She might give off distinctly normal-girl vibes, what with being typecast as the girl-next-door-gone-a-bit-awry (apart from Marie Antoinette, where she essentially played a brat), but Kirsten Dunst appears to be robustly 1950s when it comes to her attitudes about relationships.
‘I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued,’ she told Harper’s Bazaar. ‘We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking – it’s a valuable thing my mom created.’
Speaking in, yes, May 2014’s edition, not, as you might have thought, a strange time-travelled issue from before people realised that women didn’t actually need to be shackled to a kitchen sink to have a decent relationship, she continued: ‘And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armour. I’m sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s why relationships work.’
Now, we know that’s going to rile a few of you up – as much as a balance in roles in relationships can work, who said that these needed to be based around old-fashioned ideals? – she also said something really interesting about how she wants to live her later days: essentially, as a stereotypical spinster.
Talking about life after her career, the actress, who’s been dating On The Road co-star Garrett Hedlund since 2012, said that she’ll be living with her childhood mate Molly. ‘We’re going to live together in a house,’ she said. ‘And who gives a shit what we eat, and who cares how many cats we have? Because you know, you have your girlfriends for life.’
See, that’s the sort of thing we want to – and expect to - hear from Kirsten. We can’t see exactly how she got to the ‘let men be men and women be women’ conclusion, let’s hope it’s a giant misquote. Or maybe, just maybe, the film she's currently promoting, The Two Faces Of January, is set in 1962, and she’s either totally stuck in that mindset. Or she just wants some attention drawn to her and the film.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.