‘I never valued
the fame thing as
much as I valued
the experiences
I got to do while
working, and
it perplexed me
so much...’
a nyone el se ,’ says Stewa r t , ‘wh ich wa s , “ You’ve g ot to have f u n w it h
it.”’ She grins at the memory. ‘I was like, “No shit! I’m trying.”’
This is how Stewart talks – frank, candid, plenty of swearing.
She seems both sure and totally unafraid of saying what she thinks.
It’s as though something has fallen away: caution, certainly, but also a
former antipathy towards the whole publicity game that has haunted
her on a global scale ever since the extraordinary success of Twilight.
‘Every day I get older, life gets easier,’ she says, smiling broadly.
Stewart was only 18 when the first
Twilight movie came out. As the child of
a script supervisor (her mother) and a
stage manager (her father), she’d spent
time on sets growing up, and had been
acting in films since she was 10 years
old (her first was The Safety of Objects,
quickly followed by Panic Room with
Jodie Foster). But it was the Twilight
franchise that made her internationally
beloved. She and her co-star and then-
boyfriend Robert Patt inson would sit in
press conferences with an expression of
traumatised horror on their faces. They
refused to discuss their relationship, and
in interviews there was often a sense of a
wall going up, of shutters closing. Most of
the time, Stewart looked like she wanted
to run away. ‘When me and Rob were
together, we did not have an example to go by,’ she recalls. ‘So much
was taken from us that, in trying to control one aspect, we were just
like, “No, we will never talk about it. Never. Because it’s ours.”’
After the final Twilight film was released, Stewart’s departure
from the mainstream was pronounced. She acted with Juliette
Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria, a role for which she was the first
American actress to win a César award. Her choices were varied
and unexpected: she played a psychic in Personal Shopper and made
a movie about falling in love in an emotionless society (Equals).
Her career became, as she describes it, ‘the most random game
of hopscotch’. She chose to work with friends instead of big names
and didn’t mind making what she calls ‘weird, risky mistakes’.
But now, in another twist, there’s Charlie’s Angels, her most
mainstream movie for years. The internet
lost its collective mind when the trailer
came out – Kristen Stewart, the ultimate
cool girl, doing stunts, doing comedy. ‘I did
Charlie’s [Angels] because I’m a huge
fan of Liz Banks and I always felt she
vouched for me,’ she explains. ‘I always
felt, like, she doesn’t think I’m a freak.’
It was still an act of friendship, but one
that allowed Stewart to show off her
little-known goof ball side and excep-
tional fighting skills. When her friends
watched the trailer, they told her: ‘Dude,
that’s you. Finally!’
If the idea of Stewart as goof ball seems unlikely, then be reas-
sured: she can still be intense. Looking back on those early years,
and the strange sensation of being an object of fascination in your
teens, makes her reflective. There were plenty of aspects of her fame
that she found daunting, but what confused her was the sense that
her public felt they both knew her and owned her, and then were
let down when she wasn’t who they presumed she was. It was as
though she’d become a character, I suggest. ‘Totally,’ says Stewart.
‘I’ve tried to say this before, and I don’t think I’ve ever articulated
it properly... but people get mad at you because you’re in such a
grand position, so if you don’t hold that up, you don’t deserve
it. I never valued the fame thing as much as I valued the experiences
I got to do while working, and it perplexed me so much... Some
people were like, “You ungrateful asshole!” and I was like, “Yeah,
completely, I don’t want to be famous, I want to do my work!”’
These days, Stewart has mellowed. She knows there will always
be expectations, but she also knows that she doesn’t have to meet
them. When she looks around at younger actors and how they
handle their position – the Instagram activism, the campaigning
zeal, the ability to communicate directly and honestly with their
fans – she’s amazed. ‘They have this insane agency,’ she says. ‘And
the confidence! That is baffling! I’m like, how are you so confident?
You’re so young!’ Sometimes, she’s sceptical: the virtue-signalling