Kirsten Dunst Volunteered Husband Jesse Plemons for His Terrifying ‘Civil War’ Cameo

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Kirsten Dunst Now: Actor Stars in Thriller Civil War

Kirsten Dunst not only gives a standout lead performance as veteran photojournalist Lee Smith in Civil War but had a hand in casting the movie, too. Director Alex Garland explained in a recent Los Angeles Times interview that 41-year-old Dunst recruited her husband, Jesse Plemons, for his short but terrifying appearance as a psychotic militia member after another actor dropped out at the last minute.

“I was standing out on the street when I got the call, and I thought, ‘Oh
s—. Now, now we’re in trouble,’” Garland said. “And so I went to the rehearsal and said, ‘Bad news, guys, [the other actor] can’t do it.’ And Kirsten said, ‘What? You should ask Jesse.’ It was a stunning bit of good luck.”

Civil War earned more than $25 million in its first weekend, topping the U.S. box office in a record debut among films from distributor A24, and has grossed more than $60 million worldwide.

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Who Is Kirsten Dunst?

Actor Kirsten Dunst is best known for playing Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man movie trilogy from the 2000s, as well as starring in Marie Antoinette. The New Jersey–born child model and actor had her breakout role was in the 1994 movie Interview with the Vampire, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. After appearing in several crowd-pleasing box-office hits over the next decade, she began to excel in more artistic projects. She earned Golden Globe nominations for her TV roles in Fargo and On Becoming a God in Central Florida. In 2022, Dunst received an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role in The Power of the Dog. She is married to fellow actor Jesse Plemons, with whom she shares two children.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Kirsten Caroline Dunst
BORN: April 30, 1982
BIRTHPLACE: Point Pleasant, New Jersey
SPOUSE: Jesse Plemons (2022-present)
CHILDREN: Ennis and James
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus

Young Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Caroline Dunst was born on April 30, 1982, in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Her father, Klaus, is originally from Germany, while her mother, Inez, is an American of Swedish and German descent. As a result, Kirsten has American and German citizenship. Klaus worked as a medical services executive, and Inez is a former Lufthansa flight attendant.

Raised alongside her younger brother, Christian, Kirsten grew up in Brick Township, New Jersey, and attended the Ranney School, a private preparatory school. A self-described “very extrovert kid,” Dunst said strangers would often compliment her cheery demeanor as a young child. “Every time [my mom and I would] go to the grocery store, everyone would come up to her and say, ‘Your daughter is so animated, she’s such a happy child, she has such a light. You should put her in commercials,’” she said in 2012.

Sharing the enthusiasm of her fellow shoppers, Inez chauffered 3-year-old Kirsten into New York City and helped her begin a child modeling career with the baby division of the Ford agency. After Kirsten performed well in print campaigns, her family soon booked her first commercial for Kix cereal. The precocious Dunst continued to appear in TV advertisements for products such as the board game Trouble, Pillsbury baked goods, and Crayola crayons.

At age 6, Dunst graduated to dramatic roles, starting with an uncredited part in Woody Allen’s 1989 anthology film New York Stories. A year later, she played the young daughter of Tom Hanks and Kim Cattrall’s characters in the satirical movie The Bonfire of the Vanities, also starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Following her parents’ separation, an 11-year-old Dunst moved to Los Angeles with her mother, who was determined to cultivate Kirsten’s promising career. Despite her childhood success, Dunst has said she had no dreams of becoming a Hollywood star. Later in her life, the actor admitted she held animosity toward her mother for pushing her into show business so quickly. “I’d never put any daughter of mine through acting because, while I loved acting and was happy working as a child, looking back, my happiness always came from pleasing other people—always,” she told People in 2007. “It came from satisfying the director, or my mother or my acting coach, not from pleasing myself.” Still, plenty of people were happy with Dunst’s abilities and ready to offer her more demanding parts once she was on the West Coast.

Movies

Breakthrough: Interview with the Vampire and Jumanji

After a few smaller roles for television in 1993, including a two-episode appearance on Sisters and a one-time turn on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the year 1994 kickstarted Dunst’s movie career in earnest. Then 12 years old, she had her breakout role in the gothic horror Interview with the Vampire, based on the novel by Anne Rice. Dunst played Claudia, a young girl raised by vampires played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Dunst has since revealed her mixed feelings about the movie. “They treated me like a little sister. It was very sweet,” Dunst said of her co-stars Cruise and Pitt during a 2019 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “I was a very innocent 12-year-old. I was just doing my job, and they were very sweet to me.” However, she has also lamented her onscreen kiss with Pitt, who was 30 at the time, telling Vanity Fair, “it was very weird even though it was a peck. I was just very not into it.”

Even so, Vampire proved crucial for Dunst. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, and another hit movie followed in 1995: the adventure comedy Jumanji starring Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt.

The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette with Sofia Coppola

Dunst tackled a variety of film genres over the next few years, including the World War II dramas Mother Night (1996) and The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999), the political satire Wag the Dog (1997), and the action comedy Small Soldiers (1998).

Then in 1999, Dunst played Lux Lisbon in Sofia Coppola’s movie adaptation of the Jeffrey Eugenides novel The Virgin Suicides. Having described herself as “overwhelmed and kind of a young 16-year-old” at the time, Dunst said she began to feel at ease and knew the project, about a group of sisters in suburban Detroit in the 1970s, would be a success because of Coppola’s direction. She was right—although the movie made just over $10 million worldwide, it has since become a cult classic.

The Virgin Suicides also began an enduring friendship and working relationship between Dunst and Coppola. They have since collaborated on Marie Antoinette (2006) and The Beguiled (2017).

Spider-Man Trilogy

Dunst appealed to younger audiences and comic book fans at the start of the aughts, first playing cheerleader Torrance Shipman in the 2000 teen comedy Bring It On. However, the success of that movie paled in comparison to 2002’s Spider-Man, in which she played the titular web-slinger’s neighbor and eventual love interest Mary Jane Watson.

The movie, featuring Tobey Maguire as the Stan Lee–created superhero, became the first in history to make more than $100 million at the box office in its opening weekend. All told, Spider-Man grossed more than $821 million worldwide and marked what many consider the start of the comic book film craze of the new millennium. Dunst reprised her role in the sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007).

Dunst was a bona fide star by this time—also appearing in Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and Wimbledon (2004)—and, despite receiving lucrative offers, began to prioritize creative aspects when choosing her next roles. “When I was younger, in my 20s, I didn’t have the best guidance, I would say,” she told Variety. “I get offered the most money on things I don’t want to do. As soon as I took the reins and started to develop my tastes and who I wanted to work with, everything shifted.”

Later Roles: Melancholia, The Power of the Dog, and Civil War

As a result, Dunst moved away from big-budget crowd pleasers and began to appear in more artistic movies. One of those was 2011’s Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier, in which Dunst played a woman suffering from depression as an apocalyptic event approaches Earth.

Over the next few years, Dunst appeared in movies such as the fantasy romance Upside Down (2012), the thrillers The Two Faces of January (2014) and Midnight Special (2016), and the biopic Hidden Figures (2017) about Black women pioneers at NASA Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Johnson Vaughan, and Mary Jackson.

Dunst then took a four-year break from the big screen, coinciding with the birth of her two children. In 2021, she made a triumphant return in the western drama The Power of the Dog, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and her now real-life husband Jesse Plemons. Dunst and Plemons each received Academy Award nominations for their supporting roles, and Jane Campion won the Oscar for Best Director.

Most recently, Dunst played photojournalist Lee Smith in the thriller Civil War, which released in theaters in April 2024 and depicts a fictional second American civil war.

Fargo and Other TV Roles

Dunst was active on television throughout the early part of her career, appearing in Touched by an Angel, The Outer Limits, Gun, and six episodes of ER during the mid-1990s. Much later, she lent her voice to the 2014 scientific docuseries Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and made an appearance on the comedy Portlandia that same year.

However, Dunst’s most acclaimed TV role was playing Peggy Blumquist, a small-town beautician with big-city dreams, in Season 2 of the FX crime anthology Fargo in 2015. The actor has called it “one of the best parts” she has ever played. “Some things are meant to be. It came into my life at a time when I was very depressed about the kinds of roles that were out there for me to play,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I feel very fortunate that I got to be a part of this and that she was such a great character.”

Critics agreed, and Dunst received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or a Motion Picture Made for Television in 2016.

She was back at the Globes only a couple years later as a nominee for Best Actress for her 2019 role in the Showtime dark comedy On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

Husband Jesse Plemons and Kids

In 2016, Dunst began dating her Fargo co-star Jesse Plemons. Dunst confirmed their engagement in June 2017 during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The couple eventually married in June 2022.

Prior to tying the knot, Dunst and Plemons welcomed their two sons: Ennis, born in May 2018, and James, born in April 2021.

Dunst told Access Hollywood in 2021 she considers Plemons a “creative soulmate” in addition to her life partner. The two have worked together on Fargo Season 2 (2015), as well as the movies The Power of the Dog (2021) and Civil War (2024).

In August 2019, Plemons introduced Dunst when she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Seeing the kind of mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and cohort you are is why I and all of your friends and everyone else are here today and why we all love you. It’s for the incredibly generous and amazing person that you are,” he said.

Dating History

Prior to dating Plemons, Dunst was in a four-year relationship with actor and musician Garrett Hedlund from 2012 to 2016.

Earlier in her career, Dunst dated her Spider-Man co-star Tobey Maguire after meeting him on the movie’s set in 2001. They kept their relationship secret from the rest of the cast and crew, including director Sam Raimi. They broke up a little over a year later, even as their onscreen relationship continued in the other trilogy movies.

Dunst also dated actor Jake Gyllenhaal for about two years and musician Johnny Borrell in 2007.

Mental Health Experience and Advocacy

Dunst has been candid about her past struggles with depression, particularly during her 20s. In May 2008, she revealed she had checked into the Cirque Lodge treatment center earlier that year. The actor went public with her diagnosis to dispel rumors she sought help for chronic drug and alcohol abuse. “I was struggling, and I had the opportunity to go somewhere and take care of myself,” she said. “I was fortunate to have the resources to do it. My friends and family thought it was a good idea, too.”

Dunst has said becoming a mother improved her mental health and helped her feel “really free.” In a 2021 interview with The Sunday Times, she encouraged anyone suffering from depression to be comfortable discussing symptoms and open to medication. “I was afraid to take something, and so I sat in it for too long. I would recommend getting help when you need it,” she said.

Net Worth

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Dunst’s total fortune is estimated around $25 million as of October 2023.

Quotes

• I saw the power in women very young. I think that’s helped with… not needing male attention in my career.

• You really can’t explain the things you do. I can’t anyway.

• I write myself a note before I go to sleep on what I want to understand about who I’m playing. And if I don’t dream that night, I’ll just rewrite it again the next night until I do get a dream.

• I think a lot of a career is just your own personal taste really and what, as an actor, you want to do next and not fall into some trap of repetition.

• Ultimately, I want my children to grow up and be proud of me and not be embarrassed, you know, that, you know their mom kissed Spider-Man or something like that. I just hope that my career doesn’t embarrass them at all.

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