Actor Kirsten Dunst has been reflecting on her 36-year career as of late, particularly how her self confidence has been impacted by the film industry. In a sit-down interview for Netflix's Reflect series, she took a retrospective look back at some of her most iconic movies, including the The Virgin Suicides, Bring It On and Marie Antoinette – but, perhaps the most notable memory she looked back on was how filmmaker Sofia Coppola, who she worked with on The Virgin Suicides, helped her learn how to feel beautiful.
In her interview, Dunst revealed that working with Coppola was "the first time I was seen as, like, a beautiful woman." She continued: "[To] have it be a female who gave me that, it was very empowering for me at that age in terms of the way I felt about myself and my beauty."
She also pointed out how, during that early time of her life in which she was starring in some major Hollywood blockbusters, she was a "a weird age" to be submitted to the film industry's unreasonable scrutiny. "[Coppola] just gave me a lot of confidence that I carried throughout my career in terms of producers wanting to fix my teeth," she recalled. "People just trying to change and manipulate young actresses in a way to make them the same."
"She made me feel beautiful for who I was. That was a very pivotal time in my life to feel that way and to be given that."
But, it's not the first time that 39-year-old Dunst has talked about the impact the filmmaker has had on her life. Back in 2017, in an interview with Variety she said, "She [Coppola] was always a good influence on me as a young woman."
She continued: "She said to me, 'I love your teeth; don’t ever fix your teeth.' I remember doing a Spider-Man movie later, and one of the producers was like, 'I need to take you to the dentist!' They even fixed my teeth on the poster. But I just knew I was never doing that. Sofia is the chicest, coolest girl, and she thinks my teeth are great. She gave me confidence in little things that I wouldn’t necessarily have had."
In another interview, with W Magazine, the actor once again referenced Coppola's influence on her self esteem, also highlighting how the "strong females" in her life had played a big part in how she learned to love herself. "When I was younger I had really strong females around me—my mother, working with Sofia Coppola at 16, when I was really becoming a woman. I had very good influences personally of women who were like, 'You’re great, love your teeth, don’t change a thing'," she commented. "I was given a strong sense of what I feel comfortable with."
Hear, hear!
