Kirsten Dunst Wants to Make a Steamy Colin Farrell Calendar
If you've ever had a juicy revenge fantasy, then Kirsten Dunst's forthcoming movie, The Beguiled, has your name all over it. Dunst plays Edwina Dabney, a teacher at a civil war–era Southern boarding school. Nicole Kidman is her boss, while Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, and Oona Laurence (that brilliant kid from Bad Moms) play her pupils.
After finding sexy, war-wounded Yankee John McBurney (Colin Farrell) in the woods, the Southern belles decide not to give him up as a prisoner to the Confederate troops, and instead nurse him back to health. Somewhere along the way, McBurney manipulates Dabney into falling for him, but then she finds out she's not the only girl he's into. What happens when the women take control of the situation? Mini spoiler alert: Let's just say Nicole Kidman is pretty handy with a wood saw.
A previous version of The Beguiled was made in 1971 by director Don Siegel with Elizabeth Hartman in Dunst's role and Clint Eastwood in Farrell's. The '70s film took the man's point of view, but this time, director Sofia Coppola flipped the script, putting us in the women's shoes.
ELLE.com sat down with Dunst at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes to discuss working with female directors, her plans to direct a new film of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and sleepovers with the Fanning sisters.
Her pious, repressed character is Dunst's polar opposite.
"I mean, I would've tied the blue rag (given him up to the Confederate soldiers) and shot him, no matter how hot he was. I was like, 'I don't trust this guy.' You know what I mean? I'm joking. I wouldn't have let me him manipulate me like that. I don't know. It's so hard to compare the psychology, because my character was so repressed. She's very demure, very quiet. She's the complete opposite of who I am, I think. She's a very pious woman, who at her age should have been married with children at that time. She's trapped and she has this boss (Nicole Kidman) and she's under her thumb. So I think she has a lot going on internally. She's a very repressed, sad lady."
Colin Farrell is a good sport, even when you're objectifying him.
"Colin is very objectified in this movie. He was such a good sport about it, though. He knew when we had the shots of him sweating and cutting down branches-you know, his romance novel moment. I told Sofia it should've been a press package (for the movie): a Colin Farrell calendar. We definitely have pictures for that."
She's the third Fanning sister.
"I'm very close to them. I knew Dakota first and then I had met Elle, but then we became very close on this movie. She would sleep over at my house. She's like my little sister. I love her.
I'm very family-oriented. I do live very close to my family. My grandma sadly passed away but my mom is very close to me."
Dunst has worked with many, many female directors.
"I don't want to speak out of turn, but I might have worked with more female directors than any other actress, I think. It is like 11 or something. And if you count the times with Sofia, it's been a lot.... I've always worked with female directors, and a lot of times on their first films. I think the cream rises to the top and if you're good, you're good. So I don't think there's any difference [between male and female directors]."
Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar,' with Dakota Fanning as the lead, will be her next big project.
"I'm very patient in the projects that I pick. I don't feel like I have the world at my fingertips whatsoever. And making a movie is very hard work, and takes all of your life for about two good years, and then three to promote it. So, I'm not like, 'Woohoo!' I'm like, 'Okay, this is going to be tough.' It's not done, I haven't even started yet. It was my favorite book growing up, but it was Dakota who brought it to me [as a film idea]. The entire cast is female, by the way, all different age ranges."
For Dunst, bravery means being true to herself.
"Just being true to yourself, I would say. It sounds corny, but I don't know what else there is. It's so hard. You're raised a certain way, we all have our weird things in our brain that we've got to, the older we get, break out of, and then pick and choose more and more of what you want to do."
The Beguiled is out on June 23.
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