(Interview)
Kristen Stewart is sick of the Twilight bashing. Speaking to Patti Smith in the new Interview, the actress reflects on her career and growth as an artist in Hollywood. Stewart says, “I’m always asked about what type of things I want to do, and if I make decisions based on my last project. Say I do a big franchise movie about a vampire that falls in love with a normal girl. It’s like, ‘Now do you want to show them that you can be a real, serious actor?’ It’s like, ‘Was I not being a real, serious actor?'”
Taking a step back and looking at her Twilight experience, Stewart tells Smith, “I mean, it was a long process, so it’s hard to generalize about it as a whole. It wasn’t entirely cohesive. We ebbed and flowed. I will definitely acknowledge that. But the intention is so f*cking pure in a weird way. Anybody who wants to talk sh*t about Twilight, I completely get it, but there’s something there that I’m endlessly, and to this day, f*cking proud of. My memory of it felt — still feels — really good.”
Commenting on her admiration for Smith and her memoir “Just Kids,” Stewart tells the musician, “You have such a deep love for other people. A lot of artists are such narcissists. It’s very validating and affirming in a way that I really needed. Something happened to me and I became really successful at something at a young age, and that stunts you in every other aspect of your life because you feel like that’s what you’re good at and so that’s what you need to stay in.”
The respect goes both ways. Smith repeatedly praises Stewart’s acting work, at one point saying, “You have a gift for showing restraint. Even Bella Swan, she has a practical streak even though she does something completely, you know…” “Retarded,” interjects Stewart. Smith laughs, “No, she gives everything for love. And she goes as far as that will take her.”
What’s coming up for Stewart? She tells Smith, “I had a really great experience on [the forthcoming sci-fi love story] Equals because of Drake Doremus, who directed the movie. He typically works off an outline, and this was the first movie that he did with a screenplay because it was pretty high concept, and a bigger budget than what he was used to, so it was a necessary step. But it kind of felt like we were working off of each other—me and Nick [Hoult] and Drake.”
Stewart continues, “A lot of directors talk a big game about how we’re going to discover something together, and how it’s a meditation, and we’ll figure out why we’re here in the end, and we’ll answer all of our questions, and then, come day five, logistics are down his throat and he’s like, ‘Okay! Actually, we’re just going to do it like this!’ The movie-making process takes over and you have to plan for spontaneity, which is obviously contradictory. So oftentimes you have to settle to fill in the blanks.”
“On Equals, there was no f*cking expectation,” says the actress. “One day we didn’t finish something; we didn’t feel it, we weren’t in the right mood to shoot it. So we postponed it. There is not a moment where we filled a blank with a lie. Whether the movie is great or sh*t, I have never felt so free in an environment. And that’s when you’re going to be the best.”
Stewart has some thoughts about what unifies the different roles she’s taken. “There’s a through-line,” she tells Smith. “People are always comparing sh*t. Like, comparing Twilight to things and trying to figure out why I’ve made certain decisions that I’ve made, and I always say every single moment that has led me to this moment has made me who I am. Every movie that I’ve done, they don’t stand independently from one another because a little bit of me is in every single one of those, and it’s part of my own personal growth.”
“I don’t think that there’s much hiding that actors can do,” says Stewart. “If you’re doing good work, you’re showing a part of yourself to someone, so I can’t say that Twilight doesn’t have anything to do with Still Alice and Sils Maria. They have everything to do with each other. They are who I am.” What do you think about what Stewart has to say.
