K Special

At 35, the fabulously irreverent Kirsten Dunst is getting the finest reviews of her career and she’s about to marry her best friend. It was all well worth the wait, she tells Mickey Rapkin over a hot dog (and definitely not a hike).

On a perfect spring afternoon, Kirsten Dunst and I meet for a tour of the Descanso Gardens, a 150-acre botanical wonderland in Los Angeles, famous for its lilac and rose gardens. So famous, in fact, that neither of us has ever visited before.

‘These are the things you do when you have kids,’ Dunst says with a wry smile, looking out at a mess of children running around a patch of grass. ‘We’re the only creepers here without kids.’ The topic of children – when to have them and with whom – is on Dunst’s mind, and we’ll get to that soon. For now, all I can think about is how poorly prepared we are for today’s outing. I’m in dark denim and heavy boots, and have left my bottle of water in the car. Dunst is wearing a black cashmere turtleneck sweater (‘I’m like Steve Jobs today’), black suede boots and zero sunscreen to protect her famously alabaster skin.

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom and they’re not to be missed, an employee tells us at the park’s entrance, although we have no idea how to find them. I point towards a gently sloping path – it’s barely an incline – and suggest we head that way. ‘I don’t want to climb a mountain right now, do you?’ says Dunst. ‘This is the most I’ve worked out in so long,’ she adds with a laugh. ‘I was just in Austin, Texas, for two weeks. All you do there is eat and drink.’