The movies listed in Kirsten Dunst’s filmography, which traces an acting career that began more than 20 years ago, when she was 8 and landed an uncredited role in Woody Allen’s “New York Stories,” are akin to the markers of a growing child’s height on a wall.

There she was at 12, starring opposite Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in “Interview With the Vampire”; then as a teen in “The Virgin Suicides” and the cheerleading comedy “Bring It On”; and, later and most famously, as a redheaded love interest for Peter Parker in the “Spider-Man” series.

Now Dunst, 29, four years after her Spidey days, is enjoying some of the highest praise of her career for her work in “Melancholia.” That would be Lars von Trier’s ambitious portrait of a hopeful bride succumbing to depression as a large planet moves closer to Earth, threatening the end of the human race.

Dunst doesn’t characterize the film as a comeback. But because her post-Mary Jane Watson work focused on quieter, smaller films, it might feel as if she’s been gone and has now reemerged, more grown-up.

“I think the older I get, the more opportunities I have to put more of myself into what I’m doing,” she said in a telephone interview. “It gets more exciting in a way because I have less hang-ups.”

Dunst is proof that not every preteen actor is fated to rehab, court and reality TV. That’s not to say that the woman who once played “Marie Antoinette” hasn’t struggled; she took time off in 2008 and spent a few weeks in rehab for depression. But now, at least during our interview, she comes across as upbeat, focused on her work and humble.

Asked if she ever watches her older films, Dunst admits that she sometimes peeks at them while changing channels.

“The other day, ‘The Cat’s Meow’ was on HBO,” Dunst said, referring to the 2001 Peter Bogdanovich film in which she played actress Marion Davies. “I was flipping around and I watched it for, like, two seconds, and then I shut it off. It’s weird to watch yourself. Especially young and all this…”

She pauses.

“I love that my life’s been documented. . . . I think when I’m older I’ll really appreciate that, and it will be nice to show my kids. But I – yeah, I don’t do a Kirsten (movie) marathon on the weekends.”