Here is an excerpt of the interview with Kristen where she speaks extensively about her role in Jake Scott’s upcoming film Welcome to the Rileys.

Dazed Digital: You are in the midst of becoming a huge star. There’s a truckload of paparazzi outside the door right now.
Kristen Stewart: Yeah, but you can’t think about it too much because if you think about it too much it is this weird and dreamy fantasy land – you think – ‘ what the hell absurd thing are we doing at 3 o’clock in the morning, with 300 people- pretending to be other people, what the fuck are we doing?

DD: The paparazzi thing is only since Twilight, right?
Kristen Stewart: Yeah since Twilight.  That’s the only reason they’re out there. They find out where I am from the Internet – from Twitter, man! Anyone who wants to know where I am at any given time just has to go on Twitter, it’s so ridiculous!

DD: I assume playing Joan Jett is a lot different experience from Twilight?
Kristen Stewart: It’s so much fun. She’s the ultimate badass. She was the first woman to start her own record label.  Everybody threw her out after the Runaways and was like, ‘Sorry girl, your shticks over’, she was like ‘No, the message stays the same people still want to hear it.’
Who the fuck did that before her? The music industry is brutal. Once there’s one wave, one explosion of a type of music, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and tries to emulate that, so there’s a bunch of shitty versions of other bands. So there’s like shitty versions of everybody!

DD: You identify with this role in more ways than one, I’m sure. The film and music industry are not so far apart.
Kristen Stewart: Yeah, it’s been awesome working on this. I’ve gotten to do a lot of great roles recently. I just made a film in New Orleans- and its going to sound funny because I play a 16 year old street kid prostitute stripper – but it’s the one film so far I mostly identify with. I play such a child, like she has the emotional stability of a 5 year old; she’s in her own little world that she had to close off at a certain point. She’s at that point where she’s not quite over the edge like a lot of those people, and I met a lot of them in New Orleans, talking to people who had done the job for so long.
They’re gone. Like I hate to say that, there is a part of them that is dead inside and it is so sad they can still live a happy life or whatever, but that part is. So she’s not dead, she’s still whole. She’s just really broken and she needs to be put back together, and she needs this guy. James Gandolfini plays this plumber who is grieving the loss of his daughter and is dead inside as well, so she is sort of the catalyst of his awakening and subsequent reuniting with his wife, like she comes out of the house after 8 years. Like this vulgar really fully kid who has her own problems greater than theirs ends up helping to get them to a place where they can continue their lives.
It was the greatest experience on a movie I have ever had. Everyone was tight and it was the greatest crew, Jake Scott, the director, is Ridley Scott’s son.  For some reason on that one, I didn’t stop thinking all day. Now, keep in mind, I had a perfect upbringing, but I know what that feels in some way, to be this character. It was really hard. But they’re really funny and they make the most of it. They’re really great characters.

DD: Is that the best thing about being an actress, playing roles like that.
Kristen Stewart: That and also I meet so many amazing people and I get to work with my friends.

DD: You have any aspirations to do anything else?
Kristen Stewart: I know that will just naturally become other things, other than just acting in movies. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. I write shit or whatever. I am going to make my own movies with my friends, absolutely, and I might not only act in them. But really? I love this, I love what I do, I am definitely going to keep doing it if I feel this way about it. That could stop, but until then, I’m just going to just write, make movies, play music.

Though she’d caught our eye with her piercing turn with Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild last year, it was her Twilight role as Bella Swann, the mortal love of a “vegetarian” vampire named Edward Cullen (a phrase now synonymous in America with “hot, unattainable soul mate”) that showed she was ready for her NYLON cover turn.  Apparently, Superbad director Greg Mottola agrees – he’s cast Kristen opposite Jesse Eisenberg in his new flick Adventureland.

Here’s what Kristen told us about her new life as a bonafide, tabloid-chased celebrity.  Read the new issue of NYLON for even more about the world of a Hollywood veteran, but a very new movie star.

On the Twilight Madness: “Anywhere we’d go for Twilight was a psychotic situation. The sound was deafening, and it’s thoughtless, as well… You get a slew of all these bullshit questions like, ‘What’s it like to kiss a vampire?’ and ‘How much do you love Robert?’ Then you’ll get one that’s actually real, but you’re like, ‘No, I can’t right now, I can’t even consider [it].”

On her memorable David Letterman appearance: “I feel like I have nothing to say on those shows… I’m not good at the funny thing—most people are really great on those shows.  I don’t have a contrived personality that [I can] just pump out [for] a five-minute segment, so I end up sitting there and looking kind of baffled.  Embarassing.”

And no, she’s not dating Robert Pattinson. “It’s just totally false… Rob and I are good friends.  We went through a lot together, so we feel very close.  But if we go out in public, every little detail is scrutinized, like the way I stand next to him.  And it’s like, I know this guy really fucking well [laughs].  It’s only natural that we’re sort of leaning on each other, because we’re put in the most fucking psychotic situations.”

On who she’s actually dating: “He’s older than me—he’s 20 now—but when you’re 13 and he’s turning 16, it was always sort of an out-of-reach thing.  Then you get a little older, and you realize, ‘Oh, What the fuck am I thinking?  I can have you, like, lickity…’” she snaps her fingers, laughing.  “He’s awesome.”

Did you have any idea when you signed up for this movie how big it was going to become?

No. I mean, we knew that it had a really devoted fan base but we thought it was pretty small and thought it was exclusive. Like a culty thing. It’s a small studio and small budget. We all thought it was rather quaint. It’s a character-driven piece. We didn’t have a whole bunch of money for all the stunts and effects. We had no idea.

There’s been all this madness following you in America on the promotional tour for Twilight. Did you find that easy or hard to deal with?

I’m really not good at it. Some people are great at it. It’s like the other side of the job. I can’t believe I have to do it. It makes it easier because I’m really proud of the movie and I’m a fan of the book as well.

So it’s weird to see people mainly my age flipping out over Rob [Pattinson] walking into the room. He shifts in his seat and they all just go crazy. It’s a little daunting.

How do you deal with that? Do you take the mickey out of Robert all the time for the reaction he gets?

Oh my god. All the time. Constantly. It’s like, ‘Rob. Touch your hair again’.

The two of you have an amazing chemistry in the film. Did you have to try out with a lot of actors before that?

I had four guys that I auditioned with. They cut it down to who they really liked. There was no question by the end of them. He [Robert Pattinson] was the last one to come in. He understood the character. He didn’t come in and try to be this perfect looking being. He actually looked like he was thinking about something and he actually looked at me, instead of just hoping that he looked good at that moment and was fixated on his pose. He was quite perfect for it.

Your first scene together is almost quite comical. Robert Pattinson almost looks pained trying to control his feelings for you. Did that make you laugh?

It’s so funny. We thought we were being so intense and serious. We watched the film and everyone was laughing. It was like, ‘Oh my god. This is actually quite funny’. We didn’t picture it like that at all.

The film does actually have quite a few laughs in it, mainly from the individual characters at your high school. Was that intentional?

They were allowed to go for it. It was so cool. They could have been very undefined kids that go to school. They’re all individuals. Angela’s a photographer. I don’t think that’s in the book.

Your character, Bella Swan, is very intense when she first arrives and very moody. How did you get into character?

Yeah. She’s sort of happy being solitary. She doesn’t intentionally try to push people away. I think sometimes when you’re quiet and shy, you just come across pensive. I can fully relate to that. People are always asking me what’s wrong and I’m like, ‘Wow. Nothing. Absolutely nothing is wrong’. It’s weird.

I think there’s something innate. People are attracted to her. It’s weird. We always joked about it. If she were to become a vampire, she would be the ultimate queen vampire because she’s strong. Nobody can get into her mind. Edward [Cullen] can’t read her mind. She has all of these traits that are superior. But yet she’s completely unaware of them.

There are lots of fun parts in this film too, especially the stunts when you go into the tree tops. Was that fun to do or was that done in a studio?

We were in the trees the whole time. We had one day that they added on at the end of green screen, and I don’t even think they use it. Me and Rob probably look ridiculous and confused, like, ‘What are we doing in front of this big, green blob?’. So we were actually in the trees. It was cool. It was freezing cold. If I was afraid of heights then it would probably would have been a problem.

The round of interviews to promote a movie and help make millions for the studio can be demanding and it is easy to forget just how young some of the stars really are. Stewart is learning all about those demands with Twilight, the first film adaptation of the book series written by Stephenie Meyer. “It is the hardest thing,” she says of the levels of press attention now focused on her.

If you have a daughter aged 11 to 15 you may well be aware of the Twilight phenomenon. The books (four in total) have sold more than 17 million copies worldwide, and are the tale of the love between a vampire with a “Blue Steel” pout called Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and a slightly offbeat schoolgirl, Bella (Stewart). It’s The Lost Boys for the tween generation, minus the fangs and blood.

While her co-star Pattinson has become the latest teen heartthrob, Stewart is learning that not everyone wants to be her friend as they compete for the attentions of her on-screen love interest.

“We have to do autograph signings occasionally and usually everyone is so nice and excited but sometimes they just walk by and if their expressions spoke they would say, ‘We’re not here for you, we’re here for Rob. Don’t think you’re so special. We don’t even want your autograph’.”

She’s aware that doing a movie with such a huge following as this, and the sequels that will follow, brings with it a pressure that she hasn’t experienced before. “Normally if you do a movie and it touches people or says something to somebody then you say, ‘Great; cool; we did that for a reason’. And if it doesn’t then you say, ‘OK, we’ll go and do another one’. In this case that’s not an option. If people didn’t like it, then it would really be a big failure.”

Stewart, so small she appears almost to be engulfed by the large sofa she’s sitting on, seems to be your classic indie-girl. She’s extremely pretty, but doesn’t have on much, if any, make-up. She has a wry, self-deprecating sense of humour and talks of her guitar playing (“I’m not good”), her love of the Beatles and her fondness for classic literature rather than teen books like Twilight. “But this isn’t really a teen novel. It appears to be but it’s not,” she makes sure to clarify.

Like Ellen Page, who was nominated for her performance in Juno last year, Stewart is part of a new brigade of young actresses who are seeking to be taken seriously for their acting rather than being some glitzed-up marketing package.

She began performing as a young child and claims that she “fell into acting” in the way that only someone who grew up in Los Angeles really can. She was spotted singing at a school concert by an agent and was encouraged to go to some auditions. “I was vehemently turned away from all of the kiddie auditions,” says Stewart. “I never got any commercials or anything on the Disney Channel. I was always much too serious.”

She started to get some movie roles, including playing Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room. Foster is the actress she is often compared to, but after starring alongside her and studying her every move, Stewart then had to return to school, which she discovered had now become an uncompromising world.

“It was terrible. I hated going back to school. I did Panic Room when I was in the sixth grade. Even though it was just one movie and wasn’t a big deal, people would come up and scream at me in the halls. People were actually mean. They weren’t nice at all and I got all this attention and so I just changed schools. I thought it was people who I’d grown up with just being rude, but it still continued. Kids are mean. It was terrible.”

Aside from Foster, Stewart has worked with Sean Penn on Into the Wild and recently played Robert De Niro’s daughter in What Just Happened? — established figures who, she says, she watches to see exactly how they operate. Despite growing up in LA, as the daughter of an assistant director and a script supervisor, she is still learning what’s on offer as an actress.

“Recently, I had a meeting with Warren Beatty about a movie that he wants to do and he said a brilliant thing to me, which he said he had told Jodie. He said, ‘Access. You have access to everything now. Use it. Do something. Don’t just be an actor.’

“That word now is resonating. Access. I mean, it’s true. F***ing actors, man. They can pick up the phone and talk to anybody. It’s ridiculous. I don’t want to sit on a big pile of f***ing money and not do anything with it.”

She has just signed up to play Joan Jett in a movie about The Runaways, where her guitar playing will be tested to the limit. She also begins work on a movie called K-11 next year, which will be directed by her mother. Stewart is looking forward to it, but says it will be a “weird” experience.

She’s also learning the hard way about how her life is changing: recently long-lens photographs of her apparently smoking marijuana were posted on the internet, which can’t have pleased the film executives who are pitching her as a tween role model.

She is also seeing actor Michael Angarano and is finding out that a relationship such as this, along with her flourishing career, is enough to spark the interest of tabloid editors, who want photos of the couple eating lunch, shopping in the supermarket and any other mundane activity. The plus side is that as soon as Twilight’s hardcore following find out, she’ll no longer have to deal with those jealous fans.

‘Twilight‘ is in cinemas nationwide from Friday

The 18-year-old Twilight star has found herself catapulted to instant fame following the success of the film in the States, with her face on everything from badges to bags and posters.

But she said: “I’m pretty low-profile. I can go out I don’t ever get recognised by anybody.”

She added she wasn’t bothered about the attention surrounding the film.

“It’s fine,” she said. “On one hand you have to be wary now who wants to work with you, maybe you have a little bit more pull, now you’re going get your movie made with me. But I only want to work with people that really inspire me and just have the right artistic thing going.”

Twilight tells the story of Kristen’s character Bella Swan, who falls for vampire Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson.

But Kristen feels she is different to her character.

“The point of her is she’s like the generally relatable character, you project yourself on to her,” she said. “I guess if I was to put myself into this position it might be a little bit different but she’s very sure about everything she feels and thinks.

“She’s naive about the whole world of vampires, but she’s willing to submerse herself in it. I think I might be a little more over-analytical.”

Twilight is out in the UK on Friday.

All Meyer had to do was say the name “Edward,” Hardwicke said, and the room would erupt in screams.

But the prospect of translating the story — in which Bella finds the unlikeliest of soul mates after moving to small-town Washington for her junior year of high school — was intriguing to Hardwicke for its bigger themes about the perils of first love and the turmoil of adolescence, all told from its heroine’s point of view.

Specifically, she said, she wanted to try to capture the power of Meyer’s “obsessive prose.”

“I appreciate that time as a time of extreme turmoil,” Hardwicke said. “Your body changes, you can kiss a boy, you can kiss a girl, you can drive a car, you can drink. There’s so much drama. It’s when you discover who you are. I liked just being drawn into this world, and I wanted to see how I could create that on film.”

Hardwicke might be in her early 50s, but she radiates a creative boho spark more common to a recent college grad. Her Venice Beach home has a gorgeous funky aesthetic, a sort of radical second-hand chic. These days, her coffee table is covered with magazines, many of their covers touting the upcoming premiere of Twilight, her fourth feature, which begins showing at theaters across the country at midnight tonight.

A former production designer, Hardwicke’s filmography is centered around teenagers: She remains best known for her wrenching 2003 directorial debut Thirteen, a tiny indie production about a nice girl who goes off the rails at the onset of adolescence that garnered Holly Hunter a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a single mom desperate to save her daughter from herself.

Two subsequent films, Lords of Dogtown and “The Nativity Story,” failed to generate the same kind of stir, but Twilight has more stir than many filmmakers ever encounter. It’s been hailed as the heir to the “ Harry Potter” phenomenon, though the four books in Meyer’s series, which has sold about 17 million copies worldwide, represents only a fraction of J.K. Rowling’s wizard chronicles.

Still, readers connect to the material in a powerful, palpable way: At the movie’s Monday night premiere in Westwood, fans from all across the country, some of whom camped out overnight to catch a glimpse of the young, relatively unknown cast, thronged the streets, screaming as the actors arrived to walk a fairly mammoth red carpet. Newly minted heartthrob Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward, easily earned the loudest reception.

As Bella, actress Kristen Stewart, who won accolades for her supporting turn as a free-spirited love child in Sean Penn’s 2007 drama “Into the Wild,” is tasked with creating a character grounded enough to anchor the more fantastic elements of the story but also with believably conveying Bella’s undying devotion to Edward without making her seem weak or passive.

“She really has a depth that’s almost unbelievable,” Hardwicke said of the actress. “For me it could not have been a really cute TV actress; it just couldn’t have been. The way people feel connected to the books, you have to have somebody with that depth, that passion.”

Stewart said she found Hardwicke’s perspective and guidance key during the shoot, particularly when it came time to film the more keenly emotional scenes between Bella and Edward.

“You need to be in a really particular place to give so much, just because it’s so honest,” Stewart said by phone, calling from the East Coast, where she was promoting the movie. “Catherine helped me. She has a wisdom about her that is very childlike in that it is fundamental. She put me in a place that was open enough to realize that if you’re really going to say to someone that you love them and that you want to die for them then that’s what you should say. It really should be simple and down to it.”

Hardwicke actually spent time running through some of the most critical scenes with the actors in her home. Stewart and Pattinson famously rehearsed Bella and Edward’s first kiss on Hardwicke’s bed, for example.

Capturing the romance on film on location in the Pacific Northwest was daunting at times, Hardwicke said. Stewart, then 17, was only allowed to work 5 1/2 hours daily, and the erratic weather, an unending cycle of sleet, hail, rain and sunshine, created more headaches.

“There were some very dark moments making this personally,” Hardwicke said. “But it got done and I’m as proud of it as I can be under the circumstances, the constraints and the issues. Every time you have a big challenge, a personally difficult situation, and you survive it, that’s good.”

Hardwicke said she was thrilled to have the opportunity to do action scenes involving stunt work and visual effects, two things that will play a much bigger part in any potential Twilight sequel. Distributor Summit Entertainment has suggested that should the film make upward of $150 million at the U.S. box office, it will most likely move forward with at least one follow up: Meyer’s second book in the series, New Moon, which involves a trip to Italy, a group of shape-shifters and plenty more raw emotion and teen angst. (There’s already an online campaign underway to make sure the movie hits that target.)

Though the filmmaker said she was optimistic about revisiting the characters’ epic romance, she’s more focused now on, hopefully, having delivered a film that will live up to the sky-high expectations of Meyers’ readers.

“At Christmas last year, I was in Oregon at a party and helping clean up, washing dishes,” Hardwicke recalled. “There were two girls who were like 11 and 12. They spent an hour talking about Edward’s soul in great detail, really trying to figure out his humanity, his connection [to Bella], how vampires could have evolved the way humans evolved. I thought, ‘It’s pretty cool that these girls have read the books and are discussing this. I better do a good job on this movie!’ “

In our one-on-one interview with the actress, she talks about her first impressions of Stephenie Meyer’s teen love story, answers for calling some of movie’s dialogue corny, and talks about whether she’s game to do the sequels.

As the movie’s premiere nears, are you starting to feel pressure from the fans? Are you nervous about what they’ll think of your take on Bella?

I’m just as passionate about the book as the fans are, so it’s sort of weird to be addressed like, “Don’t mess this up for us!” Like, wow, I don’t want to mess it up for myself either.

What was your first impression of Twilight?

I read a synopsis of the story before I read the script or the book — and I hated it. I didn’t want to be a part of something that presents this really ideological idea of love to so many young people. The synopsis made Bella so weak, as though the only reason she wanted to be with Edward was because he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, because he could take care of her, because she didn’t have to be brave because he could be brave for her.

I don’t know who wrote that synopsis, but that is not the story. Once I read the script, I begged for an audition. The script showed completely different sides to the characters. It fleshed them out. You see that the power balance between Edward and Bella is actually really skewed and more interesting. We have a girl who is insanely naive and has no idea what she’s getting into, yet she trusts herself enough to put stock in what she feels and gives up the power to him. And he’s afraid and tortured and entirely conflicted, whereas she’s not. She becomes the assertive force in the relationship. It’s an ambitious thing to try to portray the ultimate love story, and I thought it would be a good project.

You begged for the audition, but in Entertainment Weekly, you said that you had to say some of the “corniest” dialogue you’ve ever had in a movie. Director Catherine Hardwicke also said if you didn’t feel comfortable saying something, you wouldn’t. She encouraged you to improvise. How much did you change?

We changed everything. There wasn’t one scene we didn’t touch. There were many occasions, really quiet parts of the movie when it’s just Edward and Bella together, where I was like, “Alright, we’re not saying any of the lines. We’re just going to do the whole scene with no lines.”

But, at the same time, some of those “corny lines,” it was just me being self-conscious. Those wrenching fundamental emotions, I mean how else do you express them? How else do you say, “I love you”? How else do you say, “I want to die for you”? I mean, those are really dramatic lines, but when expressed in that context, there really is no other way to say it. Catherine really helped me with that. She put me in the right position and sort of forced me to go there. You have to be so exposed, so entirely cracked open and vulnerable to able to give like that. So on the page it was really corny, but we worked it out.

Edward and Bella are pretty intense the way you describe them. Was it an intense set?

(Laughs) I take myself way too seriously. Rob and I got in a lot of trouble every day because the studio would say we weren’t smiling enough and we weren’t happy enough and we weren’t having enough fun. But you have to keep in mind what Edward and Bella are going through.

How did the two of you prepare?

Everybody’s talking about the prep like we had so much research to do and so much work to do (laughs). We just wanted to understand the story the best we could because a lot of it is really hard to wrap your head around. There were a lot of things to justify. There was also a lot of vampire mythology to get straight: Our vampires have superpowers. Our vampires don’t breathe, but they can smell.

We wanted to keep the responsiveness between the two of us acute and specific, not just like he could be some guy and I could be some girl. This is excruciating, painful stuff. When Edward touches Bella, it hurts him, it burns him. For her, it’s the opposite, like she vies for it, and when he walks in a room it’s literally magnetic. The physicality of it is entirely different, so getting all of that stuff straight was a lot of our prep time.

We just read the story a lot and sat up nights talking about Last Tango in Paris (laughs). We talked about how to find similar dynamics.

You also have said that you don’t want to do a “big movie” after Twilight but if Twilight does well, the sequels will be no doubt be bigger and more expensive. Do you want to continue playing Bella?

Yeah, I enjoyed playing Bella. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t want to follow Bella for a while. It’s not like signing on to a TV series. That would be too much of a gamble because you don’t have control over how the content will turn out or how it will end. But with Twilight I get to tackle something for a really long time and there’s an end to it.

How are you dealing with the fans? You have a few stops on the Twilight mall tour this week in Virginia and New Jersey, where you’ll be the only cast member attending.

I’ve only had a couple of occasions where I’ve had to deal with the craze. Rome being one, Comic-Con being the other. At Comic-Con, we were entirely separated from them, and that’s how it should be. I know Summit’s trying to promote the frenzy, but I’m going to tell them, “Yo, you have to protect us from this.” I’ll have big bodyguards.

In Rome, I was literally thrown into a van. I was being held by my arms by two big security guys, and they were getting pushed over by these 15-year-old girls, and they let me go for like a second, and I just got enveloped. The bodyguards had to pick me up and shove me into the van. But then the van starts rocking because the barricades had broken down and they swarmed the car. It was totally scary.

What do you love about acting? Why do you do it?

There’s really no way to put this: Because I have to. I’m not a performer, I can’t do a song and dance for you, I don’t like “entertaining” people, that’s not why I do it. Acting is such a personal thing, which is weird because at the same time it’s not. It’s for the consumption of other people. But in terms of creative outlets and expressing yourself, it’s just the most extreme version of that that I’ve ever found. It’s like running, it’s exertion. When you reach that point where you can’t go anymore and you stop and you take a breath, it’s that same sort of clearing of the mind.

And when you get to study something else and understand someone else and completely lose yourself in it, you feel a certain responsibility. Or at least I do, because if you don’t bring that character to life the right way, then nobody else gets to see them or experience what you did.

How do you think your newfound celebrity is going to help you? Are you worried about losing your anonymity?

This is going to make it so much easier for me to not be gutted every time a movie that I’m in love with is never getting off the ground. I never again have to sit around and wait for a movie to get money and then become too old for the role. That I don’t think is going to happen anymore, and that I’m very thankful for.

As for losing my anonymity, I think I’ll be fine. I keep a low profile. I mean, you’re asking for it if you’re at Le Deux every night. So stupid. Just don’t hang out in Hollywood!

She begins with a disclaimer. ”I usually don’t look like such a skank,” Kristen Stewart says, fanning out 10 dirt-caked fingernails. Fresh off her star turn as innocent, lovestruck Bella Swan in Twilight, the 18-year-old actress — best known as the hippie chick in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild — is researching a very different movie role at the moment, that of a young stripper. She’s been spending time at a run-down strip club in New Orleans’ French Quarter called Dixie Divas, taking in the show and learning how to gyrate around a pole, though she doesn’t shed many layers. ”I danced on the bar there three nights this week, and my legs are covered in bruises,” Stewart says proudly. ”Hopefully, the Twilight fans won’t totally freak out.”

Stewart has every right to be concerned. Ever since Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling series of supernatural romance novels spawned a nation of Twilighters, millions of girls (and their moms) have followed the first book’s journey to the screen. Casting the schoolgirl was every bit as perilous as casting the vampire. Fortunately, director Catherine Hardwicke was roundly cheered when she zeroed in on Stewart to play Bella, a shy, ordinary 17-year-old every-mortal. The actress’ agents, of course, were doing backflips when they heard the news. Stewart herself wasn’t so sure how she felt about being at the center of a cultural tsunami. She’s still not. ”It’s just surreal to be a crucial part of a machine like this,” says Stewart, over a lunch of raw oysters and po’boys. ”I’m sort of the vessel. The book is what it is because of these girls’ obsession with [Edward] through me. If I wasn’t right, I’d be persecuted, and put on a cross.”

Not exactly the breathless enthusiasm you might expect from a young actress in the kind of big, splashy blockbuster that could launch her onto young Hollywood’s A list. Stewart is Kate Winslet on the eve of Titanic‘s release or, at the very least, Shia LaBeouf pre-Transformers. But then again, she isn’t much seduced by hype. ”I don’t want to do something that’s just a big moneymaker,” says the actress, who has worked steadily for nearly a decade but hasn’t appeared in a genuine hit since her breakthrough role, at age 11, as Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room. Instead, she’s built up indie credibility by working with an impressive array of top-tier directors like Mike Figgis (Cold Creek Manor), Jon Favreau (Zathura), and Doug Liman (Jumper), among others. She also scored a moderate success with last year’s paranormal horror flick The Messengers. ”I just want to make sure Twilight‘s worth the ginormous attention it receives,” says Stewart. ”Everyone said this is a big-deal movie. But I hate when people celebrate before you have something to celebrate about.”

Stewart says she was drawn to the Twilight role not because of the books’ ginormous popularity — ”I figured it was a little cult vampire movie with a built-in fan base” — but because she loved the idea of playing a teenage girl experiencing animal attraction for the first time. ”What I love about the story is that it’s about a very logical, pragmatic girl who you think would never get swept into something that has this bizarre power.”

After being cast, Stewart performed a pivotal love scene on Hardwicke’s bed with the four leading contenders for the role of Edward, including Robert Pattinson. ”Catherine liked a couple of the guys, and I was like, ‘Are you joking? I can’t do the movie unless Rob does it,”’ Stewart says. ”He got it, and we could, like, see each other.” As Hardwicke puts it, ”She would have strangled me if I didn’t pick him.”

During the shoot, the pair ended up taking the roles — and themselves — a little too seriously. They spent hours deconstructing what it meant to be a vampire, and what it meant to be in love with one. The result: big-time angst, both on screen and off. At one point, the studio began to worry their young stars had mistaken this for a Bergman movie instead of a romantic teen fairy tale. ”We were like, ‘We’re going to play this real’ and the studio was like, ‘But it’s fun. Lighten up!”’ says Stewart, who launches into an imaginary rant at the studio suits: ”You knew what you were getting when you hired actors who aren’t Disney kids! We’re actually going to consider the characters, and not just smile on our marks, and hope we’re in focus.”

Stewart, who was just 17 when she shot the movie, was uncompromising about what she’d allow her character to do and say. ”We had to rewrite and improvise a lot of the most intense scenes, because Kristen will not say something if she doesn’t feel good about it,” recalls Hardwicke. ”Kristen is very tough and she does not tolerate bulls—.” Stewart just feels like she was doing her job. ”I had some of the corniest lines I’ve ever had in this film,” says the actress, who was keen to tone down some of the over-the-top declarations of ”I will die for you!” love. ”We were so awkward saying those lines. Catherine was like, ‘Just feel it and say what comes to you.”’

All this might sound like arrogance in someone else, but after spending time with Stewart, she seems like a genuine rebel spirit looking to do good work. Even now, as Twilight threatens to elevate her to the top of the marquee, she’s not that curious about how far fame will take her. She’d prefer to chart her own course. ”Look what I’m doing here in New Orleans,” she says. Playing a stripper in a film that doesn’t yet have distribution. ”I told my agent, ‘I’m not doing a big movie after Twilight.”’ Because she’s got that kind of offhand confidence, it’s easy to forget that Stewart’s barely old enough to vote. She has an eerie calm about her for someone about to undergo a high dose of sudden celebrity. ”For no real reason,” she says with a shrug, ”I just feel like it won’t be a problem.”

Kristen Stewart had quite a task ahead of her when she was cast to play Bella Swan, the love interest of vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Let’s hope she can deliver the goods and give a performance that is both entertaining to those not familiar with the books and satisfies Twilight’s diehard fans. How does Stewart feel of the daunting task of living up to their expectations?

“I think that you can’t hold that too high; I think you have to be the creative person that you are in the first place and consider that second,” Stewart reveals. “While in this case you are shooting a book—I mean, we tried to stay true to the book without fixating on details that the fans were obsessed with. They should be happy with the general integrity of the story. I mean, we haven’t changed a thing, and we did the best we could. But yeah, I think that’s maybe not a good idea to—because they’re so fanatical, I mean, fanatical. And their opinions differ.”

Sounds like Stewart is handling the pressure just fine. One of the keys to making a successful screen adaptation is realizing that you’re not going to please everyone. Some fan somewhere is going to notice a missed detail, criticize an “inaccurate portrayal” of a character, or complain about an omitted scene. Stewart realizes what she’s up against, and yet she seems unfazed. She knows the best thing to do is to just do the best job you can and remember why you became an actor in the first place.

“I feel like it’s something that I’ve really just stepped into,” says Stewart. “And, I don’t know, if you sit back and consider why I’m doing this, it’s more about stories. I read stories, and if there’s a character in it that needs to be—I have to be really compelled to do something, or it just will be terrible. I don’t know, it’s just something that feels good; it’s just something that is—it’s actually quite hard to describe. I don’t know, I just have to do it. It’s fun.”

Another key to a successful adaptation is to remember who your audience is. I think it’s a safe bet to say that Twilight targets teenage girls more than middle-aged men. I don’t know, call it intuition, but that’s the vibe I get from the trailers and such. Don’t agree with me? Here’s what Kristen said when asked if she thinks Twilight is a story aimed more towards girls:

“I think that girls are definitely—I mean, obviously—more enthralled with, like, the lovely ideas, like, especially when they’re younger,” explains Stewart. “But it’s a very high-stakes—I mean, it’s a fight for the love. It’s not—the love is like the ultimate, sort of ideal, far-out goal. But to get there is hard. I mean, it’s a fight; it’s definitely a struggle, so maybe they’ll be interested in that, you know?”

Okay, so maybe Twilight is poised to reach a larger audience. We are dealing with vampires after all. But beyond the occult, Twilight deals with plenty of teen issues. So many, in fact, that the very filming Twilight took its toll on Stewart.

“It was a very—it was a heavy movie to live through, you know, to, like, go through such things as were going on in the movie,” says Stewart. “It’s like the most intense version of a teenager’s life that you can—it’s like taking everything and just putting it up here.”

Sounds draining. People often don’t realize the difficulty of being an actor and living someone else’s life for months at a time. Being the living embodiment of a character that has to go through as much as Bella does can be both emotionally and physically exhausting. The emotional tax is obvious. And after watching the previews, the physical tax is pretty obvious as well.

Remember, we’re dealing with vampires here: beings that are blessed with incredible speed and strength. Stewart talks a little about the action scenes of Twilight.

“There’s a couple sequences (when) we’re on wires a little bit of the time,” begins Stewart. “He’s super fast—the vampire—super strong and super fast. So there’s wire work and a big fight scene.”

“I always have fun doing that kind of stuff,” she continues. “It’s a challenge. It’s a different kind of workday ahead. It’s physically and emotionally strenuous.”

So now that Twilight is being released, what of the rest of the books in the series? Is there a follow-up in the works? Would Stewart game to take part in a sequel?

“Yeah, I would love—I mean, you know. I think they’re planning on combining two of them, which I’m not sure which ones they’re gonna be. But yeah, I would love—it’s a good—it’s a very complete story. I would be very happy to do that.”

It’s as if Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s valiant afterschool activities went for naught. For seven seasons (1997–2003), Sarah Michelle Gellar’s girl-power prodigy “Buffy Summers” stalked and staked nearly every bulbous head with bared incisors menacing the graveyard mists and nightclub shadows of Sunnydale, a mission climaxing in the series finale with an Armageddon showdown where the outnumbered forces of light faced off against the pale legions of darkness and emerged torn and scraped, but victorious. Yet here we are, only a few years after Buffy retired her pointy stick, up to our glazed eyeballs with the children of Dracula. Perhaps this fresh profusion of vampires is representative of a pop culture that is sucking itself dry—draining the last drops out of a pulp genre, having exhausted its creative resources—or perhaps it testifies to the procreative power of gothic sensibility to regenerate fear and eros and reclaim the night. A batch of vampire serials are running concurrently in the publishing world, such as the Buffy novelizations, Vampire Academy, The Morganville Vampires, Vampire Kisses, The Vampire Diaries, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, and Charlaine Harris’s “Southern Vampire Mysteries,” the last being the sultry inspiration for the new HBO series True Blood, adapted by Alan Ball (whose previous HBO show, Six Feet Under, established his bona fides in the queasy-mortality department). But the undisputed golden calf of the vampire cotillion is Stephenie Meyer’s “The Twilight Saga,” a blockbuster bloodsucker series that has helped fill the yearning void left by the boarding up of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter wizard shop. Commercially, “The Twilight Saga” has given book publishing a blood transfusion, with sales topping seven million copies worldwide; it’s also a global sensation, translated into 20 languages. The physical properties of the books themselves may explain their popularity. They’re thick, chunky, promising a fat read—you don’t so much curl up with them as gulp them down.

Where True Blood is steamed in the sweat, mildew, and cheap swill of its neon-pit-stop, honky-tonk Louisiana locale (everyone except Anna Paquin’s Buffy-esque heroine and her black B.F.F. looks a little lank), “The Twilight Saga” shivers under the cloud canopy of rainy northwest Washington State, where the gray-green light and damp haze make it hard to tell the people from the mushrooms. A teenage “adult child” of divorce, Isabella Swan—everybody calls her Bella—migrates from the glassy sprawl of Phoenix, Arizona, to move in with her father, a police chief who watches a lot of sports on TV in lieu of having a personality. On her first day at a new high school, always an awkward initiation rite, Bella discovers an ethereal clique occupying a corner table in the cafeteria, ready for their photo shoot. “[Their] faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine.” Perhaps the most beautiful, fashion-modelly of the lunch bunch is Edward, Bella’s future and forever vampire lover, a high-cheekboned cross between Rudolf Nureyev and Chris Isaak in their princely prime, whose irises change color according to his moody moods (“Anger flashed in his tawny eyes”). Presumably flossing after every forest kill (ecologically correct, Edward feeds in the wild only on four-legged predators not on the endangered-species list), this immortal vial of pure mystique is a dental hygienist’s delight: “He smiled widely, flashing a set of perfect, ultrawhite teeth.” Which complement his perfect, ultra-white skin, Edward’s immaculate physique resembling an ice statue carved out of frozen milk by Michelangelo and irradiated with moonlight, putting nature itself in the shade: “The meadow, so spectacular to me at first, paled next to his magnificence.” Edward offers more than splendor in the grass. An ace driver and aerial gymnast, he also excels as a composer and pianist, emo’s answer to Chopin. “And then his fingers flowed swiftly across the ivory, and the room was filled with a composition so complex, so luxuriant, it was impossible to believe only one set of hands played.” No portrait in fine-fingered elegance (“Finished with the last bite of lasagna, I lifted a glass and chugged the remains of my milk”), Bella rues the disparity between his spectral aura and her clay form. “He looked like a god. I looked very average, even for a human, almost shamefully plain.” Yet Edward is captivated by Bella’s heavenly scent (“You smell so good in the rain”) and craves her company (“I crave your company”), his “cold, marble lips” intended only for her hot little pucker.

Compared with the pop medievalism of the Buffyverse, the secret order of occult society in Anne Rice’s Lestat series, and the evolving sexual mores of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter (are werewolves suitable bedmates?), Meyer’s “Twilight Saga” is light on bloodsucking lore, heavy on high-school humdrum. “My fourth hour class got out late, and the lunch table I always sat at was full by the time I arrived. Mike was there, Jessica and Angela, Conner, Tyler, Eric and Lauren. Katie Marshall, the redheaded junior who lived around the corner from me, was sitting with Eric, and Austin Marks—older brother to the boy with the motorcycles—was next to her.” Glad we got those seating arrangements sorted out! Vampires aside, “The Twilight Saga” is primarily young-adult fiction for unjaded palates, another rendition of the classic courtship tale about a modest duckling (with strength of character that sets her apart from the shallow and silly) who falls under the spell of a black swan of a man and, after much sparring, melts his Rochester/Mr. Darcy reserve. Here it is not a haughty man with the secret hurt that makes him vulnerable and attainable, but a beautiful boy at the peak of his slender translucence, which gives “The Twilight Saga” a gay crossover appeal. Everything a girl could want in one dreamy envelope, Edward is the answer to a princess’s prayers—doting, fiercely protective, carrying his beloved great distances in his arms like a groom forever crossing the honeymoon threshold. In the novels it gets monotonous having Bella sigh over how breathtaking Edward is every time he materializes, subjecting the reader to dumb-bunny clunkers such as this beaut: “Edward stood in the halo of the porch light, looking like a male model in an advertisement for raincoats.”

Happily, the forthcoming film of Twilight (based on a sample tasting) sweeps away the trite chatter of Bella’s interior monologue and the clumpy pace of Meyer’s storytelling with one swoop of the camera across the mist-wreathed pine forests of the Pacific Northwest, the forsaken terrain of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The de-saturated colors create an instant emotional climate of hooded intentions, muffled instincts. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, whose Thirteen displayed an intimate feel for the loose-limbed, tense-nerved clamor of teenage hormones, Twilight is engulfed in sidelong looks and tentative touches, leaving the rough sex and parody of identity politics to True Blood (where vampires “come out of the coffin” to demand citizenship rights) and going for the full unabashed primal romanticism of first love. Watching the footage made me feel like a 14-year-old girl again. Let me rephrase that. Oh, forget it. Despite the predictable squalling on some of the Twilight fanblogs, the two leads are impeccably cast. Kristen Stewart, who excelled in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, is quietly pretty and believably guarded-yet-intrigued, more sympathetic and relatable-to than the spoiled vamps of The Hills and Gossip Girl. And she has that Mary-Louise Parker tipped-upper-lip thing going, which is never harmful.

If Kristen Stewart is a perfect fit for Bella, the film’s Edward makes for a vaulting improvement over the novels’. In “The Twilight Saga,” Edward is a superior entity given to frequent snickering (“He snickered, shaking his head”) and chuckling (“‘Kryptonite doesn’t bother me, either,’ he chuckled”). And who wants a snickering, chuckling vampire, no matter how poetically he drinks in the music of Debussy? A controversial casting choice, Robert Pattinson, familiar from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, should rout the doubters with his performance and presence, investing Edward with a troubled hesitancy and a sly, deflective humor that suggest a post-Method actor without the mumbles. When Pattinson’s Edward emerges in the school parking lot, wearing sunglasses and slinging his arm around Bella, he’s the troubled 50s adolescent of fast cars and rebel cool reincarnated—the James Dean of the undead, with a jot of the Dylanesque. (In biology class, an owl’s pale wing seems to sprout from Edward’s shoulder, denoting his fallen-angel allure.) Together, Stewart and Pattinson seem to be sharing the same opium reverie (the modern vampire saga is often a junkie narrative in naked disguise—see Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction), with Stewart receiving the more powerful high, her eyes dimming out when she gets too close. There’s wit in their tentative exchanges. How old are you? she asks Edward. “Seventeen.” How long have you been 17? she presses. Pause. “Awhile.” But so what if Edward was born in 1901—the important thing is, he cares. Threatening to tear these two apart (literally) are the lusty appetite and savage glee of a vampire nomad named James (Cam Gigandet), ready to dine on Bella’s wrist as if it were a delectable lamb chop. She’s good eatin’, as Sarah Palin might say, and he’s a real sickie—evil, bad, mean, and inconsiderate, a camcorder gripped in his hand like a rock as he prepares to make Bella a virgin sacrifice in his own nasty brand of vampire porn. (The bite he leaves on her wrist is shaped like a bloody horseshoe.) It’s Edward to the rescue, and one of the unintended lessons of Twilight is that America has gotten so moribund that it’s the undead who come through in the clutch while the living go through their daily paces oblivious. They have more vitality and clarity than the average breather. The vampire clan in Twilight even has elevated taste in architecture—no gewgawed McMansion for them! Twilight is the Brideshead Revisited of the fanged and forever young.

Interview

VF Daily: Had you read the Twilight books before getting the script?
No, I hadn’t. I didn’t read the books until I got the part. I was working on another movie at the time and I only had time to read the script. I didn’t really want to focus on anything else, but everyone was saying the project was such a big deal that I had to read the books.

What was your initial impression of the project?
I thought it was really ambitious, this portrayal of the ultimate, most epic love story that could be. Also, Bella is not a typical female lead. The power balance between her and Edward is really skewed. Edward is this confident, perfect, idealistic man, although deep down he’s actually really afraid. Bella is naïve but also sure-footed. Whatever it is inside of her that drives her is stronger than she is. She just trusts the shit out of herself.

Bella and Edward, played by Robert Pattinson, share a very intense love in his film. How was it working with Robert?
Well, I basically cast him. We did one day of auditions and a bunch of guys came in. Catherine Hardwicke, the director, afterwards was like, “What do you think? This is such a hard choice.” I was like, “Are you kidding me!? Its such an obvious choice!” It couldn’t have been better. It was sort of perfect.

What did you do to prepare for your role?
We were always trying to figure out what it should feel like when Edward touched me, how far away he would have to be until he could smell me, things like that.

Are you naturally clumsy like your character?
Well, I’m definitely not the most graceful being, but it’s really difficult to be clumsy on cue. It’s like physical comedy. It was fun.

What was it like to work with this young cast?
We had such a big cast and we were all fairly close in age and we were together constantly. In that situation you might expect drama to ensue. But we were all so obsessed with this project. We were all focused on the same thing, and it was really creative and ambitious. Nikki Reed and I became really, really good friends. She’s really smart and funny. And we have a new movie that we’re working on together.

Hometown?
Woodland Hills, California. I’m a total Valley Girl.

Siblings?
Brothers. I’m the youngest.

Trademark style?
I’m a really typical girl. I look like everyone.

Favorite movie?
The Jungle Book. I love Disney movies!

TV shows that you TiVo?
I don’t watch TV.

Favorite book?
East of Eden.

Favorite cause?
I would love to be involved in a charity that helps kids who live on the street.

New York or L.A.?
New York.

Significant other?
Yes, Michael Angarano.

Celebrity crush?
Michael Angarano.

Twilight is a far cry from anything that’s come before for Stewart, whose resume boasts roles in films by directors as diverse as Mike Figgis, David Gordon Green, Jon Favreau and Sean Penn.

The first to be filmed in the bestselling series of teen fantasy novels by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight centers on a romance between Bella and forever-17 vampire Edward Cullen. Thousands of teen girls would kill to be in her shoes.

Indeed, Stewart already had a taste of her imminent fame at last summer’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, where she was greeted by the kind of screaming one usually associates with a Miley Cyrus concert. “That was the first time a physical manifestation of what everyone was talking about presented itself to me,” she says, still a little shell-shocked.

Stewart says it was Bella’s novelty that made her want to play the part. “She doesn’t fit into the obvious role of victim,” she explains. “The power balance is fascinating between her and the vampire. It’s funny that she is so unsure and tortured about this relationship and that she is surefooted and confident for no reason. Bella is a powerful character.”

Twilight may make her a star, but Stewart is already thinking about what’s next, including Welcome to the Rileys, starring James Gandolfini, and Adventureland, directed by Greg Mottola.

“I was thrilled to do (Adventureland) because it takes place in the 1980s and Jesse Eisenberg was already involved,” says the actress. “It was a very cool project because we were in a theme park doing a comedy with the ‘Superbad’ team.”

Recent breakthrough: Landed the role of Bella Swan in Twilight. If you don’t know what that is, ask any teen girl.

Role model: “My grandma, for her strength and resilience.”

What’s next: Adventureland, in which she plays opposite 14-year-old Jesse Eisenberg of The Squid and the Whale fame.

This is your first big lead in a movie. How does that feel?
It feels good. I feel like I started somewhere huge, and there’s sort of nowhere to go from here… I feel like it was a big responsibility and I was really intimidated for a while, but now that it’s done and I’ve had some breathing time to step away from the project and I’m not living it anymore, I feel good. I’m really proud. I’ve never worked so hard on another movie and you wouldn’t expect that.. It’s a big studio movie, but…

Well, it was a pretty emotionally intense experience for you.
Yes, it was.

How long did it take to shake off the character of Bella?
I bought a truck, the truck that Charlie [Bella's dad] has in the movie, and I drove it home from Portland, and it was like driving away… Not that it was something I had to get away from. It was just, it was such a complete experience. I got over it. I drove all the way home. I mean, it was okay. [laughs] It didn’t take that long. Just the drive home, I guess.

Edward, whom Bella falls for, is a vampire, but it seems like he could be the equivalent of the sensitive bad boy in real life, too.
Well, yes. There are a million guys like that, and most girls have the same feelings for them. Yeah, there are a bunch of little themes like that. I mean, yes, it’s a fantasy, and we’re at Comic-Con [so it's in the] comic book genre, but it’s very close to home. It’s about real human beings, even though the vampires aren’t human. He is. That’s what differentiates him between the good and the bad vampires, is that he still has a connection to his human self. He’s not just given to the animalistic side.

What appeals to you about Bella?
Bella is a very honest… I mean, I could relate to her because she’s just a very straight-up, good-natured girl who found herself in an insane position… [She's] seemingly logical, and then all of the sudden she’s thinking of herself as a psychotic person and [she's] just swept away by something more powerful than her. Every girl wants to lose herself. And Bella started out hard and just lost it, and that’s what I really loved about it.

Through all the adventures of this very eventful day (from storms, to incoming tides, to an umbrella mishap Kristen so sweetly helped with) we enjoyed our time with the star of this film and appreciate the efforts Kristen took to put a warm smile on her face and make us feel welcome.

Lexicon: Can you tell us what your vision of Bella is?

Kristen: Wow, that’s like a loaded question. I feel like she is a generally relatable character, you know, it’s like in the beginning of the story it’s not her choice to go to Forks, but really she HAS no other choice, it’s like, “Well, i don’t want to be on the road with my mom’s boyfriend”. I think what makes the love story so effective is that she doesn’t have any real connections with people, she’s bored and displaced. She is easily related to by most kids that age, and not just girls, but mainly because it’s…she doesn’t have…People really like her, she’s good hearted. She’s honest, she’s friendly, but she’s not really interested in other people, it’s sort of like she’s not an introvert but nothing dazzl… i can’t believe i actually just said the word dazzles!

Lexicon: How was it filming with Taylor as opposed to Rob?

Kristen: Rob’s a lot taller. They’re so different actually, they’re so, so different.

Lexicon: Which is something Bella has to deal with too.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean oddly enough, Jacob’s well, Taylor’s, warmer. No joke! I’m not just saying that! I’m serious! I’m not a… I don’t cheese it up. And that’s why in the beginning she’s like, “Wow, I’m a logical girl, I don’t understand.” It’s like something that overtakes you. Just because, Edwards wrought with so, so much, and he’s not. And Rob really, really encompasses that. I don’t want to say that he’s neurotic but definitely contemplates…

Lexicon: He’s into character.

Kristen: Yeah. But I think that’s what makes the love story so effective.

Source

In Into the Wild, the very beautiful film directed by Sean Penn, she brightens the screen. Kristen Stewart, aged 17, has a long career behind her, smokes and doesn’t drink alcohol. The little girl from Panic Room has grown up. Meeting on a parking in West Hollywood.

In the third act of Into the Wild, between dog and wolf, on a scene with spotlights, the arrival of Kristen Stewart looks like an elf appearence. Holding a guitar, she sings, with a husky voice, something about a life she hasen’t lived yet. Christopher Mac Candless, better known as Alexander Supertramp, aka Emile Hirsh, the heros of the film of Sean Penn seems finally to be moved, whereas he only has eyes for the road and landscapes, and poetry of those who traveled before him. He will soon be on the road again, lonely, after a short bivouac with Tracy.

At this point, we finally know the film is not what we expect. Sean Penn admit the part of liberty in this film is liberty itself. No sex, no drugs will counter to this quest of truth, by going back to nature. This is a road movie of a pure beauty and also kind of an anticonformism film. Mac Candless, brilliant young man begins a trip to Alaska. He will find a “happy life” and the deadlock of its own condition as a man.

We meet Kristen Stewart in LA, California. The day before, Misha Barton, drunk, would have refused to give money after dinner at Chateau Marmont. The whole city gossip: people are commenting, arguing, etc… just like in the past with the Ancien Régime. Welcome to Hollywood! This city, where Marilyn has killed herself, Lana Turner stabbed… where 24 hours a day starlets are followed and exposed by www.eentertainment.com

How can Kristen not shiver when she’s about to take the same path as these famous actors?

Kristen is not yet famous, she goes from on place to another with few people. She doesn’t demand her own makeup artist, doesn’t do any whim. She answers to the interview, sitting on the floor of the parking of the studio. She smokes a lot, shivers because it’s winter and also say the truth.

She has grown up in LA (her father is a stage manager for tv). She doesn’t want people to think she’s succeeded thanks to that. What she has done, she’s done it by herself.

When she was 11 she played Jodie Foster’s daughter, in Panic Room by David Fincher. From this experience she keeps the memory of a great industry. She won’t say anything bad about the director who had conveyed her, or only by saying “if only every director was like Sean Penn, who build their films around characters, or ideas that they care of”.

Kristen likes independant movies without knowing it. She says ” studios of production have a quota of films to make in a year, which is paradoxical to the fact some directors are fighting to make their personal project work. There are films shot without any reason, any goal, with a planning they have to respect carefully. I’ve been on sets where they were filming nothing, but filming anyway, shot, shot, and shot which held nothing.”

Then she says ” I come back from Sundance, it was the second time i’ve been there. Four years ago, I had the feeling everyone was talking about films. This time we were talking about nothing but Puma shoes offered and parties where you should go to.”

Kristen has an idealistic anger that she wants to keep. At 17 she seems to find easily her way through the vacuity and tensions in the Hollywood business. She knows she sometimes needs to be alone. She reads, writes, sings and sometimes gets bored, but she prefers being bored than being dizzy. She doesn’t want to be a “it-girl”.

All she asks for is to do her job. She begins to really love acting when she “loses” herself. She’s more an artist than a cover girl, she likes cinema itself, not only because she’s part of it. Kristen is absolutely an actress, no need to check her filmography to be convinced. Her brief performance in Into the Wild is enough.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In a few weeks she will start to shoot under the direction of Catherine Hardwicke, the writer of thirteen and Lords of Dogtown. Twilight is a story about a teenager from Phoenix who goes to Forks, in Washington, and falls in love with a vampire. Kristen has the leading role in this movie, inspired by the novel of Stephenie Meyer. The moment of truth is close. Her appearence in Sean Penn’s film got her some propositions to sing in a professional way, in a girls band. She refused. She would like to sing if she could write and if she has someone good to inspire. She still listens to the Beatles. She admires Michel Gondry and has seen all of his films. To the comment of Eternal sunshine… she says “How could we want to erase happiness of our memory, even if some unhappiness came next?” When asking if she has already suffered in love she said yes. At 17, she abandonned her innocence to come into an anger of idealism. After a discomfit hug (“we do that here”) she goes away alone, hands in her pockets, head bent, while its the beginning of the evening. She looks like a beautiful child.

“The movie is called Twilight,” 17-year-old Into the Wild actress Kristen Stewart beamed when we recently spoke to her. “[Lords of Dogtown filmmaker] Catherine Hardwicke is directing it in Washington. It’s based on a book that’s pretty popular [among] young adult, high school kids.”

Although Stewart and co-star Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory!) will soon film only the first movie, they’re already talking about turning the vampire storyline into a series that really sucks. And since the latest book sold over 150,000 copies in its first day alone, Bella and Edward fans everywhere are already counting down the months until the film’s release.

“People really love these books,” said Stewart. “Right now it’s a trilogy, and a fourth book is coming out, so hopefully we’ll get to shoot all four.”

For those who haven’t yet been bitten, Twilight will feature Stewart as Bella Swan, a teenage girl whose life gets turned upside-down after she meets and falls in love with a vampire. Additional names will be cast in the next few weeks, but according to the actress, 21-year-old Pattinson is already sinking his teeth into the role of Edward.

“He’s so good and he’s so soulful and he’s just not a liar — you can feel pain from him,” Stewart cooed. “The cool thing about the story is that it’s a seemingly wonderful fantasy — let’s fall in love with vampires and live forever — but it’s so much harder than that. Imagine living forever. Living one life is hard enough.”

But don’t get fooled into thinking this is going to be “The Notebook” for the undead. “The main character is like, superhuman,” Stewart said of the action scenes in the script. “He’s a vampire, but with really [heightened powers]; he can run faster than a car can drive, and he’s super strong. He throws me over his back [in one scene], right before he’s going to tell me that he’s a vampire, and then he runs over the treetops. And we’re going to be in real treetops; we’re not just going to CGI it. We actually get to go up there, and that’s what I’m stoked on.”

“It’s a pretty triumphant love story,” Stewart concluded, looking forward to stepping in front of the cameras. “It’s gonna take a while, and it [deserves to be] at least a series of three.”