I
Her voice is distinctive – that easy, low-rolling Californian
accent, where all the words run together, and she sounds like
nothing could surprise her.
When she finally emerges to go and have her picture taken
on a balcony with the Eiffel Tower rising up behind her, she is in perfect contrast
to her delicate, gilded surroundings. Her hair is a black-blonde swipe across her
forehead, and she’s wearing floor-length black velvet, a black bow at her throat,
as befits her status as a Chanel ambassador. She walks past, a bold, swaggering
walk, and smiles. ‘Yeah,’ she says, seeing my face. ‘It’s intense. It’s a lot of look.’
Soon enough, she’s back, and changed. Ripped jeans, white T-shirt, bare feet:
her more natural state. We talk on a warm terrace, cross-legged on sofas. I don’t
know why I expected her to be reticent or shy, but probably because that is how
she is always assumed to be, or how she comes across in photographs, when her
expression sometimes seems deadpan, reluctant to give anything away. Or
perhaps it’s just how we all remember her from the Twilight years as the perma-
nently tortured, lovesick Bella Swan. ‘I try to avoid the word “awkward”,’ Stewart
says, remembering that time. ‘I want to reclaim that word, because it’s been used
too violently against me.’
Today, Stewart is anything but awkward. She is relaxed, open, garrulous and
expressive, arms gesticulating as she talks, her voice clear and confident. Take, for
example, how she describes meeting Elizabeth Banks for the first time (Banks
has directed Charlie’s Angels, which comes out in November, featuring Stewart as
one of the leads). The pair happened to be at the same party at the Venice Film
Festival a few years ago. Stewart was dancing, but a little self-conscious. ‘I just
didn’t feel as solid as I do now,’ she says. Banks, by contrast, was having a ball. She
came up to Stewart, told her she was a fan and asked if she was having a good
time. ‘And then she said what would be the most annoying thing to hear from
n a vast downstairs ballroom in the Shangri-La Hotel in Paris, I can hear Kristen Stewart
before I see her, cha ng ing behind a pat ter ned screen in a fa r cor ner.
