Why Kirsten Dunst Couldn’t Have Delivered Her ‘Power of the Dog’ Performance Until Now

This story about “The Power of the Dog” first appeared in the Down to the Wire of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

She’s not even 40 yet, so why does it seem as if Kirsten Dunst has been overlooked by the Oscars for years, maybe even decades? It feels that way, of course, because we’ve been watching her since she was a child, from her startling preteen performances in “Interview With the Vampire” and “Little Women” through coming-of-age stories like “The Virgin Suicides” and “Bring It On,” hits like “Spider-Man” and critical favorites including “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Melancholia.” 

And now, after 33 years of acting, almost 60 movies, 19 TV shows (including the recent “On Becoming a God in Central Florida”) and two children with her partner, Jesse Plemons, she has her first Oscar nomination for Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog.”

“Kirsten is a real woman,” Campion said. “She has wild transgressive opinions at times, she says whatever is on her mind. I love her because of the kind of woman she is: beautiful and womanly and vulnerable, and also tough.” 

In the slow-burn drama, which led all films with 12 Oscar nominations, she plays Rose Gordon, a widow and young mother who marries Plemons’ George Burbank. He takes her to a remote ranch where she and her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), are relentlessly bullied by George’s brother, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). It’s a desolate, sorrowful portrayal of a woman who drowns her fears with alcohol and sinks into a heartbreaking haze. And it’s another mature performance from an actress who rebooted her career and life in the late 2000s after undergoing treatment for depression and beginning work with acting coach Greta Seacat. 

“More than anything, she’s just there,” Campion said. “She and Jesse have the capacity to just be totally present in the character.”

Jane Campion had approached you years ago for another project, hadn’t she?
Yeah. I was in my early 20s and she approached me about doing a film based on this short story by Alice Munro called “The Runaway.” But then nothing happened. I don’t know what it was, maybe a rights thing, but at least I was in her sights, I guess. 

The good news was that she also wanted you for this — but by the way, this is her first movie where the lead characters are male.
I know! It’s OK.

And also your character is pretty passive, which is not the kind of role you’ve been playing lately.
I know. But I’ll play anything for Jane. I’m always director-driven, so it’s less about the role I’m playing. For me, just being part of one of her films was so exciting. Although I do think roles come to you at certain times in your life for certain reasons. 

I would guess that you might be better equipped now to deliver this kind of performance than you would have been in your early 20s. 
Yes. 100%, in all ways. I mean, I just worked very differently then. I hadn’t found the way to approach a script yet that I do now. You know, I grew up in this industry, learning my taste in film while I was doing films. I had to learn about acting and have that change for me. And luckily for me, I figured it out, you know? I don’t think I could have delivered this type of performance in my 20s. No way. I think just even being a mom changes you as an actress. I feel so much more fearless as an actress now that I’ve had kids.

You had a kind of mid-career adjustment in how you approached your work, didn’t you?
I did. I took this one script, “All Good Things,” and I worked with some of the best acting coaches and landed with Greta Seacat. She was the one that spoke to my feelings and approached things in a way that I really connected with. It made things different. It made it for myself, as opposed to for other people. It’s now less about performing than it is about doing this for yourself or figuring out your own stuff while you’re doing it.

As you prepared to play Rose, were there certain keys for you?
It was really about creating this monster for myself, because Benedict and I don’t really have many scenes together, and we didn’t speak on set, ever. It was about creating an inner life for myself of what each scene means, and how to portray the descent, too. There are ways I do that. Sometimes it’s just about living in, breathing in the scene and letting things come to you. I work with my dreams, which makes me feel more grounded as the person I’m playing. It just gives you a confidence to be free and not be inhibited in any way, shape or form.

It feels like a very fragile, vulnerable performance. 
Well, I knew that my performance would be handled in the right way in Jane’s hands. She really lets things breathe and she really wants to see all of the darkness. I knew that I could be vulnerable and put myself fully into this in a way that would be beautifully taken care of by her. 

When you’re making a movie like this or “Melancholia,” and playing a character steeped in depression, is it difficult to return to that state day after day?
I love what I do. I like digging deep in the soul — that’s my job, you know? So I feel free expressing these things. But also, with Rose, it didn’t feel like depression to me. It didn’t feel similar at all to “Melancholia.” I felt like Rose was more the anxiety, the hangovers, the cycle of just feeling terrible and feeling crazy. So it was less depression than it was making herself ill, self-medicating. She was mentally lost. And there were times where I didn’t speak on set to anyone just because I wanted to feel small in my voice and myself. 

I drew from a lot of different things, like hearing a friend tell a story when they’ve been drinking too much. She’s like a lost little girl who’s thinking about the past, when things were great and when people thought she was beautiful and liked her, you know? It’s a very sad, sad place to be, but those things feel good to act because it feels like I’m getting something off my own chest. 

Did it help to have your partner, Jesse, with you during the process?
Yeah. Having this role, I definitely felt more insecure, because Rose was so insecure that I second-guessed myself more than normal. So to have him to come home to, it was a great comfort to have my best friend there. We’d have lunch together and take naps next to each other in our little outfits.

It must have been a sort of creative whiplash to go from playing your brassy, assertive character from “On Becoming a God in Central Florida” to this. There’s not a lot in common between those two women.
Not at all. Total opposites. There was time when I was supposed to go back to do a second season (of “On Becoming a God”), but then COVID hit and I got pregnant and we weren’t in vaccine land yet. And so that went away. But it’s so much easier making a movie than it is making a television show. I mean, television’s four scenes a day. Movies, you have half the day to do a scene. So this felt like a real luxury again after doing television.

At this stage in your career, you’ve done a little bit of everything, and you’ve been doing it for almost your whole life. I was on the set of “Small Soldiers” a great many years ago…
Steve! I can’t believe you were on the set of “Small Soldiers”!

Yep. And I remember that when (director) Joe Dante was showing me around the set, he took me into your character’s bedroom and told me that they’d originally put boy-band posters on the walls. He said you came in, took one look and demanded that they take down those posters and put up Led Zeppelin posters instead.
That’s really funny. How old was I when I made “Small Soldiers”? I can’t even remember.

Mid-teens? Early teens?  
Early teens, for sure. That was a hard movie to make, just because that was one of my first tastes of visual effects. It was after “Jumanji,” I think. But working with fake little things is not fun. It’s just acting with little X’s on the ground.

So do you ever run across something you did earlier in your career and think “What was I doing?” Or, the other hand, “Hey, I kind of knew what I was doing”?
I don’t really judge my past self. It was where I was in my life, and what the director I was working with needed from me, and what those relationships were like. Listen, it’s always easier when you’re in the hands of a really good director. I mean, being with Sofia (Coppola) so young really helped inform a lot of my choices and how I approached this industry as a young woman, I think.

I saw an interview you did with Alexander Skarsgård where you said something along the lines of, “When we get older, hopefully we’ll just get more eccentric and awesome.” Are you getting there yet?
I definitely feel the older I get, the less I care about what anyone thinks. I just feel secure in my place, in my craft, and I feel good in my life. I found someone I like, we have a beautiful family, and I know I’m very lucky. But also, I worked hard to get where I am. That’s the thing: It’s not just luck. Things don’t always come easy. This industry is very up and down, and I feel proud of myself. 

So are you ready to get more eccentric from here on?
(Laughs) We’ll see. I mean, I’ve got two kids to raise now. I can’t get too eccentric yet. When they’re in college, maybe then I’ll get my 10 cats and stuff.

Read more from the Down to the Wire issue here.