a fan of our work together. Jesse got offered the part first, and for whatever reason it didn’t work out. And then I was cast with Paul Dano [as George], and eventually Jesse was cast. So it was a lot of flipping to get to this cast, but yes, I FaceTimed with Jane about it, and she was like, “I’d love you to play my Rose.” I think I screamed with joy. I was like, “I’m going to be in a Jane Campion movie.”
SC: I loved seeing you [and Jesse] together. That scene where you guys were on the mountain top together makes me cry. Do you like working together?
KD: Well, it feels very corny to be doing that with him because we have a child together, and now I’m teaching him how to dance on this mountain top. When they first meet, they have a shared loneliness that bonds them right away. It’s so beautiful what he says at the end of that scene, “It’s just nice not to be alone.” I mean, if it wasn’t in Jane Campion’s hands . . .
SC: You’re right. Anyone else and it would be corny, and I always think that’s so daring when you go for it in a way that it’s so melodramatic and so over the top, but it’s believable. But this was subtle, then over the top at the same time — how did you find that tone?
KD: As you know, I work a lot with my dreams. In connecting my unconscious mind with the work that I have to do, it immediately puts me in a very real place. It’s finding the freedom in the scene that makes it feel the most authentic. There are some melodramatic things, like, running out of the house in my robe.
Kirsten Dunst and The Power of the Dog crew behind the scenes
SC: It reminds me of Tennessee Williams. It could be totally ridiculous if it wasn’t connected to something real. Do you have symbols or something that remind you of some emotional state that makes it real to you?
KD: Sometimes symbols. And then, sometimes, it’s heightening a feeling that you can already access in yourself. Like when I am playing the piano, and [Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil] plays the banjo and is tormenting me. I felt like a younger part of myself would be a little bit more crushed under that. To be trumped by someone else’s artistry in that way is a little soul crushing for someone who’s trying to learn her piano and thinks she’s decent at it. And then it’s just like, Wow, this person is just effortless and so talented. That just makes you feel terrible about yourself. So I kind of heightened little experiences I’ve had, in a way.
SC: I’m so impressed that you could expose that side of yourself. Do you feel that as you’ve gotten older, you’re stronger and you can reveal your vulnerable side?
KD: The older I get, the more I feel I don’t have any fear in acting. When you’re younger, you’re thinking about things more. Then you let it go because you want it to be the most authentic. You know what’s good? It’s acting in a Jane Campion movie — she wants to live in these moments for a really long time. She doesn’t want to chop up these things that feel really authentic. So it’s part of what I did, but also what I did in the right vessel.
SC: Do you work very differently depending on who the director is, and do you get a sense at the beginning of the project of how you’re going to approach it together?
KD: My preparation is always the same, but then, I feel like every movie’s a new house that you’re living in because of the environment and how [a director’s] energy affects everybody. So I could never be like, Oh, wow, that was a good thing from that director. I’m going to use that for this.
Kirsten Dunst
SC: With Jane, did you feel like you had to learn a new language as you started? How did you find your way into your role with Jane?
KD: She likes to rehearse for two weeks, which is a lot, but it’s good, too. We did improvising, and we did scenes, too, but I liked improvising what Kodi and I would do at the inn all day, making beds together and having little conversations.
SC: Your performances look subtle and almost like there’s not a lot happening and there’s so much going on. How do you bring so many layers to what you’re doing?
KD: Before I do the movie, the way I prepare grounds me in the role so much that I don’t second guess myself at all, which is what stops you on set. The first time I met Kodi, who plays my son, I had this idea that he killed my husband, his father, or he let him die. So however that happened — he was an alcoholic in the book, and he hung himself — maybe he heard him in the house and didn’t do anything about it. So we would have a history and an eeriness, or like some backstory that gave us a deeper weirder bond. Kodi was really into that idea, too. So we had that secret together.
SC: That scene inside with Kodi, where you’re kind of falling apart, did you have to prepare a lot right before the actual moment? How did you convey being such a whirlwind of a mess?
KD: That was the most difficult scene. Jane, Kodi, and I rehearsed that scene a lot. I just felt like Rose was a little girl wanting to live in this fantasy world of when she was looked at as a beautiful woman and feeling alive and special and now it’s just so sad.
Jane Campion, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirsten Dunst, and The Power of the Dog crew
SC: You see her broken pieces. And after holding it in for so long, it was a relief to see her fall apart. But does it feel cathartic after you do an intense role like that?
KD: This one felt like, ugh, I was kind of happy to not play Rose anymore, because the insecure part of her started to seep into how I felt about my work. She tries to be part of the house, and cook, and clean, and do the things that ground her from being owner of an inn. And she just has nothing. I was very happy to go home to Jesse and have someone who totally understood the set and the dynamics.
SC: I think you always choose interesting roles. Besides just your intuition, do you have some kind of rule of thumb with how you choose roles?
KD: I think that I’m director-driven mostly. You could be so good in a movie and work so hard, but if you’re not in the right hands, it doesn’t really matter. Because I worked with you at such young age, that gave me a different confidence that I think most young actresses don’t get to have, because they’re always seen through a male’s perspective, a male gaze.
SC: Do you find a big difference between if you’re working with a guy or a woman, how they see you and what they want you to represent?
KD: Yeah. And it’s interesting because I didn’t even realize it until I was older.
Kirsten Dunst
SC: You started so young.
KD: I know. I worked on Interview with the Vampire, with all these crazy big actors, all these men, a Neil Jordan movie, and then right after that, I did Little Women with an all-female cast of the biggest female actresses of the time and a female director [Gillian Armstrong]. I was in male-male world and then I was in the ultimate female world. I was biting people’s necks and working with the biggest actors in the world. And then I was learning how to knit. I didn’t even realize, until I started to talk about myself way too much, how important that [experience] was.
But [it was impactful] to have worked with you on a film that was really a blossoming kind of movie for me. You don’t make your actors feel inhibited or wrong ever. You’re good at guiding and expressing what you want with an example, rather than, do this or do that. Not everyone knows how to do that. I think that’s an art in itself.
SC: I know exactly what you mean. I always want to give the space for everyone to be comfortable to find it themselves. But I feel like you and I don’t have to talk. There’s just a shorthand, and I could say some little thing then you totally —
KD: I get it.
SC: I’m just always so excited to see what you’re going to do. It’s always so fun just to set it up and then see what’s going to happen. And you always surprise me.