Spider-Man star Kirsten Dunst: Money is why actors say yes to superhero movies

By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

Spider-Man star Kirsten Dunst has said that she would think about doing another superhero movie as “you get paid a lot of money”.

The American actress, 41, played Mary Jane Watson opposite Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man across the trilogy of films released between 2002 and 2007.

Dunst spoke to British GQ magazine about comments she made a few years ago, when she said that she had been offered “sad mum roles”.

She claimed following 2011 Lars von Trier thriller Melancholia, she had been offered “depressed things” in the new interview.

She said: “That’s why I did a comedy. I’m not that actress. I feel like, at this point in my life, I can play anything. I’m not afraid.

“I’d rather do something weird and off-kilter, and work with a first-time director, than do anything middle of the road, because I would just be depressed doing that.”

Since Melancholia, she has appeared in black comedy Fargo, comedy Bachelorette, thriller The Beguiled and is set to be seen in cinemas again as a journalist in Civil War, covering imagined conflict in the US.

When asked about her views on superhero movies by GQ, she said she would consider doing more films as “you get paid a lot of money”.

Following being told by the interviewer that actors do not admit the financial incentive, she responded saying: “Really? That’s the reason people do those movies.”

However, she said that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man film series was a “more innocent” move as the Evil Dead filmmaker is “like a cult director, so it felt like we were making an indie disguised as a superhero film”.

Dunst said that she would find it “funny” if she and Maguire made “a different kind of superhero film” that was more like a “weird indie”.

Maguire reprised his role in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home alongside other web-slinging actors Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield.

“People want us to make another Bring It On, too,” Dunst also said.

“I mean, the script would have to be really good, and I don’t know what our positions would be or whatever… I talked to Peyton Reed, the (original) director, about it.”

Dunst is known for films including cheerleading teen comedy Bring It On, drama The Virgin Suicides and 18th century-set Marie Antoinette.