about first reading
the book sounds holy
and indoctrinating,
as if Stewart main-
lined the words. “The
way [Yuknavitch]
talks about having a
body, and the shame of having that. The
way that she’s really dirty, embarrassing,
weird, gross, a girl. It was a coming-of-age
story I haven’t seen yet. I grew up watch-
ing fucking American Pie, these dudes
jacking off in their socks like it was the
most normal thing, and it was hilarious.
Imagine a girl coming—it’s like, what,
so scary and bizarre. I feel like I started
reading her stuff, and she was articulating
things that I’m like, ‘Dude, I didn’t have
the words for that, but thank you.’”
She wrote Yuknavitch an email. Their
connection was fast—they both paint it
as fated, like some shared undercurrent.
Stewart has since written and edited a
draft. She’s read it out loud to Yuknavitch
and her husband, who both then cried
and held each other while Stewart threw
her tattered copy of the book across the
room. She was obliterated, relieved.
“It’s harder for me to be an actor as
I’m getting older. I’m more comfortable
in the idea of making something from
top to bottom, rather than giving myself
to [it]. There are cert ain actors who are
out of their minds and so transient in
their presence that they can actually
convince themselves and others of any-
thing,” she says. “I have a harder time
doing that as I get older.”
W
hat nearly capsizes Stew-
art guides her, provokes her
to get scrappy. The Chro-
nology of Water accessed
what Yuknavitch calls Stewart’s “nomad
code.” The actor moved to Portland for a
few weeks and wrote, occasionally parking
outside of Yuknavitch’s home and sleep-
ing in a Sprinter van with her dog Cole.
She tells me that she allows for stuff or
story to occur in time, and for the miracle of
instinct to kick in. “Even if there’s one little
clam to be plucked in a sea of shit, even if
there’s one scene or a line, I need to get
closer to that, I need to live that. There’s
no equation you can really rely on.”
She tells me about the type of film-
maki ng that compels her—that might, I
imagine, function as her compass when
she directs her own film. “I love movies
that don’t proclaim to know anything but
that literally splatter themselves all over
the place, and then somehow, by the
end of it, you realize that the only reason
they were able to do so was because they
were held so preciously by somebody,
in that scaffolding. I love Cassavetes. I
love all the shit that made us think we
can make small movies about things that
aren’t plot-driven. But are soul-driven and
explorative.” She speaks about movies not
romantically, but as the most disclosing
format for arranging what’s unfinished.
I’ve never met anyone so synchro-
nously chill and switched on, shaking
her leg repeatedly but speaking in rapt
chains of thought. She seems deeply
clued into the collateral nature of her
intuition. She’s hung up on getting things
right. Assayas calls her “an actor of the
first take.” And Stewart, reflecting on
her own writing—the script, her poet-
ry—lights up when she tells me there is
nothing more satisfying than finding the
exact word to communicate a feeling. “I
remember being little and getting crazy
anxiety thinking that there were things
that you could never express.” That
particular tension she attaches herself
to—of being open to the unexplained yet
hel l-bent on “nailing it”—is essential to
Stewart’s potency.
“She’s not adapting to anything the
industry will want her to do or anything
an agent in his right mind would ask her
to do. She has been protecting herself,
and she has been able to do only what she
feels is right,” says Assayas, describing
her solo, psychological choreography in
Personal Shopper. “I was scared with the
places she would go.”
Considering that film’s haunted, more
apparitional elements, I ask Stewart: Do
you believe in ghosts? “I talk to them,” she
responds. “If I’m in a weird, small town,
making a movie, and I’m in a strange
apartment, I will literally be like, ‘No,
please, I cannot deal. Anyone else, but it
cannot be me.’ Who knows what ghosts
are, but there is an energy that I’m really
sensitive to. Not just with ghosts, but with
people. People stain rooms all the time.”
Driving her car—a black Porsche Cay-
enne—Stewart navigates narrow roads
and swerving drivers as if she were play-
ing a video game. “Jesus, fuck. Are you
seeing this?” I nod. “What the fuck? This
is not normal.” She grabs the wheel with
both hands: “Move over!” Her flash-
fury rises, but just as quick, expires. We
talk about Jean Seberg’s French. “Her“Who knowswhat ghostsare, butthere isan energy I’msensitive to.Not justwith ghosts,but withpeople.”FANCY FREE
Dress and shoes by
Saint Laure nt by
Anthony Vaccare llo ;
ear rings by H arry
Winston; tight s by
CALZEDONIA.