Dunst loves goofy ‘Elizabethtown’ character

updated 11:55 a.m. ET Aug. 12, 2005

NEW YORK - Kirsten Dunst says her role as Claire in Cameron Crowe's new film, "Elizabethtown," was one of the best female parts she'd read in ages.

"She is honest and upfront to a fault," Dunst tells W magazine in its September issue, on newsstands Aug. 19. "She doesn't have a lot of fear. She's dorky and doesn't care, and in that way she's cool."

Dunst plays a flight attendant in the romantic comedy, costarring Orlando Bloom. Bloom's brooding character meets Claire while on a flight home to Kentucky.

"Kirsten is a really positive person," Bloom says. "In the film she brings my character back to life. She's perfectly cast because she is that light."

The 23-year-old actress also plays the lead in Sofia Coppola's upcoming Marie-Antoinette biopic. She predicts the French press will be especially rough on the film, which co-stars Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI.

"And I'm not sure whether historians are going to love our movie," she says, "but we don't care."

Dunst, who began acting and modeling when she was 3, has more than 30 films to her credit, including "Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles," Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" and the "Spider-Man" movies.

But Dunst says she's no workaholic.

"If you don't live your life, then how can you act?" she says. "You have no experience except the last experience on a movie."

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