Kirsten Dunst reveals her ‘biggest fear’ before making Civil War (exclusive)

Kirsten Dunst took the role of a war photographer extremely seriously.

“I carried the camera with me the whole time,” the 42-year-old Oscar-nominated actress recalls the filming civil war, the A24 drama from writer-director Alex Garland, in a behind-the-scenes video shared exclusively with PEOPLE.

“When I got the role, I immediately thought, ‘Alex, give me the camera,'” Dunst says in the clip, adding that she was “a little unsure” whether she could accurately portray her character, a photojournalist named Lee Smith.

“That was actually my biggest fear. It might look like I didn’t know what I was doing with the camera, or like I was holding it in a way that didn’t seem like part of my body,” she adds.

Civil War According to the synopsis, it imagines “a journey through a dystopian America of the future.” It follows “a team of military-trained journalists who race against time to reach DC before rebel groups attack the White House.”

The cast includes Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny and Nick Offerman, as well as Dunst’s husband Jesse Plemons.

“I’ve never had so much fun researching a character,” says Spaeny, 25, of her role as aspiring photographer Jessie Cullen. “For some of these roles, you have to learn, I don’t know, fencing or baton-wielding or something like that. Now I know how to use a film camera, which is really useful.”

Learning the intricacies of operating a camera may even have become a new favorite pastime for the Priscilla Star.

“I use about 20 rolls of film a night,” Spaeny says in the video. “For me personally, it’s been a great journey.”

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Garland, 54, was “very interested in accurately portraying the photographic element,” said Civil WarStill photographer Murray Close says he was instructed to “work with Kirsten and Cailee to introduce them to photography.”

“In films, sometimes people don’t hold the cameras well,” adds Close. “You immediately notice that they are not photographers, but actors.”

The destruction The director’s commitment to accuracy during filming paid off. After the release on April 12, Civil War became the second most successful film of the distributor A24 (after 2022 Everything everywhere at once) and received positive reviews from both critics and audiences.

Civil War is now available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital.