25 Things You Didn’t Know About Interview With The Vampire
17. They Aged Up Claudia For The Film (And It’s Still Weird)
In Anne Rice’s novel, Louis describes Claudia as five years old. In Neil Jordan’s film, Kirsten Dunst was a diminutive eleven years old when filming took place between October 1993 and March 1994.
An older girl was cast because the requirements of the role were out of the reach of five years olds. Regardless, eleven years old is still a weird age to have your first kiss with a thirty-year-old man, even if that man is Brad Pitt.
Wiser than her years even then, Dunst was sensible enough to admit that the idea of kissing Pitt - even a peck - filled her with horror. Cruise and Pitt were like big brothers on the set for her, always looking out for her, so she wasn’t racing around high-fiving waitresses and getting sh*tty letters from devastated single mothers. In fact, she thought it was disgusting, and that Pitt “had cooties”.
Now, obviously that’s just kidspeak for urrrrgh gross you’re so olllld. Thing is, given what we now know about Pitt’s dodgy hygiene, he may well actually have had cooties: the deadliest, most infectious parasite known to man.