For the last of our interviews with the key players behind this weekend’s “Midnight Special ” we finish up with perhaps the film’s biggest star, who, though crucial, actually has one of its smaller roles. But Kirsten Dunst, who plays the mother of the supernaturally-gifted boy Alton, who is reunited with him on the run when he and his father Roy (Shannon) escape from the cult (called The Ranch) that they all used to belong to, has always pursued a strange kind of stardom. Her emergence as a Hollywood player (breaking out in “Interview with the Vampire,” starring in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” blockbuster series and more) never quite eclipsed her career as an indie sweetheart.
That parallel track really took off with Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides” and since then, Dunst has worked with a wide range of independent and arthouse talents, like Michel Gondry, Cameron Crowe, Walter Salles and Lars Von Trier. It seems a very filmmaker-led strategy, so when we met her at the Berlin International Film Festival after the premiere of “Midnight Special,” that’s where we started.
Your role in this film is not huge, as your character is simply not the main focus. So why did you take it — was it the lure of Jeff Nichols?
That’s exactly it. I will do anything with a good filmmaker. I really didn’t even need to read anything, it’s really all about the filmmaker to me. You want to feel like you’re working, with the director and the other actors involved, towards a common, creative, meaningful experience. Not every movie is like that and I knew that I would get that this time.
So sure, I was the lead in my last movie and I’m not the lead in this one, it’s like, who cares? As long as you are doing something you think is good it doesn’t matter.
