Kirsten Dunst Only Gets Offered ‘Sad Mom’ Roles, Blames Ageism
Kirsten Dunst is joining a list of female actors who believe she’s being typecast in roles because of her age. In a new cover story for Marie Claire published Tuesday (March 4), the Bring It On star revealed she hasn’t acted in two years. Dunst, who is a mother of two young sons, tells the publication the only roles she has been offered were “sad mom” roles.
Dunst, 41, is returning to the big screen in A24’s forthcoming dystopian sci-fi film, Civil War. We last saw her star in 2021’s The Power of the Dog, alongside her husband, Jesse Plemons, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. She opened up about how demoralizing it was to experience firsthand Hollywood’s gender-specific ageism. “To be honest, that’s been hard for me… because I need to feed myself,” she said. Dunst added that the hardest thing is being a mom and every mom not feeling like she has anything for herself. She then claimed, “There’s definitely less good roles for women my age.”
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Instead of surrendering to sad motherhood, the award-winning actress hard-pivoted to what she calls “elevated action.” Reading the script for the Alex Garland-directed film, she felt was unlike any other work she’s done before. Garland directed other sci-fi greats like Ex Machina and Annhilation. With mutual respect for each other’s work, Garland praised Dunst’s long acting career for her character in the upcoming film. He told the publication that Dunst has “a deep level of craft, and crucially for this role, she has soul. It’s in her eyes, and her gaze, which felt perfect for a photographer.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Dunst admits she would do another superhero movie? Not because she necessarily loves the genre, but she bluntly states, “because you get paid a lot of money, and I have two children, and I support my mother.”
Dunst isn’t the only actress to talk about the challenges she’s faced in acting as she’s gotten older. Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway are just a few actresses who we have previously written about their experience aging in Hollywood.
Civil War hits theaters on April 12th. The film follows a dystopian US torn apart by a third-term president gutting governmental agencies (Nick Offerman) and 19 states have seceded, with California and Texas forging a “Western Forces” alliance. Dunst stars as steely photojournalist Lee Smith, who consistently risks her life covering the American war zone on a harrowing, bloody odyssey with press colleagues played by Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Wagner Moura. Dunst says the film is “a cautionary tale” of what happens when people stop seeing each other as human beings. Watch the trailer below:
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