USA: Kirsten Dunst sees kindred spirit in "Marie Antoinette"

Kirsten Dunst has gone from child vampire to Spider-Man's love interest and now doomed French queen Marie Antoinette, whose rise in the aristocracy could mirror the actresses' own climb to Hollywood stardom with her current role in "Marie Antoinette." Having made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the movie, which is scheduled to open in North America, focuses on Marie Antoinette, an Archduchess of Austria who, at age 14, was sent to France to marry the dauphin who eventually became King Louis XVI. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette famously met their demise at the wrong end of a guillotine during the French Revolution, but the movie excludes their deaths and focuses on Marie's growing into adulthood amid the arrogant aristocracy at Versailles. Dunst can relate to the queen in her youth, being thrust into the limelight herself early on in her career. The 24-year old was a child when she began acting and her early roles ranged from big-budget thrillers like 1994's "Interview with the Vampire" to art-house films like Sofia Coppola's teenage drama "The Virgin Suicides" in 1999. "One of the things that I could see in her is trying to find her identity in this place where you are expected of in so many different ways and all the exceptions you are not fulfilling for anyone. To be in a place where you are not considered a person is really scary... no wonder she wanted to get away and have her fake village and Petit Trianon. Even though those were in Versailles as well, is only she could have been a normal girl she would have been fine," Dunst told Reuters. Her role in "Spider-Man" catapulted the actress to stardom when the film became a box office smash with global ticket sales of 822 million U.S. dollars.. "Marie Antoinette" marks the reunion of Dunst and Coppola, and working with the director was a key reason Dunst said she took the part. After optioning Antonia Fraser's biography of the French queen in 2001, Coppola was less interested in the political context surrounding the Austrian émigré to the court of Versailles than in providing a close-up view of a teenager of exorbitant privilege. "When I read Antonia Fraser's biography on Marie Antoinette, it was so full of the life of this real person and this young girl. I was struck by how young she was. She was 14 and there was so many elements to relate to even now its so different then all the clichés I knew about Marie Antoinette. I didn't really know much about her except for this evil decadent queen it was interesting to read about this real girl," Coppola said in Los Angeles. After Coppola learned that the young Hapsburg was only 14 when she was sent to Versailles and that she didn't consummate her marriage to Louis XVI for seven years, the director understood the young queen's lust for compensatory partying and shopping. The king is played by Jason Schwartzman, who is Coppola's cousin. He said that he was impressed by his relative's strength when facing the press at the Cannes Film Festival. "I think the Cannes thing kind of got blown out of proportion, no pun intended, but it got lost in translation. A couple people booed or whatever. It's not the end of the world. You make a movie and you want people to like it if they don't its ok we did our best and I expect that and I had a great time there and it was a proud memory for me. She stood there, Sofia (Coppola) stood there, in front of thousands and took it. She is strong, man," Schwartzman said. Coppola, daughter of famed director Francis Ford Coppola, won a Oscar for best original screenplay for "Lost in Translation" in 2004.

ITN Source | October 26, 2006

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