MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: That's not true. To get into that kind of thing, to start to say this is where we are with movies, that women need to have a man and the issues that we're dealing with in “Mona Lisa Smile” are still issues now. It's like regressive thinking. We're so much beyond that. I think in a lot of ways, I guess it depends what movies you go and see. But I think there are a lot of movies being made that include maybe romance and sex and all that kind of stuff, but don't demand that the woman has to have a boyfriend or a husband in order to do something interesting. I really don't think that's true.
Kirsten, can you talk about your character’s transformation and taking on a role like this?
KIRSTEN DUNST: Well, I had never played a role like this before in a bigger movie. I felt like mostly a mass audience has only seen me as a cheerleader or like Mary Jane. So I wanted to do something [with] this girl. She's just the most restricted in the time and the society of it all, and I really could see a lot of pain in this girl. [She was] trying to be alive and wanting to enjoy her life, but so held back and so juvenile in the way she acts out against the other girls. She's just kind of like this little girl who is trying to be this woman. She's 21 and only recently has this woman come into her life. It's like, “Change your thinking,” and of course your first reaction is, “No, no, no. It's scary.” So I just saw more than just like the traditional bitch of the film.
Were these all the parts you originally went out for?
[all nod]
JULIA STILES: Yeah, I really responded to Joan immediately because I was surprised by her choice. She was a nice contrast to the other journeys the characters go through. And I thought the danger with a movie like this was that we would all come away from the movie thinking that the message is all women have to have careers. I liked that Joan really makes an individual choice. I met Mike [Newell] and read for Joan because I really wanted the part.
Maggie, there’s a scene in the film where it seems like your character is going to announce she’s pregnant. Was there a scene ever a scene like that?
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: No, I think Giselle for most of the movie is doing what I think most human beings do, which is even if you're in a situation that's constricting or complicated or hard, they try to survive. And I think Giselle is doing a pretty good job of it. I think her way of surviving in this weird place that she finds herself in is to fight for life wherever she can find it. Things that taste good and feel good and sound good, and I think that she's pretty good at it most of the movie. I think that scene is just a moment where some of the stuff that's underneath just comes to the surface. I think she just wants to be near him. It would be too much if she was pregnant. Like, come on. She has a diaphragm. She shows it to everybody. She has a lot of sex, but she's had safe sex.
Kirsten, could you relate to anything about your character?
KIRSTEN DUNST: I just could understand [that] it wasn't really [that] she's a mean person. She's just really a sad person and I had compassion towards her. She doesn't have the tools or the people around her or the guides to figure stuff out within herself. So I can relate to feeling that way. I don't act out the way she does or I didn't act out the way she did, but I know that feeling of feeling stuck a little bit.
Julia, can you talk about the dialect you used in “Mona Lisa Smile?”
JULIA STILES: We had a dialect coach but I felt very confined by that, so in order to not feel like it was so foreign to me, I watched a lot of movies from the early 1950s. I'm just like, "Did people really speak that way?" And I know that the movie stars of the 1950s aren't maybe the average person, but they did. I feel like I modeled a lot after Grace Kelly - the way that she spoke - only because she would've been brought up in the same way that my character was. She went and took elocution lessons and went to a finishing school.
Kirsten, are there any big changes planned for Mary Jane in “Spider-Man 2?”
KIRSTEN DUNST: I scream a lot less in this one. There's not as much screaming. She's definitely more on the track of a more independent woman and everything. But then look at her family and what she came from. This abusive male in the house and this mother who's an alcoholic. So I don't think Mary Jane was the most secure woman to begin with. She was a little bit more like, I guess you could say, a Damsel in Distress. Now she has her own place in New York and she's getting married. She's working and doing her own thing.
ADDITIONAL "MONA LISA SMILE" RESOURCES:
Interview with Julia Roberts
"Mona Lisa Smile" Photo Gallery
"Mona Lisa Smile" Credits, Trailer and Movie News
