What made you want to play this part?
Kristen: When I read the script it was one of those things that you get really excited about and then instantly really sick because you’re not sure that you’ve got the part. I was sort of undeniably emotionally moved by it and I think just regarding the person that I played, she makes such a comeback. I feel like in the beginning she’s so clearly disappointed in everything around her and that first time you see her she’s rejected and that’s what she’s running from.

Can you identify with the whole teenage runaway attitude that you have in the film?
Kristen: I feel like [running away] was so not thought out. It’s a pretty courageous thing to do to get in that car. And especially for a young girl, it can be considered silly. But I can identify with her in that she is doing something that is dangerous but that will ultimately be absolutely worth it. I can absolutely relate to that.

You guys must have spent a lot of time in the car. Any funny stories from filming?

Eddie: [For the scene] when we hit the [deer], we had a load of crew in the back with lights and all this stuff. And I had to do this screeching break as we hit this thing and I was like, “Be careful because I am screeching this car…”

Kristen: Again and again you said it.

Eddie: “…It’s gonna be quite a jolt when we stop.” And they said “No problem, man, no problem.” And we did the scene and they cut to me and I break the car and I scream and this guy got all bruised out of the back! And I’m like, “I told you man, I told you.”

Kristen, your character is into ballet in the movie. Did you have to take any ballet classes to prepare?

Kristen: Yeah. Something that was initially really daunting about the character was that she loved to dance and that she really used her physicality as a means of control and power. Before I did this movie I don’t think I did a two-step. So I took some ballet lessons from these really hardcore ballerinas, but what I always thought about the character was that she wasn’t really one to take a class. She sort of was like, “I really wanna do that.” So then I didn’t have to say that I was a trained ballerina, which I would never ever be able to accomplish in the two weeks that we had before we started shooting.

Eddie: Remember how obsessed you became with your dance shoes, though? Jazz pumps. You became obsessed.

Kristen: I have like, 16 pairs of these little white Capezios.

Eddie’s character plays around with a disposable camera in the movie. Did you keep any souvenirs of the photos you took?

Eddie: We did, actually. The photos used in the scrapbook in the movie are ones we took of Kristen doing her dance.

Your characters are cut off from the outside world once Kristen’s phone dies. Do you ever turn off your cell phones just to see what happens?

Kristen: I always turn my phone off and really infuriate a lot of people.

In the movie, a big storm hits and it’s rainy and gloomy for a while. Have you ever lived in that kind of climate?

Kristen: I haven’t had crazy weather… Wait a second — what am I talking about? I just made three films in the Pacific Northwest. I know the depression that is the cold west.

So does the dark weather really mess with your mood?

Kristen: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s sort of undeniable. If you’re cold for three months and you’re always trying to stay dry…

Eddie: It’s interesting, though. In London we used to have horrific weather. But when I came to LA, the expectation is for continual sunshine. You expect it to be the perfect Hollywood dream and when it’s not, it can be mildly depressing.

Have you learned anything interesting about each other since you spent so much time together?

Kristen: There’s nothing interesting to learn about this guy.

Eddie: There’s nothing interesting to learn about her.

The Yellow Handkerchief also stars William Hurt and Maria Bello in a romance/road trip movie that also serves as a love letter to the state of Louisiana.

Three characters — Stewart’s Martine, Hurt’s Brett and British actor Eddie Redmayne’s Gordy — head out on a journey upon which each is seeking to run away or to something redeeming.

SheKnows: The film was shot years ago, what is it like to think back to a film set before the Twilight phenomenon?

Kristen Stewart: Anytime you play someone who is not yourself, you’re stepping out of your comfort zone. That’s sort of what we do, and if the role is bigger, that is more to chew on and that’s always good (laughs).

SheKnows: Arthur Cohn serves as producer. As a winner of many Oscars, what did you take away from the Arthur Cohn experience?

Kristen Stewart: He has such a faith in the material. It’s a very old school sense of, “I’m the producer and I’m going to take care of everybody and the most important thing here is the movie and the performances.” And… chocolate (laughs)!

SheKnows: Loves his chocolate… now speaking of guys, perhaps not so valiant as Arthur Cohn, the men in your character’s life in The Yellow Handkerchief are hardly model citizens. What do you think it was about the character of Gordy that you believe made Martine fall in love with him?

Kristen Stewart: She wouldn’t have needed to be won over if she had just opened her eyes and not been so affected by the other guys who had hurt her. I think that she’s the type of girl who really wants to let her face hang out. Every time she does that or puts herself out there, she gets disappointed by people. I think the journey that they take, for me, the thing that made me see Martine fall for him was how Brett (Hurt) looks at him. It’s about a girl who is dropping prejudices that she didn’t know she had.

SheKnows: What was it like for you as a young actor to work with such a professional thespian as William Hurt?

Kristen Stewart: He is absolutely the most attentive, hard-working actor I’ve ever worked with and I say that about actors I like to work with, I say that about a lot of people, oh, they’re really hard working, I really appreciate them. But, he is absolutely, you don’t know more than him. Regarding a story, he makes you work so much harder to understand the movie. I would not have understood this movie as much as I do, I would have a completely different impression, I’m sure.

SheKnows: In the film, there’s three of you in a journey, but Maria Bello’s character hangs over the convertible like a ghost, but also, the geography is truly a fifth character. How do you see your character?

Kristen Stewart: My character was so sensitive and so explosive, just like…you would never expect from this tiny little thing so much…what is wrong with you? Her problems are so completely far away from anything that he could understand, it’s like opposite sides of a magnet that just (her voice gets louder) flip over!

SheKnows: The scene where you and Eddie Redmayne kiss, is the moment of the movie. Was there any, “Oh, my God” moments before filming?

Kristen Stewart: That was what I was most intimidated by technically speaking. Literally, I start from being completely, she’s so explosive and so emotional and so raw in that moment. It was a very defining moment for her. If you do that wrong, if it seems out of no where, if I seem like an explosive weird emotional girl for no reason, arbitrarily, that was what I was nervous about. The characters were drawn so wholly and completely that if we didn’t’ play them that way, it wouldn’t have made sense. But, the last scene of the movie, that was what I was really putting everything into because it was written differently.

SheKnows: Really…

Kristen Stewart: When we got there, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to shoot. It was raining. It was like, “OK, we have 10 minutes to get this right.” Everything with her is so thin skinned, she feels everything so much. That moment when it all comes to fruition, it’s everything.

SheKnows: It is a road trip movie, but The Yellow Handkerchief was filmed in over 40 locations. Did that ever wear on you?

Kristen Stewart: It was cool because it was a road trip movie. It felt like we were on that.

SheKnows: The shoot was in and around New Orleans and after Katrina, but did you get to get out into the city of New Orleans at all and discover it’s magic?

Kristen Stewart: I was 17 when we shot this movie. I didn’t really get to… I love New Orleans. I’ve been there since. But, I’m still underage. New Orleans is such a “going out” town — just walking around is awesome. It’s an amazing place to be and you go see great music. Well, you can stand outside the club (laughs).

At her side in the film is a very cute Brit actor named Eddie Redmayne (of The Other Boleyn Girl) who was surprised to be cast as a quirky, vagabond young American guy from Oklahoma!

These two share a few kisses in the film and were both nervous and anxious to do their “getting-to-know-you” scenes justice. We wanted to know which scenes intimidated Kristen and what she learned from bigtime actor William Hurt on the project.

Why were she and Eddie worried about their final kiss in the movie? You’ll find out.

Kristen told us that she didn’t get to party in New Orleans because she was very underage (you might feel her pain).

We think Kristen is as sensitive as the character she plays in the film. When she talks about her teen character Martine, is she sort of talking about herself? Check out what else we learned about acting and this touching road trip movie from Kristen and her cute co-star!

Q: This was probably your first big lead role in a film. Was that an adjustment to play the lead at that time?

Kristen: Anytime you have to play a person who is not yourself, you’re stepping out of a comfort zone but that’s what we do and if the role is bigger that’s just more to chew on and that’s always good.

Eddie: There is more of a sense of responsibility. What was great about this film is that it’s an ensemble piece in the sense that it really is about the four of us, I’m certain Kristen and I felt in incredibly safe hands having William (Hurt) and Maria (Bello) around us and because of the intensity of the film, having three of us in a car for three months shooting, we ended up being close as a trio which is wonderful because any fears or problems you have, you have the other two to turn to.

Q: Kristen, your character Martine has bad luck with guys. Her dad has a new girlfriend and is sort of ignoring her and a guy at the first of the film kind of dumps her. So, what do you think it was about Eddie’s character Gordy than finally won her over?

Kristen: I think she probably wouldn’t have needed to be won over had she just opened her eyes and not been so affected by the other guys who had hurt her. I think that she’s the type of girl who really wants to let her face hang out and every time she does that or puts herself out there, she get embarrassed or disappointed by people. I think the journey that they take, there are a lot of revelatory things that happen. For me, what really made Martine re-evaluate him was how Brett (the Hurt character) looked at him and moreso, there’s this thing that happens; we hit a deer with the car and he does this thing and she has this…. (pausing)

Eddie: Emotional reaction to it.

Kristen: Yeah. There you go. And, he helps me earlier as well. It’s about a girl who is dropping prejudices as well that she really didn’t know she had. She’s becoming more open to people. She was very closed off in the beginning and realizes ‘I don’t want to be like that actually at all’.

Eddie: A lot of the film is about prejudice, pre-judgment.

Kristen: Yeah.

Eddie: And that’s what I love about it. Even though these characters have been prejudiced against, they also have their own prejudices and that’s what’s kind of overwhelming about all of it.

It’s about everyone dropping their guard and seeing people for who they really are beneath the veneer. Whether it’s the eccentric quality of Gordy or the self-guardedness of Martine or just the holding back of the Brett character, it’s about seeing through that translucency and finding something real.

Q: Eddie, how much a fish out of water did you feel when you started this movie and when did it click in and you felt a part of the movie and America?

Eddie: That’s a wonderful question. The truth of the matter is, when I got sent the script and asked to audition for it, I thought it was madness, I thought it was absurd and I said ‘really? Go to New York and audition for this? Guys, it’s never gonna happen’ (Kristen is laughing). ‘It’s playing an adopted Native American from northern Oklahoma. Do you really think it’s gonna happen?’ (laughter).

I’d never gone to an audition caring less because I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in Hell and I went in five minutes, threw this ridiculous audition down, left the room not caring what was going on ‘I’ll never hear back from that’. And, when it did happen, Udayan (Prasad) the director, coaxed me into it.

On set one of our first days, I was terrified. I’d done lots of work with a dialect coach and done some research but it was like ‘right, f**k it! Here goes!’ (laughter) It was a deep breath and I was well aware that I could end up with egg on my face. But ‘why not give it a shot’. (we think he was wonderful in the movie).

Q: Did either of you have a particularly challenging scene or one that you were either not looking forward to or wanted to get to so badly that you couldn’t wait?

Eddie: I had one scene when we’re in the motel and it’s pouring with rain outside and we kiss. I got to kiss her for the first time and (I say), ‘If I kiss you, then all the temptation will go away’ and she’s like ‘really?’

Kristen: And she’s like, ‘really’? (laughter)

Eddie: It’ll go away? But it was only because the producer kept saying ‘this is the scene’ and I’m like ‘This is the scene? How much can my eyes do in this scene to make it work?’

Kristen: That really was ‘the scene’ too. It was really a big deal, especially the way it was written. My character was so explosive and so sensitive and just like (frustrated breath). You would never expect from this tiny little thing, so much. Like (her saying) ‘what is wrong with you?’

Her problems are so far away from anything that he could understand. You have these two things like opposite sides of a magnet that just ‘flip them over!’ You know what I mean?

Eddie: On stage you could have an hour to build up to that explosion whereas when you’re filming on set, Kristen has to wipe away the tears. ‘Cut! Sorry the focus was wrong. Cut! And go again, ‘stop!’ It completely cools her freaking out and it’s tricky. It’s just different.

Kristen: And even watching this, I’d already seen the movie once but I’m like ‘bluh (negative?) okay’.

Q: So that would be your scene too?

Kristen: That was what I was most intimidated by just technically speaking in that she’s so explosive in that scene and so emotional and so raw in that moment and you don’t know her yet very well. It was a very defining moment for her. If you do that wrong, if it seems out of nowhere, if I seem like an explosive, weird, emotional girl for no reason arbitrarily, that’s what I was nervous about.

The characters were drawn so wholly and completely that, if we didn’t play them that way, it would not have made sense. It would have been like ‘this is a bit of a random story’ because it’s so quaint. It’s not like all these plot events happen so all of the little character things….

Eddie: What’s unspoken.

Kristen: Yeah, yeah. So I was nervous about that but the last scene of the movie is what I really was putting everything in. It was written differently as well. We were in a car and they went further. They drove away and wanted to come back and see something.

We got there and didn’t have a whole lot of time to shoot and it was raining and it was like ‘okay, we’ve got ten minutes to get this’. The way it was written, she was so emotional. Everything effects her. She’s thin-skinned and feels everything so much and that moment where everything comes to fruition, she’s deeply affected.

Eddie: And there is an ambiguity to that. It’s not ‘oh, they lived happily ever after’. I think it worked in the film where we are there and we watch them (Hurt and Bello) together but we’re not comfortable yet together.

Kristen: At all! It’s not we’re together now and they’re together. It’s like we’re parents looking at our kids (kissing and) going ‘awww’.

Eddie: You’re right. It’s so much in the script. We both read the script and reacted incredibly emotionally to it. But, there is so much on the set. That’s why it’s both a dream for actors and a challenge for actors, this film, because it’s about filling in the spaces and making the people who are idiosyncratic people feel real.

That last moment, if we had played it slightly close together (he pulls her closer), it would have told a completely different story for the ending.

Q: What was it like for you, as young actors working with cool, experienced actor William Hurt?

Kristen: Yeah, we’ve been talking about that all day. He’s absolutely the most attentive hardworking actor I’ve ever worked with. I say that a lot about actors that I Iike to work with. I say that about a lot of people ‘oh they’re really hard-working. I really appreciate them’ but he is absolutely, you don’t know more than him.

But, regarding the story, he just makes you work so much harder to understand. I wouldn’t understand this movie as I do if it wasn’t for him. I’d have a completely different impression I’m sure.

Eddie: He would have us in his trailer reading a book of short stories about the South. It was so important to him that a fifth character in the piece was Louisiana about getting under the skin of what that place was about. It was never-ending, his commitment to it. A lot of people including myself, when I started doing films, see people turning up at premieres in fancy dresses and say ‘oh, these actors swan from one thing to another’ but I’ve never seen someone work with such continual commitment that, for both of us, it raised our game, no question.

Q: Any particular example of how he helped you guys?

Eddie: Not only would he help us, but there were three of us in a car and in one scene, just after a fight has broken out at this store, William drives off the car quickly and it’s the first time that Gordy breaks and says ‘I can’t deal with this’ and Kristen and I sat in the back of the car having this conversation and William is driving, he kept giving us ideas.

Kristen: And he didn’t look back, he just kept driving (she indicates him holding the steering wheel staring straight ahead) (laughter).

Eddie: And there’s also a risk on film, you feel like you have to underplay things and he was like ‘go for it’. He gave us the balls to go for it and to lose fear. Yeah, we learned a lot.

Q: How big a challenge was 43 different locations?

Eddie: We were all over the place.

Kristen: Yeah. We were everywhere. It was cool though because it was a road trip movie so we felt like we were on that a little bit.

Eddie: And the continuity was the car so we had this thing that did become part of us.

Kristen: That’s such a cool idea.

Eddie: And what’s lovely is often, on film, you have hundreds of different people coming in doing various things and camera angles but because there were three of us geographically confined by the space of the car it meant that people had to kind of stay out. It was the actors so we could work together.

Q: Did either of you get to go have fun in New Orleans at all or were you busy shooting every day.

Kristen: I think I was 17 but, if I was, I was freshly 17. I’d just turned 17 so I didn’t really go out. I love New Orleans and I’ve worked there since…also underage. I’m sooo underage and New Orleans is such a ‘going out’ town that just walking around is awesome.

It’s an amazing place to be. You can go see music but you have to stand outside the club and be like (she looks sad), oh great. (laughter).

Eddie: Awwww

You were awesome in the movie. So believable.

Kristen: (smiles) Oh, thank you!

At the press day for the film, Kristen Stewart talked about what drew her to this smaller, independent film. She also gave an update on her own feeling about whether Breaking Dawn, the final book in the Twilight Saga, should be split into two films, how excited she is about the March release of The Runaways and her hopes to make the drama K-11 with her mother at the helm.

Q: What was it like to play this character, when you hadn’t done too many major roles, at the time you did this film?

Kristen: Anytime you have to play a person who is not yourself, you’re stepping out of a comfort zone, but that’s what we do. If the role is bigger, that’s just more to chew on, and that’s always good.

Q: What about Martine resonated for you?

Kristen: I can relate to her, in that she’s such the typical girl that really wants to be out there and smiling and totally in the middle of whatever is going on, but has been embarrassed one too many times and has just gone, “I can’t do that anymore.” I feel like she’s also isolated herself. She’s put herself above everyone else. She can’t talk to people because they’ve let her down too many times and, in reacting to that, she made herself better than them. And, through this journey, which is such a cool thing to see such a young person go through, she realizes, “Oh, God, I never looked at you and now I’m opening my eyes and I can see you, and I was wrong.” I liked that.

Q: Did you know this film was based on a Japanese film, and did you see that original film?

Kristen: I knew it was based on a Japanese original, but didn’t watch it because apparently it was just starkly different. It was just a different movie completely.

Q: What was producer Arthur Cohn’s involvement with the film?

Kristen: He had such a faith in the material. He has a very old school sense of, “I’m the producer and I’m going to take care of everybody, and the most important thing here is the movie, the performances, and chocolate and watches.”

Q: Your character doesn’t have any luck with guys, from her father who leaves to the guy who dumps her at the beginning of the film. What was it about Gordy (Eddie Redmayne) that you think appealed to Martine?

Kristen: She probably wouldn’t have needed to be won over, had she just opened her eyes and not been so affected by the other guys who had hurt her. She’s the type of girl who really wants to let herself hang out. Every time she does that or puts herself out there, she gets disappointed by people. The journey that they take, a lot of revelatory things happen.

For me, what made Martine re-evaluate Gordy was how Brett (William Hurt) looked at him. And then, there’s this thing that happens when we hit a deer and he had this really emotional reaction to the deer. He helps her out earlier as well. She’s dropping prejudices that she didn’t really know that she had. She’s becoming more open to people. She’s very closed off, in the beginning, and realizes that she doesn’t actually want to be like that at all.

Q: As a young actor, what was it like to work with someone like William Hurt?

Kristen: He is absolutely the most attentive, hard-working actor I’ve ever worked with. I say that about actors that I like to work with. I say, “Oh, they’re really hard-working, I really appreciate them,” about a lot of people, but you don’t know more than him about basically everything. Regarding the story, he just makes you work so much harder to understand things. I wouldn’t understand this movie as I do, if it wasn’t for him. I would have a completely different impression, I’m sure.

Q: Were there any particular scenes in this that stood out for you?

Kristen: That scene where we first kiss was THE scene. It was a really big deal, especially the way it was written. My character was so explosive and so sensitive. You would never expect so much from this tiny little thing. It was like, “What is wrong with you?” And, her problems are so completely far away from anything Gordy could ever understand. It’s like opposite sides of a magnet. I can’t even watch that scene.

That was what I was most intimidated by, technically speaking. She’s so explosive and emotional in that scene, and so raw in that moment, and you don’t know her very well yet. It was a very defining moment for her, so I was nervous about doing that wrong and having it seem out of nowhere. I didn’t want her to seem like an arbitrarily weird, emotional girl, for no reason.

The characters were drawn so wholly and completely that, if we didn’t play them that way, they wouldn’t have made sense. It would have been a bit of a random story because it’s so quaint. It’s not like all these plot events happen. So, all these little character things are unspoken. I was nervous about that. But, the last scene of the movie was what I really put everything into because it was written differently as well. We got there and we didn’t have a whole lot of time to shoot. It was raining and they were like, “Okay, we have 10 minutes to get this.” The way it was written, she was so emotional. Everything affects her. She has such thin skin and feels everything so much. That moment where everything comes to fruition, it needs to be effective.

Q: Have accents always come easy for you?

Kristen: I had to go to school for it, so they could break it down. There’s 15 accents, just within Louisiana. And then, you can fall back on it.

Q: What was it like to shoot in so many different locations?

Kristen: We were everywhere. But, it was cool though because it’s a road trip movie, so we felt like we were on that a little bit. The set just went around everywhere.

Q: Did you get to have any fun in New Orleans at all, or where you working too much?

Kristen: We shot in the summer, so I had just turned 17. I love New Orleans. I’ve worked there since, also underage. I’m still underage. New Orleans is such a going-out town, but just walking around is awesome. It’s an amazing place to be. I can go see music, but I have to stand outside the club and be like, “That’s really great.”

Q: Is there anything about New Orleans that you specifically enjoyed?

Kristen: I liked petting the mules that walked around Jackson Street. They were like, “Come on, take a ride!,” and I was like, “No way!” I just wanted to pet them. I wasn’t going to be dragged around by this thing.

Q: When you have the opportunity to take a road trip yourself, do they become profound journeys of self-discovery?

Kristen: The only road trip that I’ve ever taken was back from Portland. When I was up there doing Twilight, I bought a little truck and drove home. It wasn’t the most transformative experience, but it was fun. It gave me a sense of freedom. I was going away from something that was a rather intense experience.

Q: Because you spend huge amounts of time away from home, when you go somewhere on location, do you try to make it more like home or do you really drown yourself in the lifestyle, wherever you’re at?

Kristen: I try to do that. I know actors who go on location and make their trailer like their home. They literally put pictures up and stuff. I don’t do that. I really like being where I am. You’re made to pretend that you actually live there.

Q: Since you have your pick right now, what attracts you to a role? What do you look for when you get a script these days?

Kristen: As much as you can say, “I’d like to do this because it’s different from what I’ve done before,” I can’t really plan things out like that. Despite whether or not a character fits my description and the script is good, what actually drives me to do something like this, which is a really bizarre thing, if you think about it, is more than just to be in a movie. It has to speak to me, in some way, and that’s always hard to describe. I don’t know what I want to do. And, this is the first time I don’t have my next job lined up. I have a totally clean horizon and that’s actually pretty exciting.

Q: Is that a scary place to be, not knowing what you’re going to do next, in a business that’s so unpredictable?

Kristen: To be honest, you don’t look at scripts that are very clearly just framework and they just want to put a dollar sign in the picture frame, but that’s so obvious. I only want to do work that I find to be moving, and that’s something that I can’t be specific about. I’m totally lucky and I can’t believe that I have more opportunity than I’ve ever had. It’s awesome.

Q: You did this film before the Twilight films. Would you have approached things differently, now that you have this international profile?

Kristen: I guess because I don’t hold the reins, I really follow my heart. It would really be a shame that just because I did one movie, and I know it’s four or five films, but it’s one story and one project for me because it’s the same character, it would affect choices that I make. I don’t have this scheme for how people are going to receive my movies, in the order that I do them, and why I do scary movies or movies about disaffected teens, which I get all the time. They’re just people that I really wanted to play. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m just playing parts that speak to me.

Q: Do you follow your heart when you’re acting as well?

Kristen: Yeah. You get hired on a job and I had had roles in movies before, that I took really seriously and really liked, and I learned that, if I was a fairly impulsive actor or I felt something, I didn’t need to sit down and go, “Okay, this is why,” and it helps so much. I understand the story so much more because of that.

Q: What are your feelings on Breaking Dawn? Do you think they’re going to do two films? Do you know when that will happen?

Kristen: Probably in November, but I don’t know if it’s going to be one or two films.

Q: Are you contracted for two movies, or are you contracted for one?

Kristen: I don’t know, actually. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to do two films. The story so completely warrants two films, and it would be really disappointing to have to lose a bunch of the story. I would like to do it as two movies, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what they’re going to do.

Q: The Runaways is getting a lot of buzz now too. How has that been, and what has the experience of the festival circuit been like?

Kristen: We all knew that, if it did well, it would be a Sundance movie. But, now it’s being released. It became a bigger deal than we thought, which is just always very exciting. Sundance was awesome. I love Sundance. It’s one of the only places that you can go, show your movie, and then talk to 300 people who just saw it. It’s just a different experience.

Q: What’s it like when your mom calls you and says, “I’m going to direct a film and I’d like you to be in it”?

Kristen: I wish it was like that. We’re trying to get it (K-11) off the ground. If she called me right now and said, “We’re making the movie,” I would be really excited. We’re really close and, at the same time, we’re creatively very, very different. It would be cool. I think that we could actually leave the family thing. I feel like we both like what we do so much that we could actually work on something and do something pretty cool

THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF opens on February 26th .

The actresses clinked glasses and giggled.

With downtown Los Angeles’ Kyoto Grand Hotel standing in for a bustling Tokyo sushi joint last summer, the teen stars were on the set of the coming-of-age drama “The Runaways” — in character, with Fanning as Cherie Currie, the wild-child lead singer of the titular all-girl rock group, and Stewart portraying Joan Jett, its electric-guitar-wielding, ‘tude-copping founder. Between the years 1975 and ‘79, the Runaways packed shows from coast to coast, toured the world and racked up hits before self-immolating in a blaze of drugs, jealousies and in-fighting.

“The Runaways” will premiere next Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, arriving as one of the fest’s most outrightly commercial offerings, thanks largely to Stewart’s demonstrated “opening” power as a marquee draw. (Put out by independent distributor Apparition, the movie reaches theaters in March.) But “The Runaways” is also one of the most piquantly feminist films to touch down this year at America’s preeminent independent film forum — albeit a punk- infused genre pic with a pronounced generational viewpoint and no shortage of blood, drug abuse and bodily effluvia.

Written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, the acclaimed photographer and video director behind such foreboding, atmospheric clips as Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People” and Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter,” the movie was less intended as a by-the-book musical biopic à la “The Doors” or “La Bamba” than an impressionistic character study illuminating a unique female predicament: What happens when teenage girls get handed too much, too soon via worldwide rock stardom?

In the drama “Welcome to the Rileys,” which premiered Saturday afternoon at an industry-heavy screening at the Racquet Club Theater, the “New Moon Saga” superstar portrays someone quite unlike “Twilight’s” long-suffering vampire-lover Bella Swan. That would be Mallory, a stripper-hooker with a penchant for wearing X-shaped pasties and G-strings (and sometimes no undies at all) with fishnet stockings who makes repeated references to the state of her “private parts” and sexual acts in language not suitable for publication in a family (or even PG-13-rated) blog.

Although her “Rileys” character initially claims to be 22, it is eventually revealed that Mallory ran away at an age when most teens are first getting a drivers license to live in semi-squalor in New Orleans, where she works in a French Quarter strip club in which she charges a little extra for more personal contact.

To get ready for the flesh- and soul-bearing part, the low-key Stewart — dressed Saturday in the de facto Sundance regalia of military parka, distressed denim and sneakers  — said she didn’t “prep” per se, even  though she studied some stripper dancing for the sake of greater realism.

“I’m not ‘playing a stripper’” she said with dripping emphasis before the film’s first screening. “It’s really not a stripper movie at all. It sort of just opens your eyes about people that don’t have options. I know I’m speaking really vaguely about it.”

In the rock-surged comin- of-age drama “The Runaways,” Stewart portrays real-life rock icon Joan Jett, who co-founded the all-girl teenage band – yes, you guessed it – called the Runaways at age 16. The group burned brightly with righteous proto-punk fury then fizzled out between 1975 and ’79. In that film, Stewart snorts cocaine, makes out with co-star Dakota Fanning and drunkenly urinates on an electric guitar.

Did we mention that she embodies Jett almost perfectly?

“It’s, like, crazy,” Stewart said when a reporter asked her about her resemblance to one of rock’s foremost female titans. She bit her lip and ran her hand through her hair. “I can’t even accept it!”

In the midst of an interview about her new film Welcome to the Rileys, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past weekend, Kristen Stewart’s cellphone, buried under a pile of puffy, winter garb, begins going off.

Stewart, who is dressed in all-black (sweatshirt, leggings, boots), is sitting on an immense leather sofa between director Jake Scott (son of Ridley) and co-star Melissa Leo (Frozen River), burrowing deeper in the confined space she always seems to create around her. Her head—hair dyed black in a jagged cut—is down, like a shy child. Her leg is tapping nervously.

Suddenly, she bolts upward and leaps in the direction of the buzzing contraption.

“Oh, shut up! I’m busy—Shut the fuck up!” she cries to no one in particular.

After silencing the phone, she returns to the sofa. “Sorry, Jake,” she says softly, and returns to what seems like her most comfortable stance: self-protected coil.

It is this nervous, very wired, “twitchy”—as she puts it—energy that has come to define Stewart. She is best known as the female lead in Twilight, the blockbuster vampire franchise, which has made her an unlikely star of both movies and tabloids. But with the Sundance debuts of two new films—Rileys and The Runaways, in which Stewart plays iconic rocker Joan Jett—Stewart is becoming known as something else: Indie “It” Girl.

Every year, the festival produces one face that stands for all that is rebellious, unorthodox, and slightly ill-fitting about scrappy movie-making. Chloë Sevigny, Parker Posey, and Zooey Deschanel have all worn the crown. Last year, An Education’s Carey Mulligan was a slightly more polished and proper Sundance debutante, but, hey, in a hoodie, anyone call pull it off.

No one more so than Stewart, who is, both in person and on screen, an awkward and self-effacing pixie. In Rileys, she plays Mallory, an underage prostitute in New Orleans’ French Quarter who finds parental figures in Doug Riley (James Gandolfini) and his wife Lois (Leo), who have lost their own, real, daughter. Mallory, who is as damaged as the city she’s living in, hides behind thick, raccoon eyeliner, and shapeless, baggy pants and sweatshirts—at least when she’s not teetering around in hopelessly high heels, ripped fishnets, and little else. In The Runaways, she’s the harder-edged, but no less establishment-averse Jett.

Stewart is coming of age—morphing from girl to woman (she’s 19), and from teen idol to serious actress—in front of a global audience. It’s not always pretty. While doing press for last fall’s Twilight: New Moon, she was lambasted for not being press-friendly enough, and for wearing her signature scowl a little too relentlessly.

Such behavior didn’t fit well with a movie designed to dazzle 13-year-old girls, and Stewart paid the price. Talking to Stewart now about the perception of her, it’s like hearing someone who was forced to parade around in a drab school uniform and has now, at long last, been given her first pair of ripped jeans.

“It was hard to turn on the Twilight stuff… I was doing a movie,” she says of the two weeks she had to leave the Riley set in fall 2008 to promote the first Twilight film.

“There are a lot of people who are like, ‘Wow, you have just turned a new leaf… You can really express yourself very, very eloquently when you care to, and, Oh! You smile sometimes!’ And it’s like: I was doing a movie! I shouldn’t have been where I was! I should have been in New Orleans! That’s why I was so completely inept. I mean, like, that’s why. Because I shouldn’t have been there.”

It is this torn-between-two-worlds quality that makes Stewart different from other alternative-cinema queens: She is being grippingly embraced by two alien universes—mainstream Hollywood and the margins. And yet she seems passionately determined to shed the former role. Over the course of our conversation, the word “movie” is always said in respectful italics. It is clear the term does not refer to Twilight.

But if Stewart is ready to decamp from the slick center of the industry and set up permanent shop on the outskirts, she’s going to have a hard time. Not only did young Stewart die-hards from Salt Lake City battle a blizzard to show up for the premiere of Rileys on Saturday. They showed up to see it again, Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. And at The Runaways premiere on Sunday evening, the red-carpet mayhem rivaled anything that Westwood has to offer: an eruption of shrieks and cellphone flashes as Stewart abashedly slunk by. The same Beatlemania broke out Saturday night during Joan Jett’s concert at Harry O’s on snow-blanketed Main Street. However much the crowd was rocking out to Jett (“Put another dime in the jukebox, baby…”), it was nothing compared to what happened when she briefly brought Stewart and her Runaways co-star Dakota Fanning out on stage. In response, Stewart shoved her hands in her hoodie and attempted to dissolve into the drum set.

And during the Q&A after the Rileys premiere, Stewart’s leg was shaking so dramatically that it looked like it was going to break off. When she lost herself in an erratic train-of-thought response to a question, Leo jumped in and answered for her in polished actress speak.

It is this palpable discomfort that kids on both side of the cultural divide relate to—the angst and ambivalence about life, fame, everything.

Of filming Rileys in New Orleans, Stewart says, “I sort of called it home. Like, Mallory, she’s not from there, but when she moved there, it became her town. And when I was there, it felt like it was my—like, it was so calm. I would walk down the street and I wasn’t recognized. Walking down the street, compared to how I would normally feel walking down the street, it was so different. Like, I tromped around.”

Stewart’s face brightens at the memory of such freedom, which is clearly a luxury.

But even at Sundance, the very womb of low-budget outsiderdom, Stewart again finds herself split, as she promotes two films, one of which is a tad more indie than the other. (Runaways already has a distributor, Apparation, and is coming out in March; it also has a splashier veneer than Rileys, which is seeking a buyer.) Having spent the afternoon talking Rileys, she’s now getting ready to dart off to the Runaways premiere.

“Talking about films that you really care about is really, like, the hardest thing for me to do, especially to people that I don’t know,” Stewart says. “So it’s scary.”

“I really, really, really like these movies,” she continues, vehemently. “I put a lot into them, more so than the other ones. So to have both at the festival—it’s weird. It’s like, Jesus! It’s a little overwhelming.”

At 19, Stewart has already earned a place in the annals of pop-culture history. This is due to her starring role in Twilight, which—in case you’ve somehow managed to elude word of its all-encompassing death grip on young America—is a film based on the first in a series of very popular books about vampires, werewolves, and teenage life in the town of Forks, Washington. Stewart’s character, Bella Swan, is a newcomer to Forks who is forced to cope with the dueling pressures of starting life at a new school and the fact that her prospective boyfriend, the rakish Edward Cullen (played by the rakish Robert Pattinson), is a 104-year-old undead bloodsucker.

Given Twilight’s preoccupation with the timeless themes of misunderstood youth, troubled young love, and the intervening forces of darkness, the film’s success isn’t all that surprising. (To date, it has grossed more than $380 million worldwide.) Nor is the fact that more Twilights are in the offing: A second installment, New Moon, hits theaters in November, and a third, Eclipse, is due out next year. But the growing size and complexity of the Twilight machine has had some unavoidable implications:

In the last 12 months, Stewart has become a tabloid regular and a blog-stalked cynosure. The fact that her Twilight character is romantically linked to Pattinson’s in the film has also fueled nonstop speculation that they are involved in real life. BUYING A HOUSE? and GETTING MARRIED? were just a couple of the early autumn headlines. Between filming Twilight sequels, Stewart did a turn as Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi’s new rock-band biopic The Runaways; even her hair for the film—which was chopped and dyed to mimic Jett’s late-’70s shag—inspired reams of media critique.

Stewart grew up in Los Angeles in a Hollywood family of sorts—her mother is a script supervisor, and her father is a stage manager—and as a kid announced her interest in working in front of the camera. Her second film, David Fincher’s 2002 thriller, Panic Room, in which she played Jodie Foster’s too-quick, too-wise, too-over-it daughter, proved an early indicator of her ability to play young, smart, but not precocious. Her performance in more left-of-center projects such as Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007) and this year’s Adventureland has only reinforced that notion. But if there’s a thread that runs through her relatively small body of work, it’s one that’s closely connected to the idea that you don’t have to be old to have soul. With Stewart, you don’t get 19-going-on-35. What you do get is a visceral window into what it means to be young and struggling to make sense of your own life and the world around you—and all the alternating waves of darkness and confusion and brightness and possibility that come with that. In many ways, it’s the unwritten nature of Stewart’s own story now, with its surreal subplots and recent twists and turns, that makes her compelling to watch. It’s true that she might very well be a rebel anodyne to many of her bleached and sprayed-on contemporaries. Or, like Bella Swan, she might just be someone who comes from somewhere, found her way into something exceptional, and is on her way to someplace else. Either way, she’s got a solid arc.

In celebration of Interview’s 40th anniversary, we askedactor, director, writer, and photographer Dennis Hopper—whose connection to the magazine reaches across all fourdecades—to handle the interviewing duties for this cover story. He graciously obliged. He spoke to Stewart, who was shooting Eclipse in Vancouver, from the set of his cable series, Crash, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

DENNIS HOPPER: Before we start, I have a little six-year-old daughter here who’s going crazy right now because you’re on the phone. Could I just put her on for a second to say hello?

KRISTEN STEWART: Yeah, sure.

HOPPER: Okay, her name is Galen. [hands phone]

GALEN HOPPER: Hi!

STEWART: Hi! How are you?

GALEN: Good.

STEWART: It’s really nice to meet you, Galen. [pause] Hello?

GALEN: Hi!

HOPPER: [takes phone] She’s so excited.

STEWART: Wow, that made me so nervous!

HOPPER: It made you nervous?

STEWART: Yeah. I’m just sort of intimidated by kids. I didn’t know what to say.

HOPPER: Well, thank you for doing that. So how are you doing?

STEWART: I’m pretty good. I’m not very good at interviews, but this is a trip. Why in god’s name did you want to do this? You have no idea how cool this is for me.

HOPPER: Well, you’re a really good actress. And my daughter is your biggest fan, so I thought, What the hell? [laughs] I usually don’t do this, either. But you must be going through a lot right now, the way Twilight is hitting. You must have no peace at all.

STEWART: The sad thing is that I feel so boring because Twilight is literally how every conversation I have these days begins—whether it’s someone I’m meeting for the first time or someone I just haven’t seen in a while. The first thing I want to say to them is, “It’s insane! And, as a person, I can’t do anything!” But then I think to myself, God damn it, shut the fuck up.

HOPPER: [both laugh] You know, you’re giving really wonderful performances. Since you didn’t know you’d be making sequels when you were making the first Twilight, has it been difficult for you to get back into character for these new ones?

STEWART: I’ve actually always been interested in following a character more long term, but the only place to really do that as an actor is on a TV series. But the Twilight series is cool because you know what’s ahead of you—all of the books have been written. And I get breaks in between. It’s sort of a depressing thing to lose a character just when you’ve been able to get to know her. Usually, at the end of a film it’s like I’ve finally gotten to know this person completely, and then we’re done. That actually happened on the set of Twilight, and then it happened again on New Moon. Each time my character Bella became a different person, and I got to know that person and take her to the next level.

HOPPER: Have you been able to enjoy it? Or do you feel more pressure doing these sequels?

STEWART: I do feel more of a pressurized strain than what is typical for me. Usually, what drives you is your own personal responsibility to the script and the character and the people you are working with. But in this case, I have a responsibility not only to that but to everyone who has personal involvement in the books—and now that spans the world. It’s an insane concept. There are certain things in Twilight . . . As much as I’m proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it’s a first-person narrative. She’s like a little vessel and everyone experiences the story through her. All of these girls who are fans personally feel like they encapsulate that character. So it’s like, “How the hell am I going to do that for all of them? It’s impossible!” But I’ve decided, if you’re just unabashedly honest all of the time, you have nothing to be ashamed of.

HOPPER: These Twilight books have some dark material.

STEWART: But the movies aren’t that dark, as much as we’d all have loved to have made those films. But as pretty as it is to watch and as nice as it is to have watched these two characters find solace in each other, everything around them is absolute chaos. I mean, you have to question their motivations—to watch two people so unhealthily devoted to each other . . . I stand behind everything that they do. I have to justify it in my mind, or else I couldn’t play the character. But they are definitely not the most pragmatic characters. The weirdest fucking themes run through this story—like dominance and masochism. I mean, you always have to realize that the story needs to make sense to the 11-year-olds who read the book and aren’t necessarily going to be viewing a scene as foreplay. But then there is the other segment of the audience—a large percentage—who does see the scene as foreplay. And it’s pretty deep, heady foreplay. [laughs] So it’s fun to play it both ways. I mean, I don’t know what it feels like to make out with my vampire boyfriend because it isn’t something that anybody has ever felt. But it’s funny to think that a lot of the audience is 10 years old and will maybe one day grow up to realize there are a lot of involved thoughts in Twilight that they didn’t see before.

HOPPER: Well, you’re getting a lot of attention.

STEWART: Yeah, it’s weird. There’s an idea about who I am that’s eternally projected onto me, and then I almost feel like I have to fulfill that role. Even when things come out of my mouth, I want to be sure I’m saying exactly what I mean. All I’m thinking of is the fact that everything that I say is going to be criticized—not criticized, just evaluated and analyzed. And it’s always something that matters so much to me that doesn’t come out right. But in terms of how my life has changed, I never really went out a whole lot before. I’m sort of an in-my-head kind of person. I wish I could take more walks . . .

HOPPER: You can’t take walks?

STEWART: I’d like to take more walks after work, instead of having to come back to my hotel room and not leave. So it can be boring. I’ve been working as an actress since I was very young, and I know a lot of people who are actors who don’t have to deal with having a persona . . . You know, if you look up the word persona, it isn’t even real. The whole meaning of the word is that it’s made up, and it’s like I didn’t even get to make up my own. It can be annoying. But I have a really strong feeling that this is going to go away, that this is the most intense it’s going to get—and could get—and that it’s fleeting. So in a few years, I will hopefully become more like the people I want to become like.

HOPPER: Does it bother you to see yourself in the tabloids?

STEWART: There’s nothing you can do about it, to be honest. I don’t leave my hotel room—literally, I don’t. I don’t talk to anybody about my personal life, and maybe that perpetuates it, too. But it’s really important to own what you want to own and keep it to yourself. That said, the only way for me not to have somebody know where I went the night before is if I didn’t go out at all. So that’s what I’m trading. It depends what mood I’m in. Some nights, I think, “You know what? I don’t care. I’m just going to do what I want to do.” Then the next day I think, “Ugh.Now everyone thinks I’m going out to get the attention.” But it’s like, no, I actually, for a second, thought that maybe I could be like a normal person.

HOPPER: I was looking at all the films you’ve done, and you’ve worked with some extraordinarily talented people: Patricia Clarkson—god, she’s a great actress—and Jodie Foster. Just really wonderful people. And your performances are very different. You started when you were nine years old. You wanted to act, right? It wasn’t like you were forced into it because your parents were in the industry?

STEWART: No. Not at all.

HOPPER: Because Dean Stockwell is one of my best friends, and he has horror stories about acting when he was a kid. But you wanted to do this, right?

STEWART: It’s a weird thing to expect a child that young to say what they want to do, like act. I’m not sure it was a natural inclination for me either, but it was something that I fell into. To be honest, I had fun at first. It was the first thing I ever thrived at. My parents are crew. They were both baffled that I wanted to act. But they support anything that me and my brothers want to do. It was something I thought was fun because I grew up on sets. And then a few years later, I grew up and acting became very different to me. I think I was about 13.

HOPPER: Did you study with anyone? Or did you just pick it up through association?

STEWART: No, I just walked into it.

HOPPER: You learned it there. That’s the best place to learn. I saw Panic Room again last night.

STEWART: Really? I haven’t seen that in so long. That was the second movie I ever made. Thank god Jodie Foster did that movie because I wasn’t thinking about anything on that set. I was literally just hanging out with her and being myself. I can’t think about watching that—it would kill me. It would be like watching a home movie.

HOPPER: But you’re so good in it. Did you go to school while you were working as a kid?

STEWART: I went to public school up until junior high. I know it’s a little late and I’m a little old, but I just finished high school—with honors. The other day I was doing a graduation scene on Eclipse, and I had just finished high school myself the week before, so I told the crew, “Hey, just so you know, I’m actually graduating right now, and I’m not going to have another ceremony.” So I took a mock picture with an extra. I literally asked the actor to come back and shake my hand and hand me the diploma while I was dressed in a cap and gown.

Fanning, and he knows her as well, so it was cool. I actually hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. So it was sort of a trip because I’m different and he’s not. You know what I’m saying?

This is an excerpt of the October cover story. To read the full Kristen Stewart interview pick up a copy of Interview.

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.

What is it like to be back on set doing another Twilight film?

It’s a little bit surreal to be back doing a second one, just because it’s something that I thought about for an entire year and now it’s happening. But it’s sort of like I couldn’t wait any longer.

It’s hard. Usually you finish a movie and there’s a very long grieving process. You have to lose the character. You have to drop it from your mind or else it just continues to bug you. In this case, I couldn’t drop her completely and I worked in between, which is a strange sensation. It’s weird how easy it was to slip right back into it. I don’t know if it’s because I have such a reference, like the book, or because I knew that I just had to do it. I don’t know, but it feels good. It feels like I can finally release the pressure.


Isn’t that pressure kind of self-inflicted?

Yeah, I have that feeling on every movie that I do. It’s just that this one, I had to wait a year. Unless there’s something about the story or that character I’m playing that literally needs to be fulfilled — like, consummated — unless it’s actually lived through and physically manifested, it’s just a story and it’s not done. So until you actually bring it to life, you basically have the capability of murdering the character on the page. If you don’t do it justice, then nobody else is ever going to see those things and you’re never going to learn from those experiences because you didn’t do it right.

So yeah, the thought of having to live through something that I find so worthwhile, and then subsequently have people learn from that through your own experience, I would do anything. I would jump off a cliff for it. Oh! There’s cliff-jumping in our movie. Perfect! (Laughs)

What are the changes in this second installment? Your character Bella takes risks again…

Well, she loses what basically gives her the drive to do anything in her whole life. She loses the man she’s in love with, but she also loses her entire life plan, and she’s so young to have to be forced into a decision like that. It’s just a glorified, elaborate version of the worst breakup you’ve ever been through. All of a sudden you question everything. All of a sudden you know nothing and you’re dropped in the middle of a freezing cold ocean.

Oddly, we have a character that’s warm enough and bright enough to bring her out of that, and it’s truly gut-ripping. Because as perfect as Jacob is for her, she holds on to an ideal, the ultimate fiery love that she has for Edward even though it’s not comfortable, it’s not practical and it’s not a good idea. So it’s really a very strong thing to do. It takes someone who really trusts themselves.

So basically the movie starts out and everything’s great, and then it gets absolutely terrible, and then it gets maybe OK again, and then it’s” no, no, no, no – life is hard.” It’s going to get hard again because he comes back again.

Is she introverted or just seeking an ideal?

It’s not that she’s incredibly introverted. She’s just yet to have found a connection that is truthful. She’s a seeker of the truth. She’s not one to get wrapped up in something that is a fantasy. She doesn’t set herself up for disappointment. So that’s what makes the story with her and Edward so compelling, in that this is a girl that normally wouldn’t do something this crazy.

So what does Kristen prefer, the werewolf or the vampire?

Kristen shouldn’t open her mouth (Laughs). Kristen is entirely torn. Kristen should stop using her name in the third person.

You were virtually unknown when you shot Twilight. How has your life changed since its phenomenal success?

My life hasn’t changed. Most circumstances I find myself in are different than they were a year ago, but I myself haven’t changed…however a normal 18-year-old girl would change in a year. But it makes things so much easier. I would do it for free every day [even] if nobody saw it. I cannot describe how good it feels to actually have something that is truly into your heart and soul actually affecting people. And that’s amazing. So that’s the biggest change.

Has success changed you?

It didn’t change me, it changed things around me a little bit…I’m so used to doing movies that nobody wants to see. To put your heart and soul into something for years of your life and have it actually affect people is probably the most satisfying, and that is a completely ineffective word to describe how satisfying it is.

Do you feel a responsibility towards the author’s fans and the movie fans?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a strange thing. You start something and you know that it’s going to take on a life of its own, but its already something so whole — there are so many people that you’re going to inevitably either make happy or not. Everyone’s understanding of the story and love for it is going to show, even though there are little issues that everyone’s going to have because everybody reads the book differently. So of course we have a massive responsibility. Because of them, we’re able to do what we like to do.

What was it like coming back to a different director?

As an actor, you don’t work with the same director on every film. And this, it’s a continuation. It’s the same story but it is a different movie. I love Catherine (Hardwicke). She’s a dear friend of mine, but Chris (Weitz) – it just works out.

Besides all the technical, logistical reasons, Chris is so devoted and because he’s a man, there’s a common question. How is it having a man director? Is it a huge difference? You can’t make generalizations about people like that. He’s one of the most compassionate human beings I’ve ever met. Unfalteringly compassionate. He cares way too much for the story, and you need that. So he’s perfect.

How would you describe it to someone who hasn’t read the books or seen Twilight?

Anybody who’s ever been broken up with will probably watch this movie, and their temperature will probably go up.

How do I describe this? It’s a movie about ultimate devotion being ripped from you and thinking that your entire world that you’ve established is wrong. And then trying to get it back and realizing that it’s all OK. (Laughs) And vampires, werewolves, too, so that makes it even more exciting. Robert Pattinson is just so cute. So is Taylor Lautner. That’s what I would tell someone who doesn’t know about the movie yet.

You’re still quite young. Do you want to continue making movies or perhaps go to college?

I absolutely have no foresight. I used to think I had a lot when I was younger. I worked really hard in school to give myself options, and I’ve literally taken those options and thrown them down the toilet. Purposely – not to make that sound totally negative. It’s what I want. I want to keep doing what I’m doing.

It’s funny, people ask me all the time: “What do you do for fun? What do you do when you’re not acting?”

It’s a strange thing, acting. It’s a business, it’s a job, everything like that. All it is, is self-reflection. You just never stop caring about people and I’ve never stopped doing that, so I’m sure it’ll seep into other areas of my life. I want to write. I’m not going to school because I can’t take the structure of it, but I’m not going to stop learning.

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.