Kirsten Dunst Defends Calling Kissing Vampire Brad Pitt At 11 'Gross’

Kirsten Dunst, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire
(Image credit: (Warner Bros))

Not many women can say they’ve kissed Brad Pitt, and I’d imagine if you have, it’d be something to boast about. Not for Kirsten Dunst. The actress gave him a peck on the lips for 1994’s Interview With a Vampire in one of her first big-screen roles ever. Now that it has been 25 years since the gothic romantic horror film was released, she still stands by her original reaction on shooting the scene. In her words:

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.’

At the recent Los Angeles premiere of her new Showtime series Becoming A God In Central Florida, Kirsten Dunst defended calling that one kiss from Interview With a Vampire “gross” because it actually was to her at the time. She was eleven and he was 30. They have almost a 20-year age gap! Do we blame her? Check out her words to ET back in 1994 when she was asked about the kiss at the time:

I hated it so much because Brad was like my older brother on set and it’s kind of like kissing your brother. It’s weird because he’s an older guy and I had to kiss him on the lips, so it was gross.

The actress certainly had early luck in her career working opposite Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in Interview With a Vampire. Not to mention the actress’ first movie was Bonfire of the Vanities, which starred Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis. She’d also go on to star in the original Jumanji in 1995 with the great Robin Williams, all before 15! When it comes to fond kissing scenes with A-list actors, Brad Pitt doesn’t make the cut, and for a valid reason!

Of course, Kirsten Dunst does have another famous movie kissing scene that will stick with her for a long time: the upside-down kiss in 2002’s Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire! The moment is one of the most iconic make-out moments Hollywood has ever seen. So why even linger on that underaged kiss with a vampire?

During the LA premiere for her series, Kirsten Dunst shared how positive her experience was on the set of Interview With a Vampire. She said Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were both so sweet to her and to this day is nothing like she’d ever experienced. “They just don't make movies like that anymore,” she commented about the scale of the vampire epic which was given a $60 million budget and became one of the highest grossing films of 1994, just behind Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction at spot No. 10.

Kirsten Dunst’s new show (which she executive produced alongside George Clooney) will premiere on Showtime on Tuesday. Brad Pitt stars in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is now playing in theaters.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.