Kristen Stewart plunks down on a bench,
on the west side of the basin of the res-
ervoir in Silver Lake. She gets comfort-
able, pushing her hair away from her
face. A thicket of short crunchy blonde
that matches her eyebrows, also blonde.
Both are growing out. They are the color
of dead grass, still holding the memory
of its green.
A shorn blonde comes to mind, one
whom Stewart will soon portray: Jean
Seberg in director Benedict Andrews’s
political thriller, Against All Enemies. It
chronicles the late actress’s fatal demise
brought on by the FBI’s surveillance pro-
gram COINTELPRO, which targeted and
tried to discredit Seberg because of her
relationship with Hakim Jamal and the
Black Panther Party. “Even though she
went through circumstantially, really hor-
rific, tragic things, there was something
about [Seberg] that was energetically
undeniable,” says Stewart. “She was so
misunderstood. It’s not like you need to
hero-worship a celebrity, they are just
people you want to look at. The fact that
people stared at her and fixated on things
that were not real, projections: That really
ultimately destroyed her.”
Stewart moves like a writer’s actor,
speaking in gestural Morse. She signals
with her forehead or a messy flip of her
hair, conveys apprehension through
the stiff energy stored in her shoulders
or the round attitude of her chin. Her
green eyes are searching—their under-
tow puffy—her sonic delivery is low-key
and annotative.
She rarely appears awkward in motion
because her control comes loose. Be it
while riding a motorbike in the woods
(Twilight: New Moon) or racing a Mus-
tang wearing denim cutoffs (in a Rolling
Stones video). She tears toward emotional
beats, designing her own architecture of
impatience: climbing out of a car before
it comes to a full stop (Personal Shopper),
exasperatedly listening to a parent (Still
Alice), forgetting to unwrap the utensils
before wiping her face with the napkin
roll (Certain Women), ordering blueberry
pancakes (our breakfast).
In November, Stewart opens the reboot
of Charlie’s Angels very, very blonde, in a
platinum Barbie wig that conceals her
asymmetrical crop. Telling the story of
a systems-engineer whistle-blower who
goes underground and is protected by the
Angels, the action comedy is directed by
Elizabeth Banks (who also plays Bosley)
and costars Naomi Scott and Ella Balin-
ska. Stewart plays Sabina, a Park Avenue
heiress turned international spy. She’s a
lovable doofus, a show-off with a dopey
heart. She has a weakness for chasing bad
guys, is prone to close calls and staying
chill under pressure. She’s always snack-
ing. It’s a comedic turn for Stewart. “I’m
not even like that in real life. [Banks] put
punch lines on my jokes every day. I over-
think stuff, I make everything way too
long. She’s like, ‘Dude, just say it faster.’”
“We wrote her a lot of jokes,” says
Banks. “We also improv’d because I
come from that background, going
all the way back to Wet Hot American
Summer—you find something in a
moment.” Stewart, says Banks, “lands
as many jokes in this movie as any comic
actor.” Banks approached writing for
Stewart as if it were fan fiction. “What
do I want to see Kristen Stewart do in a
movie? Like, the fan in me wants to see
Kristen Stewart do this. And then I would
just make her do it.”
You won’t catch Stewart overacting.
She’s like a circuit breaker. Onscreen, if
she’s eating a sandwich, she’s eating a
sandwich. If she’s trying on a dress, she
isn’t posing. She is the image and then
the cut. She’s understated and actually
cool. The action-packed antics of Char-
lie’s Angels (horse-racing in Istanbul, gun-
play, Krav Maga) intercept the comedy.
The movie never slows, celebrating, as is
the tradition with this franchise, PG diver-
sion: a dance number turned showdown,
spy toys, the color pink, Noah Centineo.
This Charlie’s Angels feels harvested
from the same era as the last one—the
one from 20 years ago, starring Drew
Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy
Liu. That’s a good thing. It’s extra-lite and
pleasantly out of place. The sort of atmo-
sphere that suggests the cast—to put it
plainly—enjoyed working together. I ask
Stewart why she thinks the tone of Char-
lie’s Angels is effective despite the movie’s
early-aughts pep. Her answer is simple.
This is a movie about “women at ease.”
K
risten Jaymes Stewart was
born on April 9, 1990, in Los
Angeles. She grew up in the
San Fernando Valley, to par-
ents she calls “sick,” as in awesome. Their
names are John and Jules (“Better than
J-e-w-e-l-s,” says Stewart), and they work
in film. John is a stage manager and Jules
is a script supervisor. Her brother, Cam-
eron, is a grip. She also grew up with an
extended family of boys whom she calls
brothers. “My parents took in strays,” she
says. “My best friend had a really precari-
ous upbringing and became part of the
family when he was 13. My brother’s real-
ly good friend lived with us all the time.
His mom was best friends with my mom.
It was like we formed a family. There’s
always been an us-and-them vibe, which
is really nice and protective.”
K
60 VANITY FAIR SEPTEMBER 2019
