Kirsten Dunst Refused to Change Her Teeth for Spider-Man: “Nope”

Three months after she confidently—and rightfully—called out the film industry for never showing her proper recognition, Kirsten Dunst is carrying right along with being candid, this time in an interview with news.com.au. While it was pegged to Dunst’s most recent project, the Showtime series On Becoming a God in Central Florida, the 37-year-old actor also took the opportunity to reflect on her career at large—and particularly her stint as Mary Jane Watson.

Dunst was 18 when she began filming part one of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, which debuted in 2002. At that point, she’d already had quite a few star turns—Interview with the Vampire and The Virgin Suicides among them—and yet, according to Dunst, the film’s crew didn’t think it was too late for Dunst to switch up her appearance for the sake of the Spider-Verse. “One of the producers tried to subtly coerce me into changing my teeth into those perfect Barbie doll teeth,” Dunst recalled. “I was like, ‘Nope, not doing that.'”

Asked if that confidence to say no comes with age and experience, Dunst replied, “You know what, when I was younger I had really strong females around me—my mother, working with Sofia Coppola at 16 [on The Virgin Suicides] when I was really becoming a woman. I had very good influences personally of women who were like, ‘You’re great, love your teeth, don’t change a thing.’ I was given a strong sense of what I feel comfortable with. And, ultimately, it’s a TV show or a movie, so I’m not going to kill myself and get in an accident. If my intuition’s telling me ‘No, no, no,’ then I’m not going to do it.”

Funnily enough, later in Dunst’s career, Coppola ended up making a similar aesthetic request of the actor, suggesting that she lose a bit of weight before they began shooting Coppola’s 2017 film The Beguiled. Once again, Dunst politely declined, pointing in part to the shoot’s location in rural Louisiana. “It’s so much harder when you’re 35 and hate working out. I’m eating fried chicken and McDonald’s before work. So I’m like, ‘We have no options! I’m sorry I can’t lose weight for this role,” she added in an interview with the director that year. (To Coppola’s credit, she was apparently “very understanding.”)

Related: What is Kirsten Dunst’s On Becoming a God in Central Florida Even About?