An elegant, sun-soaked Patricia Highsmith adaptation with fine work from Viggo Mortensen as a con man and Dunst as his wife, holidaying in early 1960s Athens when they meet an American tour guide (Oscar Isaac). It seems tantalisingly unclear at first whether his designs are on the chirpy young bride or her shady older husband.<\/p>\n
The opening instalment in Sam Raimi\u2019s trilogy featured that ingenious upside-down kiss, with MJ (Dunst) suggestively unpeeling the mask of Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) as he dangles beside her in an alleyway. But the middle movie gives her a few more notes to play \u2013 disgruntlement, vanity, that ambiguous final closeup \u2013 even if the whole thing ultimately comes down to her being rescued yet again, this time from the tentacles of Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina).<\/p>\n
18. Small Soldiers (1998)Dunst and Gregory Smith in Small Soldiers. Photograph: Universal\/Allstar<\/p>\n
Director Joe Dante taps into the spirit of his earlier Gremlins in another tale of gifts run amok, as toys fitted with US military microchips become sentient \u2013 and savage. Dunst is the teen menaced by her own collection of scissor-wielding \u201cGwendy\u201d dolls. \u201cNow it\u2019s our turn to play with you!\u201d they announce as they swarm over her like Lilliputians on Gulliver. Then, among themselves: \u201cLet\u2019s see if her head comes off \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
David Mamet\u2019s script could be torn from today\u2019s front pages. Dustin Hoffman is the blowhard movie producer who helps a spin doctor (Robert De Niro) manufacture a war against Albania to distract from the president\u2019s underage sex scandal. That means creating fake news footage, which is where Dunst comes in as the actor playing an Albanian villager fleeing terrorists while cradling a bag of tortilla chips \u2013 which the SFX team duly transforms into a kitten.<\/p>\n
With Cailee Spaeny, left, in Civil War. Photograph: AP<\/p>\n
From one imaginary war to another: the US is tearing itself apart under an authoritarian president, and Dunst is the war photographer capturing the country as it disintegrates. \u201cThis movie is so terrifying and effective because it\u2019s set in America, a place where you never feel like this could happen,\u201d she said \u2013 a remark that has dated not only poorly but with alarming speed.<\/p>\n
15. Little Women (1994)<\/p>\n
Gillian Armstrong\u2019s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott\u2019s novel has been unfairly overshadowed by Greta Gerwig\u2019s 2019 take<\/a>, but it remains a strong reading (the Independent on Sunday called it the best studio picture of 1995, the year it opened in the UK) with an enviable cast: Winona Ryder as Jo, Christian Bale as Laurie, Claire Danes as Beth and Dunst as the headstrong younger Amy. Shot in Vancouver over a scorching summer, the cast dripped sweat in the winter clothes they wore for the Christmas scenes. \u201cI think I threw up,\u201d said Dunst.<\/p>\n 14. Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service (1989)<\/p>\n The English-language dub of the Studio Ghibli charmer, recorded in 1997 when Dunst was 15, casts her as Kiki, the teenage witch hired as a broomstick-riding courier for an artisan bakery. Dunst nails the adolescent mood swings between giddiness and gloom. The mid-section of the film, where she mooches around with a woodland-dwelling bestie (Janeane Garofalo), morphs into a charming borderline-lesbian buddy movie. Tremendous value, too, is Phil Hartman, whose drily funny turn as Kiki\u2019s sarcastic cat Jiji was to be one of his final roles (along with Small Soldiers, above).<\/p>\n From left, Amy Adams, Brittany Murphy, Denise Richards and Dunst as beauty show contestants in Drop Dead Gorgeous. Photograph: Moviestore Collection Ltd\/Alamy<\/p>\n Enjoyably prickly mockumentary about a teen beauty pageant in Mount Rose, Minnesota (pop 5,076). Dunst is Amber, a pageant hopeful who lives in a trailer with her alcoholic, chain-smoking mother (Ellen Barkin) and works as a mortician, practising her tap-dancing steps at work in front of a captive if necessarily unresponsive audience. Denise Richards, Brittany Murphy and Amy Adams play rival contestants.<\/p>\n Peter Bogdanovich\u2019s Old Hollywood shindig brings together star names including Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), William Randolph Hearst (Edward Herrmann) and his mistress, the actor Marion Davies (Dunst), for a seaborne whodunnit hinging on the real-life death \u2013 or murder \u2013 of the producer Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) on board Hearst\u2019s luxury yacht in 1924. As the starlet later played by Amanda Seyfried in David Fincher\u2019s Mank, Dunst shows sophistication and killer timing as well as compassion for a woman often given short shrift elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about teenagers in Versailles,\u201d observed Sofia Coppola<\/a> of her lavishly embellished gateau of a movie based on Antonia Fraser\u2019s biography. As the regal rabbit-in-the-headlights who must grow up in public after being married off to the future Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), Dunst does her best to foster intimacy with the camera, but the movie, rather than any one performer, is the star here. For closer acquaintance with the granular detail of Dunst\u2019s craft, check out the Making Of documentary \u2013 shot by Coppola\u2019s mother, Eleanor \u2013 which includes umpteen skilfully modulated servings of the \u201cLet them eat cake\u201d scene.<\/p>\n As Rose in The Power of the Dog. Photograph: Netflix\/Allstar<\/p>\n The focus in Jane Campion\u2019s movies has never been as singularly male as it is in this homoerotic western set in 1920s Montana. Dunst plays Rose, the inn-keeper who is mother to a queer son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and wife to a good-egg ranch-owner (Jesse Plemons, Dunst\u2019s real-life partner, whom she met when they played happily married murderers in the second series of Fargo). She gets short-changed in the second half as the focus shifts to the tension between her son and her bullying brother-in-law (Benedict Cumberbatch). When Rose succumbs to alcoholism, it is as if the film has slipped her a Mickey Finn. Dunst still got an Oscar nomination (her first), but we\u2019re left craving a more intensive collaboration between actor and director.<\/p>\n Dunst radiates hard-won wisdom and experience as the churchgoing single mum whose life starts looking up when she falls for a charming stranger, played by Channing Tatum. What she doesn\u2019t know is that he is an escaped prisoner who lives secretly in the branch of Toys \u201cR\u201d Us where she works. Director Derek Cianfrance tries to neutralise the creepier elements of his factually based film, though the repeated shots of Tatum watching Dunst on the store\u2019s CCTV cameras come across as voyeuristic rather than protective. What matters, and raises the film\u2019s emotional stakes, is that Dunst\u2019s every scene rings true.<\/p>\n There may be an MOR ballad to conveniently signal every moment of emotional crisis in this culture-clash love story, but the authenticity of the performances wins out. Dunst is the congressman\u2019s daughter whose privilege permits her to veer repeatedly off the rails, Jay Hernandez the poor-but-diligent Latino schoolmate whose academic chances are jeopardised by their relationship; this prompts a never-seen-before movie moment in which a teenage girl\u2019s father (the excellent Bruce Davison) warns her boyfriend to stay away because she might hurt his grades. Dunst uses her full expressive range to play this damaged but unjustly sidelined soul. Beautifully matched, she and Hernandez are contenders for the most crazily beautiful screen couple of the early 2000s.<\/p>\n As Mary in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Photograph: Focus Features\/Allstar<\/p>\n Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet meet and fall in love, not realising they have already been through one romance with each other and had it wiped from their memories at the Lacuna clinic after breaking up. Poignant though that narrative is, it is the subplot, involving Dunst as the clinic\u2019s receptionist and Tom Wilkinson as her avuncular boss, that pierces the heart like a needle in the movie\u2019s final straight.<\/p>\n Not merely an adaptation of Jack Kerouac\u2019s Beat novel, Walter Salles\u2019s cruelly underrated film is also an interrogation of its elisions and shortcomings. There is no Beat generation here without its beaten-down counterpart \u2013 usually female. The first time we meet Marylou (Kristen Stewart), teenage wife of Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), he is ordering her into the kitchen. Dunst plays his second wife, Camille: while Dean and Sal (Sam Riley) goof around, the camera shows how her life has shrunk to the dimensions of her child\u2019s cot. The picture measures, down to the last teardrop, the historical cost to women of the freedom of these men.<\/p>\n In the first of Dunst\u2019s dreamy quartet of films for Coppola (including The Bling Ring<\/a>, in which the actor briefly appears as herself), she plays Lux, the oldest of the five doomed Lisbon sisters. Coppola, who mixes the DNA of Picnic at Hanging Rock and 1970s shampoo commercials, is stronger on mood than motivation: in a shot of Lux arriving home from the school dance in the early hours of the morning, Dunst resembles a downtrodden Cinderella forced to take a cab now her carriage is a pumpkin once more. Having Coppola as a cheerleader stood the actor in good stead for negotiating the choppy waters<\/a> of self-esteem in Hollywood: \u201cI had Sofia at 16, who thought I was so cool and pretty when I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. Dick (1999)Michelle Williams (left) and Dunst in Dick. Photograph: Cinetext Collection\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n History is rewritten with magic markers in this silly-smart pink-and-pistachio-coloured comedy, which was unfairly dispatched straight to DVD in the UK. Dunst and Michelle Williams play bubblegum-brained teenagers who inadvertently expose the Watergate scandal. Hoping to keep tabs on them, a haggard President Nixon (Dan Hedaya) hires them to be official White House dog-walkers, after which they bring the Vietnam war to an end, ease US-Soviet relations with hash cookies and become the \u201cDeep Throat\u201d sources of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch) and Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell). Resistance is futile in the face of the leads\u2019 joyful performances, or the scene in which they make their disillusionment with Nixon public. \u201cI hate Dick! Dick just disgusts me now!\u201d cries Williams, to which Dunst adds: \u201cYou can\u2019t let Dick run your life!\u201d<\/p>\n According to director Neil Jordan, Brad Pitt was chagrined to discover that Tom Cruise, rather than the hoped-for Daniel Day-Lewis, would be playing his fellow bloodsucker. On the bright side, he had a formidable scene partner in the shape of 11-year-old Dunst. She gives one of the great child performances of all time as Claudia, transformed into a vampire by the gay-dad duo of Cruise\u2019s Lestat and Pitt\u2019s Louis. Her poise, self-possession and gravitas are staggering, as is the rage when she realises they have saddled her with immortality. \u201cI haven\u2019t tears enough for what you\u2019ve done to me!\u201d she screams at Louis. Kissing an adult co-star made the experience extra creepy. \u201cI was a little girl and [Pitt] was like a brother to me,\u201d she said<\/a>. \u201cIt was very weird \u2026 I was very not into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Dunst has been uniformly superb in her films for Coppola, but she is especially subtle and highly charged in this simmering erotic psychodrama about an injured Union soldier (Colin Farrell) taking shelter at a girls\u2019 seminary in Virginia during the US civil war. The atmosphere is sticky with veiled threats and loaded glances as pupils and teachers alike \u2013 among them headteacher Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) and prim teacher Edwina (Dunst) \u2013 compete for their guest\u2019s attention. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen that lovely pin on you since Christmas,\u201d observes one student of Edwina, causing her to blanch at the insinuation that she is dolling herself up \u2013 but also to exhibit a little crinkle of delight.<\/p>\n