Kirsten Dunst named Best Actress 2011 at Cannes Film Festival

Kirsten Dunst won The Best Actress Award (French: Prix d'interprétation féminine) is an award presented at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday for her role in "Melancholia," directed by Denmark's Lars Von Trier who was thrown out of the film festival for joking he was a Nazi and Hitler sympathiser.

Melancholia, a psychological drama inside a disaster movie, is billed as a “beautiful movie about the end of the world” stars Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Gainsbourg star together with Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgård, Udo Kier and Jesper Christensen. It is Von Trier‘s first feature since the controversial Antichrist, which also featured Gainsbourg. 

The trailer sets the scene: Kirsten Dunst‘s character Justine is celebrating her wedding to Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) at the luxurious home of sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law John (Sutherland). Meanwhile the planet Melancholia is heading towards earth, setting off a distructive chain of physical and psycological events.

After receiving the Prize from Edgar Ramirez, Dunst exclaimed: “What a week! My thanks to the Jury, this is a real honour. I’m grateful to the Festival for keeping the film in Competition. And I’m grateful to Lars Von Trier for letting me play the role with such freedom.”

The 55-year-old film maker, a winner of the top Palme d'Or award in 2000 for "Dancer in the Dark," has been banned from coming within 100 metres of the festival site where the awards ceremony brought a curtain down on the May 11-22 event.

Biography :

Kirsten Caroline Dunst was born April 30, 1982 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, to Inez (née Rupprecht), her mother was an artist and one-time gallery owner and Swedish descent. and Klaus Dunst, her father worked as a medical services executive and German descent. She has one younger brother, Christian. 

Until the age of six, Dunst lived in New Jersey, where she attended Ranney School. In 1991, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Los Angeles, California. In 1995, her mother filed for divorce. The following year Dunst began attending Notre Dame, a private Catholic high school in Los Angeles.

After graduating from Notre Dame, Dunst continued the acting career that she had begun at the age of eight. As a teenager, she found it difficult to deal with her rising fame, and for a period she blamed her mother for pushing her into acting as a child. However, she later expressed that her mother "always had the best intentions".

When asked if she had any regrets about the way she spent her childhood, Dunst said: "Well, it's not a natural way to grow up, but it's the way I grew up and I wouldn't change it. I have my stuff to work out ... I don't think anybody can sit around and say: 'My life is more screwed up than yours.' Everybody has their issues

Dunst began her career when she was three years old as a child fashion model in television commercials.She was signed with Ford Models and Elite Model Management. At the age of eight years old she made her film debut in a minor role in Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks, a short film that was released as one-third of the anthology New York Stories (1989). Soon after, she landed a small part in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), as Tom Hanks's daughter. In 1993, Dunst played Hedril in "Dark Page," the seventh episode of the seventh season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

At the age of 12, Dunst gained widespread recognition playing the role of vampire Claudia in Interview with the Vampire (1994), a performance for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. The same year she appeared in Little Women, to further acclaim.

Dunst achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–07). Since then her films have included the romantic comedy Wimbledon (2004), the romantic science fiction Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy Elizabethtown (2005). She played the title role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006) and starred in the comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008). 

In 2001, Dunst made her singing debut in the film Get Over It, in which she performed two songs. She also sang the jazz song "After You've Gone" for the end credits of the film The Cat's Meow (2001).