Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey) is an American actress/singer.
She began her career at the age of three appearing in television commercials. She also appeared as an extra on one episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live (which she would guest host years later).
She later made the transition to the big screen in her first film appearance, New York Stories, in 1989 and soon after landed a small part playing the daughter of Tom Hanks's character in The Bonfire of the Vanities, which also starred Melanie Griffith and Bruce Willis.
Her breakthrough was in Interview with the Vampire, the film based on the Anne Rice novel of the same name and directed by Neil Jordan. This movie features the frowned-upon-scene in which Dunst, then aged eleven, had to kiss Brad Pitt, who was then twenty nine. Her most famous performance to date was as Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man, reprised in Spider-Man 2.
She won the 2002 Best Actress Silver Ombת at the Mar de Plata Film Festival for her performance as Marion Davies in Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow.
She and actor Jake Gyllenhaal recently broke up after dating for two years.
She made her singing debut in the 2001 film Get Over It, in which she performed two songs written by Marc Shaiman. She also lent her musical voice to the end credits of The Cat's Meow.
More recently, Dunst has also committed to playing the role of doomed 18th-century royal, Queen Marie Antoinette. The forthcoming motion picture, scheduled for 2006, is to be directed by Sofia Coppola and is based on the biography of Marie-Antoinette by British historian, Lady Antonia Fraser. Filming of "Marie-Antoinette" is due to commence in February 2005.
