It’s a good time to be Kirsten Dunst. The former child star and big-screen Mary Jane Watson’s career is humming right along mostly on the strength of her astonishing performance in season two of FX’s acclaimed Fargo. Dunst’s character, Peggy Blumquist, was the one who set all the events of the season in motion and her work earned her both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations in the lead actress in a miniseries or movie category.
Now Dunst is ready to take on a new challenge by hopping into the director’s chair. Deadline reports the she will helm a movie version of the classic, very bleak Sylvia Plath novel The Bell Jar. She also co-adapted for the screen, with Dakota Fanning set to star. The Bell Jar, about a woman’s mental illness being exacerbated by her taking a magazine internship in New York and subsequently moving back to Boston, was the only novel Plath wrote before taking her own life in 1963.
Dunst has some previous directorial experience in the short film category, having made 2007’s Welcome, which screened at Sundance and starred Winona Ryder, and 2010’s Bastard, which screened at both Cannes and Tribeca. Her most recent movie role came in Midnight Special, alongside Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton and Adam Driver.
(via EW)
