Hollywood QUEEN keeps her HEAD

[KiwiCoromandel]

Kirsten Dunst refuses to let the movie star life change her, David Michael writes.

HAVING faced the expectation of the entertainment industry since the age of three, Kirsten Dunst admits she feels a kinship with the historical figure of Marie Antoinette.

"I understand the pressures to perform in a certain way: to be young and to have a lot of people expecting things of you, and you kind of wanting to get away from that and do other things," Dunst says about playing the young Austrian - who at the age of 15 became the monarch of France - in Sofia Coppola's period piece on 18th century Versailles decadence.

Pacing a room of a Beverly Hills hotel, clutching a mug of coffee, Dunst seems a little despondent. Her unease is from playing the part of Hollywood princess, having spent a whole day answering frivolous questions on fame and fashion.

"When I come and do these things it reminds me of this weird position that people see me in," she says, as we take a seat for her final interview of the day. "I don't relate to [it] at all. It freaks me out a little bit."

Having done more than 30 films in her 24 years, Dunst has taken the considered step of taking extended breaks between films, in the name of self-preservation. Right now, she is planning to enrol in art school, having done tap and photography classes in her previous break of six months between shooting Marie Antoinette and the forthcoming third instalment of Spider-Man.

"I'm not the type of actress who likes to do movie after movie after movie," she says. "It doesn't feel much of a life. It's important to do other things."

Her only project on the horizon is with visionary French director Michel Gondry, whom she worked with on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. "[it's] about somebody who everybody knows, but I can't say who it is," Dunst teases, before admitting her character is a "well-known singer", giving credence to reports that she is to play a very abstract take on Deborah Harry of the band Blondie.

In the meantime, though, the actress is seeking normality. While Marie Antoinette was surrounded by a royal court that attended to her every need from the second she stepped out of bed, Dunst is keen to distance herself from the pampering - in the form of sycophantic assistants, publicists, and media - that a Hollywood actress enjoys.

"This whole life really brings out the extremes in your personality and a lot of times for me, it makes me terribly uncomfortable," she says, with a roll of her feline-like eyes.

"Basically growing up in this industry, I've created a group around me who aren't 'yes' people, they'll tell me straight. Some are my good friends. Even my manager or agent, I can talk to them truthfully."

Dunst nods when it's suggested that this isn't the norm.

Some of her peers, it would seem, have more in common with Marie Antoinette.

"I feel like she was a child all her life in the way she was brought up and protected," Dunst says of the tragic monarch who would eventually lose her head to the French revolution. "So she never really realised herself until she was on the balcony faced with the revolutionaries.

"It's easy to dismiss her. Everybody is more complicated than they appear."

Marie Antoinette is released on Boxing Day....

Source:The Sun-Herald

image:Reuters:HIGH EXPECTATIONS....KIRSTEN DUNST in MARIE ANTIONETTE...