Kirsten Dunst gave the performance of her life in Civil War this year, but as time goes on her role is getting less and less buzz regarding Oscars’ stakes – and she’s feeling sore as hell about it, a source exclusively tells In Touch.
The movie, directed by Alex Garland, premiered to critical success and audience appreciation and was “a special one for Kirsten, because she got to play a pretty gritty role way out of her comfort zone,” says a longtime associate of Kirsten’s, adding the in addition to her own work, “she is also proud of the work Jesse [Plemons] did in the movie.”
NPR’s Justin Chang said that she gave a “strong, tough-minded performance,” while Tatiana Hullender for Screen Rant called her work “a powerhouse” performance.
Rave reviews are essential for an Oscar race, but “most importantly, the movie was a box office hit,” the source notes, “and it triggered a good bit of chatter by the middle of the year that Kirsten could finally be in the Oscar mix.”
However, because other titles from the studio behind the movie, A24, like The Brutalist with Adrien Brody, “appear to have a clearer path toward actually winning awards,” the company “significantly scaled back their spending on the Oscar campaign for Civil War.”
The source insists that it’s unfair to the actress, 42: “Just because some of their other titles are looking promising in awards season, [that’s] not Kirsten’s fault.” Instead, Civil War is adding to the already heavy list of supposed snubs suffered by the star.
The first role to bring Kirsten attention was Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, in 1994. Just 11 years old when filming began, she gave a moving and mature performance for any actress, let alone a child actress. Many thought she would be a sure-thing for Best Supporting Actress, à la Tatum O’Neal, who won the same award at 10 for Paper Moon, but she went home empty handed that year. She would go on to win Best Actress at Cannes for her role of Justine in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, but would lose out on the Oscar again that year, and finally suffer her most recent disappointment with Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog in 2022
Her role in Civil War had looked like a solid option for the Academy, considering, “she did great work in her movie and turned heads with her acting yet again,” but it’s unlikely her luck will turn with this movie. “She’s not getting any younger and so many of her peers have had easier paths to actually winning an Oscar than she has had to put up with,” the insider adds.
“When you’ve been in the business since you were a little girl, and when you work as hard as Kirsten has, this kind of bad luck really hurts.”
“She’s not giving up on spreading the word on this movie, but she doesn’t have as much firepower behind her as she thought she would. Not even close!”
