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Kirsten Dunst was robbed blind in 2007 while staying in a Soho Grand Hotel penthouse in New York. The actress was there to film a scene for the 2008 British comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, and was sharing the room with her co-star, Simon Pegg.
The thieves broke in at 4:48 a.m. and stole “jewelry, cameras, cash, purses, telephones, wallets and other pieces of property from the actors and the assistant who left their belongings there for safekeeping,” an Assistant District Attorney on the case said.
The burglary was caught on surveillance cameras, and cops later identified two culprits: a “major” New York drug dealer, Jarrod Beinerman, and his accomplice, James Jimenez. The day before he was busted, Beinerman — who made off with Dunst’s $2,000 brown Balenciaga purse (with $2,000 in cash inside of it), and other personal items — had updated his mood on MySpace to "worried," according to PageSix. (“Learn from your mistakes and grow from misfortune,” read a sad mea culpa on his profile, alongside photos of stacks of $20 bills and a 50 Cent song on autoplay.)
Robert Parker, the Defense Attorney for Beinerman’s friend, James Jiminez, proposed the theory that they were given permission to be in her suite because they were delivering marijuana to Dunst, their alleged pot-smoking client. "Why would Bienerman come to a penthouse room that is supposedly secure?" Parker said. "He obviously had permission to be there."
The only thing is, Dunst and Pegg were filming a scene for their film in the hotel’s lobby. As for the room’s security, the prosecutor alleged that the perps "took advantage of the somewhat chaotic scene" while the stars were filming downstairs and took an employee-only elevator to the top floor. Jiminez made off with a white shopping bag containing all of the loot. On the stand, he played dumb, trying to convince the jury that he was only told to carry the bag out of the hotel per his friend’s instruction — a “favor” for Beinerman’s mom. He says he didn’t know what was in it.
"At four in the morning?" the prosecutor bluntly asked.
Parker tried to steer the blame back to Dunst. When asked point blank if Dunst smoked marijuana, she replied, "No!" Her co-star, Pegg, hurriedly added, "Absolutely not!" Parker continued to push his theory, though, that Dunst was a toker outside the courtroom. "She certainly didn't have to come to this trial and lie," he told the press. He attempted to perjure Dunst by referencing an interview she had given where she took issue with America’s characterization of marijuana. (Choice quote: “I think America’s view on weed is ridiculous.”)
"I don't think there's a person on this planet who would believe … she doesn't smoke marijuana," Parker was quoted as saying in New York Daily News.
“That is completely false and clearly a desperate ploy by the attorney,” Dunst’s rep, Stephen Huvane, said in response to Parker’s statement.
Beinerman was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for attempted burglary. Despite all the evidence against him, the jury was hung in Jiminez’s trial, and he was let off on one burglary count. At a retrial, however, he, too, was sentenced to four years in prison. Both the men maintained their innocence.
Plenty of Mary-Jane jokes were made in Dunst’s name following the sentencing. Almost a decade later, on the set of her 2017 film Woodshock, Dunst again encountered the drug. Just “for fun,” crew members handed the actress a joint with real weed for a scene in which her character takes a puff.
"After we were done with the scene, I went back to this little bedroom to rest and I started to feel like I was losing my mind. I went to the bathroom, I'm pacing. I told the director there was something wrong with me, I think I need to go to the hospital. There's something seriously up, I feel like I'm losing my mind!" she told Jimmy Kimmel. "[The director] goes back, he looks at everything that I smoked to make sure everything is OK, and came back and said, 'You smoked a full blunt on one of the takes."
"I was crying, laughing, eating a peanut butter sandwich. I couldn't film anymore, they sent me home! I was a total mess!" Dunst said. "I've never been that stoned in my entire life!"
#Hollyweird is a bi-weekly column about celebrities' forgotten or buried strange-but-true stories.
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