I will admit, though Nathaniel over at TFE and others sang her praises, I didn't get the appeal of Kiki (the nickname comes from a short she did as a kid) until very recently. She struck me as too vanilla. And that's probably because I waited to watch crazy/beautiful until years after it came out. I always meant to and I finally did after accidentally catching her shockingly good work in th recent All Good Things. You can read my review here, but be careful NOT to scroll down passed the review, as there are some plot-revealing stills from the film that follow in the spoiler summary. The movie is weird and strange, but so was the life of the man it was based on. Ultimately, the film is technically unclean and poorly executed, but the story is like a car accident: you just can't turn away. And, at the center of it all to reward you for your trouble is balls-out amazingness from Kirsten Dunst. I swear, she is THAT GOOD. And, considering her choices as of recently, she only plans on getting better.
One can easily be forgiven for assuming that her ferocious and memorable supporting turn at eleven (!) years old as Claudia in Interview with the Vampire was her film debut, as the two other features she completed before that were little seen. As the pint-sized, curly-haired vampiress, she had audiences eating out of the palm of her hand and delightfully sucked the life out of any prospective victim who crossed her path. She worked steadily in TV and film, appearing in such box-office friendly films as Little Women and Jumanji, as well as Wag the Dog and Small Soldiers. Having gotten to kiss Brad Pitt in Vampire, she also shared screen time with George Clooney years later during a 6-episode story arc on ER playing wayward teen Charlie Chiemingo, just as he was getting ready to leave the show for greener pastures. 
Being that she was so young and talented, she got choice roles in high school-based movies like her beauty queen contestant in the black comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous and ambitious cheerleader in mainstream hit Bring It On. She would also have the honor of working with new director Sofia Coppola in the well-received dark independent The Virgin Suicides. There wasn't nothing Dunst wasn't willing to try whether it be a Hollywood take on Shakespeare (Get Over It), a raw teenage love story where she really began to shine as a young adult (crazy/beautiful), or as a 1920s flapper (The Cat's Meow). 
Of course, by jumping onto the Spider-Man franchise as red-headed Mary Jane Watson, Dunst would raise her public profile and Hollywood status and begin to separate herself from playing younger characters. And, while her choices continued to be hit and miss, she began to fade into the show business periphery. She was delightful in her mesmerizing reunion with Coppola in Marie Antoinette and had the good fortune of scoring a role in the science-fiction romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. However, featured roles in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People opposite Simon Pegg and Julia Roberts' vehicle Mona Lisa Smile, as well as Richard Loncraine's Wimbledon, and Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown would fail to push her career forward. 
But, then, there was a subtle shift, that was quite noticeable for someone who had largely ignored her skills all these years. By chance, I had caught All Good Things, and I can't reiterate enough how terribly great she is in the film. But, nobody saw it and she failed to get an Oscar nomination, which she more than earned. Last year, she wowed critics with Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, having also incurred bad press from his controversial choice of words during a Cannes press conference. She'll soon be seen in the Sundance selection Bachelorette, as well as Upside Down and small roles in On the Road and a cameo in Charm. She's also rumored to be in Coppola's latest project The Bling Ring and attached to Ronald Donaldson thriller Cities (dubiously with Elizabethtown costar Orlando Bloom) and a role as a prostitute in Red Light Winter. 
I admire her for her Nicole Kidman approach to career choices as of late. She's more interested in working with intriguing and eclectic directors than she is about her commercial appeal. I suppose she probably expected more for signing her life away to the successful Spider-Man franchise. But, if it gives her a good ten years working with the likes of Lars Von Trier, etc., then she didn't do too badly, did she? She has also directed and produced short films and I imagine her to be one of the more exciting actress prospects for the next ten years. Today, Dunst enters her 30s.
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