Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are one of the most beloved relationships in Hollywood history.
Mainly because both Maguire and Dunst have such die-hard fans who love them so much. And because they were in arguably the greatest superhero movie of all -time. That definitely helps.
But they were adamant about keeping their relationship a secret. In fact, many people, including Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, had no idea they were dating until the split. During Spider-Man press conferences, they did occasionally fawn over each other.
Maguire lauded Dunst’s acting talents in the May 2002 issue of Vanity Fair, telling the publication, “She’s really gifted. She’s incredibly attractive and lovely. She possesses a womanly quality as well as a really fun girl quality, an innocence. And there’s no conceit in her performance. She simply decides to go for it.”
Dunst had a similar response when asked about working with Maguire. When asked by Entertainment Weekly why she decided to portray Mary Jane, Dunst revealed that Tobey had a hand in it.
“I wanted to do Spider-Man the minute I found out about it, even before Peter Parker had been cast. But as soon as I learned Tobey Maguire was doing it, I wanted to do it even more. He’s so talented and adorable, but more than that he has an immaculate body of work. I had been wanting to work with him for a long, long time” Dunst said.
But what about that iconic “kiss” from the movie: Spider-man 2??
In the first Spider-Man, Peter Parker hung upside down from his spider-web after saving Mary Jane, and to thank him, she pulled down his mask halfway and kissed him in the pouring rain. It became an iconic moment in pop culture history. And it even won Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards in 2003.
But according to both Dunst and Maguire, the kiss wasn’t as romantic as one might imagine. “There was rain pouring up or down my nose. I couldn’t breathe and I was gasping for breath out of the corner of Kirsten’s mouth,” Tobey told reporters ahead of the film’s premiere in 2002. “Poor girl. I was giving her mouth to mouth rather than kissing her. But in the midst of that, I was sneaking some pleasure out of it.”
