Kirsten Dunst

here are many children who act, but very few who do so on an equal footing with their adult peers. Kids are so often there simply to be cute, not to truly inhabit a character, not to understand their part like an actor many years their senior might. Natalie Portman did an amazing job in Leon, appearing towards the end to be far, far older than she was. But even that performance paled next to that of Kirsten Dunst in Interview With The Vampire. She actually had to play an adult trapped in a child's body, and a particularly worldly-wise adult at that - and she did it with such sensitivity and precision she was nominated for a Golden Globe. Remarkable. No less remarkable was her canny growth through teen movies into more adult material. Though perhaps overly prolific at points, her transformation was continuous and with Spider-Man under her belt, at the time the fifth biggest US box office hit ever, she could now concentrate on following her idol, Jodie Foster, into writing and directing.