I have a confession to make. My favorite Spider Man is Tobey Maguire and I know! I know! You are thinking it should be Tom Holland or Andrew Garfield but it’s just not. Spider-Man came out when I was in second grade (please hold your bewilderment! 2002 was TWENTY years ago, people!) I loved Tobey Maguire but in truth, I loved Kirsten Dunst more.
She was the American dub for Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service, my favorite Ghibli film, and she starred in one of the most important movies I watched during my formative years: Jumanji. She became an integral part of my life again in my teenage years with Bring It On. That scene of her brushing her teeth next to that guy in the bathroom lives with me even to this day. Phew! Anyway, I know I said on this blog that if I could be friends with any female celebrity, it would be Allison Williams, but also Kirsten Dunst, too.
Spider-Man premiered on Friday, May 3rd, 2002, and it became a rousing enigma of box office success. Garnering $114 million domestically within its first three days of release, it smashed the box office record of $90 million that was set by Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone a few months earlier. Spider-Man would rake in a total of $825 million, and its sequel would go on to make $789 million. Sadly, the arguably most interesting character in that franchise wouldn’t see anything close to that amount in her paycheck at all.
Kirsten Dunst was doing press in London for her role in The Power of the Dog in November of 2021 when she told The Independent reporter Alexandra Pollard that the people behind Spider-Man wanted to fix her teeth before filming, “That kind of vanity… you’ve got to be really careful with that stuff.” The then 19-year-old Dunst was taken to the dentist without her consent by a producer and refused to get out of the car, “...also, Sofia loved my teeth.” Dunst referring to her friend and mentor Sofia Coppola who has directed her in numerous projects, “the fact that the coolest girl liked how I looked, that’s what preserved me.”
The producers had the last laugh, however. On the poster for Spider-Man 2, her teeth are photoshopped to be perfectly straight – almost robot- like, but in real life, her teeth are the same as they were 20 years ago.
Speaking of the poster for Spider-Man 2…
“The pay disparity between me and Spider-Man was very extreme,” she says. “I didn’t even think about it. I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, Tobey [Maguire] is playing Spider-Man.’ But you know who was on the cover of the second Spider-Man poster?” She flashes a grin and points at her chest. “Spider-Man and ME.”
This article got more traction than I think Kirsten or the reporter initially expected. It resurfaced the tale of Michelle Williams getting paid less than $1,000 for reshoots for Ridley Scott’s ‘All the Money in the World,’ while Mark Wahlberg got paid $1.5 million. While many came to Mark’s defense due to his length of being in the industry, Michelle claimed she was worth more than 1% of her co-star’s salary as she too has been working in film since she was a child. Michelle recalled feeling “paralyzed in feelings of futility” when she learned of the pay gap between her and Wahlberg and said that no one associated with the film was jumping at the chance to fairly compensate her once the news came to light
"No one cared," she said. "This came as no surprise to me, it simply reinforced my life-learned belief that equality is not an inalienable right and that women would always be working just as hard for less money while shouldering more responsibility in their homes. … I’ve been accredited by my industry at the highest levels and that still didn’t translate to equal and fair compensation."
This begs the question: how many times does this happen and we never hear about it? Actress Jessica Chastain came to Michelle’s defense, and that’s when the story really gained traction in the mainstream media. Michelle credited Jessica’s voice to getting the word out, something she herself could no do on a wide scale. Chastain, amassing over 5 million followers across social media platforms, is a more powerful voice in the world of social media whereas Williams is not active on any social media platforms at all. But what about Dunst? Where’s her due? Where is the outrage? Where is the apology? I have an obvious feeling we won’t be seeing one.
Kirsten has spoken at length at being the actress Hollywood forgot. After starring in moving works like Melancholia and Drop Dead Gorgeous without any acclaim or praise, she began to think something was wrong with her. In an interview with Larry Flick on his Sirius XM radio show, she said, “I’ve never been recognized in my industry. I’ve never been nominated for anything… I always feel like nobody – I don’t know. Maybe they think I’m just the girl from Bring It On? I don’t know.” Dunst has been working steadily on high profile projects since 1994 but had gone consistently unnoticed until this past Oscar season with The Power of the Dog. As of the writing of The Independent article, she had not yet been nominated for an Academy Award.
The Independent article went on to say, “She was even egregiously overlooked, by awards bodies if not critics, for Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. As a newlywed hit with such all-consuming depression that her food tastes “like ashes”, she gives a performance so crushingly visceral, you can almost taste the ashes yourself. She should have won an Oscar for that, but she wasn’t even nominated. Nor has she ever been. The Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Baftas – Dunst has been overlooked so often that in a viral interview a few years ago, she wondered aloud what she had done wrong.”
She did however get a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame after that Sirius XM interview, but there were still whispers after her Best Supporting Actress nomination for The Power of the Dog. People were scratching their heads as to why she was even nominated at all. I had to look no further than my own friend group and the film podcasts that I listen to in order to hear the grumblings. “Her part is so small in that film,” and “I don’t think she was the main focus to the story,” and “I don’t get why she is nominated,” and finally, “I think she’s only nominated because her fiancé is nominated,” because of course her nomination would be a pity one and only worthy because her fiancé had possibly pulled some strings. What? That’s not how it works!? These assumptions and accusations puzzled me but also reminded me of how deeply ingrained misogyny is in our world. Duh!
On the Mad About Movies Podcast, a podcast which I usually enjoy listening to, the hosts stated The Power of the Dog is a film that was made to be forgotten. It was clear they didn’t love the film, which is fair, but they were adamant in their stance that The Power of the Dog will be a movie in ten years that no one will remember or remotely care about. I can’t say I am so sure.
Women getting proper notoriety in film and fair pay is a slippery slope. Jennifer Lawrence was extremely vocal back in 2018 about the pay gap women face in film after being one of the highest paid actresses in the world. But in the fall of 2021, she made a puzzling statement, saying she was “happy” with being paid $5 million less than her Don’t Look Up co-star Leonardo DiCaprio even though she was #1 on the call sheet. Doing the math, she made 83 cents to DiCaprio's dollar.
“Look, Leo brings in more box office than I do. I’m extremely fortunate and happy with my deal. But in other situations, what I have seen — and I’m sure other women in the workforce have seen as well — is that it’s extremely uncomfortable to inquire about equal pay. And if you do question something that appears unequal, you’re told it’s not gender disparity but they can’t tell you what exactly it is."
"McKay wrote “Don’t Look Up” for Jennifer Lawrence, and the actress got the first read of the script. Lawrence stars as Kate Dibiasky, an astronomy grad student who discovers a comet hurtling towards earth. Kate and her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio), set out on a tour across America to warn the country about the impending doom."
If pay disparity is still happening today, it will probably continue to happen in the future. It may not sound serious, but with things like Roe v. Wade rumored to be overturned this year or next, I honestly can’t tell if we are moving forwards or backwards. Do we really care about women? Or do we only say we do for clout? Perhaps our granddaughters or great granddaughters will finally reap the benefits of a multi-century long fight for equality, but as of the writing this today, I wouldn’t be able to promise them that. If Kirsten Dunst can have a highly prolific 30-year career and still not be paid fairly and face scrutiny when she does receive critical acclaim, what chance does anybody else have? If Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar Winning actress, can be #1 on the call sheet for a major motion picture but is still paid less than her male co-star, where does that put everybody else? And if Michelle Williams is paid less than 1% of a man who is doing the same job but has been in the industry for just as long, what does that mean going forward? It’s exhausting to think about what this implies for the rest of us plebeians who work normal jobs. Perhaps only time will tell. Oh, and it needs to said that the women I have mentioned in this post are all white women. Black and other BIPOC females have it so much worse and need to work twice as hard for the same disappointing paycheck.
I wish I could leave you with words of encouragement or an uplifting message, but there isn’t one for me to give. I will say this: be brave enough to talk to your co-workers about wages, speak up about unfair treatment in the workplace, and go watch any of the 80+ projects Kirsten Dunst has starred in. Her recognition is way overdue.
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