Dunst is happy to be bridesmaid

Kirsten Dunst stars in dark new indie film Batchelorette. Picture: Contour By Getty Images Source: National Features

KIRSTEN Dunst spent her summer going to weddings.

"I was a bridesmaid, a maid of honour, went to another wedding ... This was definitely a heavy wedding year for me."

As her school friends walked one-by-one down the aisle, the 30-year-old claims to have felt no pressure to get her own marital act together.

"Not at all, no. All in the time that it should come," Dunst says.

"I'm not worried. When you do worry, when you fixate on those things, that's when it doesn't happen. Like when you hear about couples who adopt a child and then they get pregnant, you know? That kind of psychology.

"When you're not thinking about it, that's when it comes your way."

So Dunst is happy to remain a bridesmaid - for now, at least - even in her new movie, Bachelorette.

Riding a post-Bridesmaids appetite for female-led comedies, Bachelorette is an indie production focused on three emotionally-stunted women (Dunst, Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher) who go off the deep end when the fourth wheel of their old high-school gang - Becky, the one they called "Pig Face" (Rebel Wilson) - is the first to get married.

Dunst's BlackBerry-gripping, wedding-organising Regan is the most distressed that she's not the one walking down the aisle.

"I'm not crazy like Regan is. Or Type A," Dunst says with a laugh.

"I used to be a little bit more of a neat freak, but I let that go living in New York in my apartment because I had so many friends and family stay.

"At a certain point you've just gotta live in a space instead of worrying about whether it's pristine or not.

"It's probably a control thing. Even ! my brother, his room is the neatest room you've ever seen. It's so funny, he's always cleaning. I go in and out with that. I like things organised but I'm not worried about a mess anymore."

Mess is what the Bachelorette girls create, turning Becky's subdued send-off into a wild night of strippers, drugs, sex and a ripped wedding dress.

As they battle until morning to undo the damage, laughs are laced with heavy issues, from bulimia to abortion.

"We got to talk about a lot of things that on a male set you don't get to talk about," says Dunst of the female-dominated set, led by writer-director Leslye Headland.

"Isla and Lizzy and Rebel, I respect them as actresses and I also love their personalities.

"So for me it was very easy.

"It was a very supportive set but also really fun, too."

Any bitchiness was kept to the screen, where every action of Regan's crew makes you wonder why Becky has stayed friends with them.

Dunst says it was refreshing to not be playing the happy, sweet, pretty girl.

"Not that I only play those roles - I did Melancholia before, so it's not like I was playing some nice ... you know," she laughs.

"But you don't very often get to play women who are like this. It usually takes a female writer to write this kind of material for a woman because men don't want to see women in this light, or they don't know how to write it."

Dunst has been given great roles by females before - Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette are among the actor's most loved films, but she says a career in movies is difficult no matter your gender.

"There are so many different paths that you choose as an actress. You could have a career where it's mostly focused on your vanity or a career where it's mostly focused on your comedy skills or your dramatic skills ... In only bigger movies or smaller movies ... It's up to each individual actor that carves out their own career, that makes them special or not.! "

W! hat path is Dunst on?

"Well, I started acting so young ... I'm not affected, I don't think, as much as someone who is starting out now.

"You need to grow with yourself and mature. Luckily I've done that, because it's hard to go from a child actress into an adult actress."

Of course. Shouldn't Dunst have gone well and truly off the rails by now?

"I have a good family," she laughs. "I definitely think this industry can make people weird, but it's up to you to not let it."

Dunst has been famous since starring alongside Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise as an 11-year-old in Interview With the Vampire.

Along with her family, she's supported by friends she has had "even before high school".

Thankfully, her own crew is "a little more mature" than the entitled, self-destructive Bachelorette girls.

"My girlfriends have a little more spirituality, they're grounded, they're not as juvenile in thinking as these girls are."

As she speaks, Dunst is in Greece, where she's shooting The Two Faces of January with Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac. It's only week one, but Dunst has wasted no time in warming up to her co-stars and crew. "I'm not a very introverted personality. It's not that I'm 'on' or something, I'm just a friendly person," she laughs.

-- SEE Bachelorette opens today