AT the tender age of 25, Kirsten Dunst has already survived two career crises. The first came at age 17, as she began to understand the full implications of living her life in a media fishbowl.
When I was 11 (the age she appeared opposite Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview With The Vampire), I wasn't aware of what fame was.
I thought: 'This is fun.'
It wasn't completely my choice. I was a child.
There came a point in my life where I wanted to do what I was doing but I had to deal with the fact that I was famous and I hadn't made an adult decision about that.
The second turning point came after Dunst made Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola's harshly criticised MTV take on the world's most misunderstood monarch.
When Dunst's character, Mary Jane Watson, is crushed by scathing reviews in Spider-Man 3, she is forced to take a job in a wine bar.
Being more financially secure, the actress who plays her was able to take 12 months to reassess what she wanted to do with her life.
Reports at the time suggested that Dunst was considering throwing in the towel altogether.
It can be wearying if you let your confidence be judged by what other people think of you, she says now, in Tokyo for the world premiere of the third Spider-Man film.
I took a year off. I didn't read any scripts. I needed a break to explore the things I love to do - really explore them.
During this time, she signed up for art classes.
I just needed to focus on myself and my other passions, she says.
Because she has grown up in the spotlight, Dunst is remarkably accomplished in the art of the interview, during which she is friendly, relaxed and always in control.
When asked to name one thing people don't know about her during a press conference, she quickly counters: They know enough already.
Dunst knows where to draw the line, refusing to be drawn on the speculation about a new relationship with British rocker Johnny Borrell.
She does, however, reveal that she came to Japan a couple of days early to have a bit of extra time to look around, which fits in with reports in the British newspapers that she paid for Borrell to accompany her on the trip.
And when the subject of M. J.'s rendition of I'm Through With Love is raised, she speeds up a little bit.
We all go through that, I think, she says. Then you meet 'The One'. I don't think anybody's through with love.
Next question please.
Such a healthy awareness of personal boundaries might well explain how Dunst has managed to survive the notoriously difficult public transition from child to adult while remaining psychologically intact, unlike some of her peers (Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears immediately spring to mind).
Growing up is not smooth for anybody, she says.
But I always had a good family and good friends to support me and I went to normal schools.
Dunst was just 16 when she auditioned for the first Spider-Man film. I had the purest response to this character - I knew I could do something special with it.
She and Tobey Maguire were contracted for two more Spidey films. A sense of being trapped by the choices she had made might explain her diffidence about the character around the time Spider-Man 2 was released when she said: I'm sick of playing stupid girlfriend roles.
Older, wiser and much more in control, Dunst describes the third film in the franchise as the one she most enjoyed making.
We all came together more as adults. This one was more collaborative. We're like a family now - you have the fights but you love each other, so you work it out.
Everybody is so passionate about this film in a real way, in a storytelling way, it's very close to our heart.
Spider-Man 3 is by far the darkest and most complex of the three films. Another woman (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) and two new supervillains (Topher Grace and Thomas Haden Church) are the least of our heroes' worries.
It's the inner-demons of Peter Parker, M. J. and Harry Osborn that are most likely to bring them unstuck.
For much of the film, Peter behaves like an arrogant, self-obsessed prat, and seems completely oblivious to M. J's heartache and broken dreams.
Paradoxically, Dunst says making it was a whole lot of fun.
You don't need to be in pain to play people in pain. I think that's baloney. I do my best work when I'm happy.
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