Kirsten Dunst has fond memories of working with Brad Pitt at the beginning of her career when she was 11 years old.
Dunst, now 41, starred with Pitt, now 60, in the 1994 gothic horror film, Interview with the Vampire. The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actor was 30 years old at the time, and she recalls he developed a very special bond with her.
Pitt was “like an older brother to me,” Dunst told the U.K. outlet The Telegraph in an interview published Tuesday, April 2. “[I was] treated like a princess,” the Spider-Man alum said. “Yes, it was a virtually all-male set, but everyone was very gentle and kind, and nothing ever felt weird.”
Interview with the Vampire also starred Tom Cruise, Christian Slater and Antonio Banderas. Dunst recalled the Mission Impossible star, now 61, also treated her like family.
“One morning, around Christmas, I remember going into my dressing room at Pinewood and he’d set up a beautiful tree in there for me, covered in ornaments,” she shared.
Interview with the Vampire was Dunst’s first starring role after appearing in Woody Allen‘s New York Stories in 1989, and Brian De Palma‘s The Bonfire of the Vanities the following year. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as child vampire Claudia.
In the film, Dunst had to kiss the much older Pitt in the film. While promoting the movie in 1994, she admitted to Entertainment Tonight that it was extremely uncomfortable.
“I hated [the kiss] so much because Brad was like my older brother on set and it’s kind of like kissing your brother,” she said. “It’s weird because he’s an older guy and I had to kiss him on the lips, so it was gross.’
Two decades later, the actress was shown a clip of her reacting to the kiss by ET, and her reaction was the same.
“Yeah, it was gross! I stand by that. It would have been so much creepier if an 11-year-old was like, ‘It was great.’ You’d be like, ‘There’s something wrong with this child,’” Dunst said in August 2019.
Despite that very uncomfortable kissing scene, Dunst told ET she loved the process of working with Pitt and Cruise.
“They were so sweet to me,” she added of Pitt and Cruise. “I mean, listen, that production, that film, was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced — maybe Marie Antoinette, (released in 2006) because of where we shot. Other than that, they just don’t make movies like that anymore.”
