SPIDER-MAN CENTRAL • Photos: Spidey 3 Premiere • Spidey 3 Film Stills • Spidey 3 Behind-the-Scenes • Villian Vote! • Tobey Maguire Feature • Kirsten Dunst Feature • Spidey 2 Behind-the-Scenes

The warm July afternoon turned into a cool evening, ending with Kirsten Dunst penniless and trying to charm money from a London cash machine that — millions or no millions in her account — wouldn't cough out a farthing. (It was nothing personal — my card was rejected, too — and I knew for a fact I had $628 available.) Unaware of the stingy British banking system, we'd left the Coach & Horses pub and recklessly pooled our last pounds to buy espressos while strolling the edgy Soho streets, which were growing edgier with every darkening minute. Another cash machine, another "transaction denied." How to make it back to my hotel in Knightsbridge and Dunst's rented Notting Hill flat? It began to rain. A full-on, un-forecasted downpour. What next? Locusts?

With each added insult, Dunst grew more and more amused, embracing the exotic situation wherein no amount of her money, or celebrity, or cell phone minutes (or a publicist, even!), could save her. She was on her own in an episode of Survivor: London. "Omigod, a taxi!" Dunst ran to the curb and waved her arm in that sweeping way island castaways do when they spot a plane. "Two stops," she said to the driver, and after telling him where to go — but not telling him our pockets were empty — she leaned back in the seat, raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated "uh-oh, now what?" expression, and burst into infectious giggles. A plan was devised.

Under phony pretenses, she waited with the driver outside the small brownstone hotel, her fingers crossed. One grumpy night porter and a 40-pound loan later, Dunst was free to go on, though she seemed slightly disappointed as she took the money, whispering, "Now I won't have to make a run for it." The cabbie pulled away with her, and as he passed beneath the light of an old street lamp, she looked back through the rain-streaked window, smiling, pressing her hand good-bye against the glass. It was a complicated smile, small and knowing, and not knowing, somehow moving. It is one of her great onscreen gifts, and it begs the question: What is Kirsten Dunst thinking?