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Kirsten Dunst has admitted that she was "scared" of working with Lars von Trier on Melancholia due to his reputation for 'torturing' actresses.



The Spider-Man star said that she was initially put off by the director's outspoken nature, but later found him to be a "sensitive, funny and kind" individual.

"I was scared about working with Lars because everyone made such a big deal about how he tortures actresses," Virgin Media quotes her as saying.

"When I first got to know him I was shocked by the things he would say, but you don't make the movies he makes with a PC personality. But what I found was a really sensitive, funny and kind director who was emotionally intuitive. He loves women."

Dunst added that she wasn't taken aback by von Trier's request that she strip naked for Melancholia, describing the pertinent scenes as a 'beautiful' work of "art".

"There's a scene in Melancholia where I'm lying naked, bathing in the glow of the moon, but it looks like a painting as it's lit so beautifully," she said.

"You can almost forget that I'm nude... It's art. I'd be proud if it was my girlfriend."

Dunst came to von Trier's defence following his controversial comments about Nazis at the Cannes Film Festival last summer.

"He says dumb stuff sometimes but not anything I had ever been offended by," she said. "It just came out wrong, that's not Lars at all.

"I was upset, shocked and angry, but at the end of the day he is still my friend."