Though the film covers some 19 years of Marie Antoinette’s life, and required Dunst to move back in forth in time throughout the shoot, she saw Marie Antoinette’s emotional evolution as often stunted by her very unusual circumstances. “I think over the years Marie Antoinette developed into a kind of wise child,” Dunst observes. “She came to Versailles as a teenager but there, she was so isolated, that she remained child-like through much of her life. Her tragedy is that she didn’t really come into her own and become an adult until it was too late.”
For Dunst, part of the challenge of playing Marie Antoinette was creating a character who doesn’t have a solid sense of being a completed person. “I had to allow myself as much as I could not to worry about feeling solid,” she says. “But that is part of what interested me in what Sofia was doing. This isn’t a history piece so much as it is the story of a girl who was very human, very real and is very understandable to us today. People don’t really act the way you often see them in period films, and Sofia wanted something much more natural, without accents. For me, it was more freeing and I think will help people to better understand what Marie Antoinette went through.”
The chance to work again with Coppola was also a major draw for Dunst. “Sofia’s almost like an older sister to me, in a way,” she remarks. “What’s nice is that we didn’t ever really have to over-analyze the scenes or talk about them too much because I pretty much know what she wants most of the time. I look up to her and I admire her but she also makes me feel really confident in what I’m doing. I also especially like working with a woman director. It was always a very open and relaxed atmosphere.”
To prepare for the role, Dunst immersed herself in some of Marie Antoinette’s most famous activities. “I took dance lessons, singing lessons, harp lessons, etiquette lessons and more,” she notes. “I felt like I learned a little bit about the things people did during that period.”
Dunst even had to learn the famous “Versailles glide” – the exaggerated movement in which ladies in giant hoop dresses appeared to never touch their feet to the ground.
Dunst faced not only emotional challenges in portraying Marie Antoinette’s journey from playful child to tragic Queen but the physical challenges of being transformed into an 18th Century fashion goddess complete with rib-crushing corsets, truly massive hair and extensive makeup, including the lavish rouge circles that were emblematic of the French aristocracy. “The daily process was pretty brutal,” Dunst admits. “There was a constant flow of dry shampoo and hair spray and they were always piling more and more stuff on me. I often needed a break after the hair and makeup sessions because it was so stressful.”
When it came to wearing corsets, Dunst was amazed that women put up with it. “It’s very hard to breathe and get a sense of your body in the clothes from that era, so I tried to get away with wearing as little underneath as I possibly could. I wore corsets in Versailles but once Marie Antoinette goes to Le Petit Trianon, I wanted her to feel freer and to feel the fabric against my skin to convey that change. I always felt like Marie Antoinette must have been like a bird – always trying to get out of all these cages around her.”
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