Cast Highlights: Robert Pattinson Ashley Greene Peter Facinelli Elizabeth Reaser

Character: Bella Swan
Production Status: Completed
Release Date: November 21, 2008 (USA)
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Writers: Stephenie Meyer (novel),
Melissa Rosenberg
Genre: Action, Horror, Romance, Thriller
MPAA Rating: PG-13

From the Photo Gallery:

Trailer:

Plot Outline:

When you can live forever what do you live for?

Twilight is based upon the beloved Stephenie Meyer novel of the same name. It’s about a teenage girl who risks everything when she falls in love with a vampire. The film was put into production as early as 2004, but it wasn’t until 2007 that it really came into fruition and began filming. There are four Twilight series books; Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. All primarily narrated from Bella’s point of view. The rights to the first three novels have been aquired and Melissa Rosenberg is penning the scripts.

Bella Swan has always been a little bit different, never caring about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix high school. When her mother re-marries and sends Bella to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks, Washington, she doesn’t expect much of anything to change. Then she meets the mysterious and dazzlingly beautiful Edward Cullen, a boy unlike any she’s ever met. Edward is a vampire, but he doesn’t have fangs and his family is unique in that they choose not to drink human blood. Intelligent and witty, Edward sees straight into Bella’s soul. Soon, they are swept up in a passionate, thrilling and unorthodox romance. To Edward, Bella is what he has waited 90 years for — a soul mate. But the closer they get, the more Edward must struggle to resist the primal pull of her scent, which could send him into an uncontrollable frenzy. But what will Edward & Bella do when a clan of new vampires — James, Laurent and Victoria — come to town and threaten to disrupt their way of life?

Kristen Stewart’s Role:

Kristen Stewart plays Isabella “Bella” Swan. An clumsy 17-year-old girl who moves to the small town of Forks, Washington from Phoenix, Arizona about halfway through her junior year of high school.

In the novels, Bella, after moving to her father’s house, meets the mysterious Cullen family and becomes intrigued by a student, Edward Cullen. Edward saves her life on multiple occasions, exhibiting super-human qualities. Bella learns from family friend Jacob Black that legends say the Cullen family are vampires. Edward eventually admits to this truth, though his family hunts only animals, not humans, through moralistic choice. Edward constantly warns Bella against being with him, perceiving her life to be at risk if she continues to associate with him because the scent of her blood is so much more powerful to him than that of any other human. Bella’s love and confidence in Edward’s restraint is such that his warnings go unheeded, and on an outing with the Cullens she becomes the target of a sadistic vampire, James.

Bella is described in the books as being fair-skinned with brown hair and eyes, and a heart-shaped face. Beyond this, a detailed description of her appearance is never given in the series. Stephenie Meyer explains that she “left out a detailed description of Bella in the book so that the reader could more easily step into her shoes.” While Meyer stresses that “Bella’s looks are open to interpretation”, she does supply her own personal interpretation on her website, describing Bella as:

“very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped—a wide forehead with a widow’s peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair and more straight than they are arched. She’s five foot four inches tall, slender but not at all muscular, and weighs about 115 pounds. She has stubby fingernails because she has a nervous habit of biting them.”

• If you would like to continue your research about Bella, please refer to Twilight Wiki and Wikipedia. Be warned you are potentially spoiling the novels and future films by reading on.

Kristen Stewart Quotes:

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

On Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen

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

On Edward Cullen

He’s a vampire, but with really heightened powers; he can run faster than a car can drive, and he’s super strong. He throws me over his back [in one scene], right before he’s going to tell me that he’s a vampire, and then he runs over the treetops. And we’re going to be in real treetops; we’re not just going to CGI it. We actually get to go up there, and that’s what I’m stoked on.

It’s a pretty triumphant love story, It’s gonna take a while, and it [deserves to be] at least a series of three.”

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…

“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.

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.

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.

I didn’t know about it before [novels]. And we don’t know if the four are gonna be made into a movie, but it’s almost sure that we’re gonna make the second one. They were going to merge the second and the third into one movie, but they’ve changed their minds. I think we’re gonna make the third one too.”

On working with Robert Pattinson

Very intense. He contemplates the infinite. He has a very focused energy. We spent three months together in the shooting with what we have known each other very well and he has become a great friend. And he’s hot.

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.

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

I participated in a conventional audition process.

The series has this huge fan base, And they have very specific expectations. They’re supportive. But they’re crazy. It’s like we’re their pets. If we’re bad, they’re going to punish us.

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.

There’s a couple sequences (when) we’re on wires a little bit of the time, 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, It’s a challenge. It’s a different kind of workday ahead. It’s physically and emotionally strenuous.

It was a heavy movie to live through, you know, to, like, go through such things as were going on in the movie, 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.

I think that girls are definitely — I mean, obviously—more enthralled with, like, the lovely ideas, like, especially when they’re younger, 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?

I feel like it’s something that I’ve really just stepped into, 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.

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, 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.

It’s just surreal to be a crucial part of a machine like this, 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.

I don’t want to do something that’s just a big moneymaker. I just want to make sure Twilight‘s worth the ginormous attention it receives, everyone said this is a big-deal movie. But I hate when people celebrate before you have something to celebrate about.

I figured it was a little cult vampire movie with a built-in fan base. 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.

Catherine liked a couple of the guys, and I was like, ‘Are you joking? I can’t do the movie unless Rob does it, He got it.

We were like, ‘We’re going to play this real’ and the studio was like, ‘But it’s fun. Lighten up! “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.

I had some of the corniest lines I’ve ever had in this film. We were so awkward saying those lines.

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in Washington and Oregon, USA

Kristen Stewart has naturally green eyes. She wears brown contacts for filming because Bella is supposed to have brown eyes.

For the role of Edward Cullen, Robert Pattinson flew from England to director Catherine Hardwicke’s house to audition. There, he and Kristen Stewart, who was already cast as Bella Swan, rehearsed the “Love Scene”/”Meadow Scene” on Hardwicke’s own bed.

All of the actors playing the Cullens wear topaz-colored contacts.

Over 5,000 actors auditioned for the role of Edward.

According to a July interview with Network. NationalPost.com and director Catherine Hardwicke, Kristen Stewart was recommended for the role of Bella Swan by Emile Hirsch her co-star from Into the Wild (2007) and whom Hardwicke directed in Lords of Dogtown (2005).

Henry Cavill was Stephenie Meyer’s first choice to play Edward, but by the time the film came to be, he was 25 years old, and no longer looked the part of a 17-year old. He was then offered the part of Carlisle Cullen but turned it down due to his commitment with The Tudors.

The author, Stephenie Meyer has a cameo in the film. She says “That’s the only part I’m never going to watch.” Meyer has no lines in the movie – she says she was too shy – but she can be seen sitting at a lunch counter in a diner. It’s a scene where Bella and her father are dining out in Forks, Wash., the town where most of the story takes place. “It just seemed like the kind of thing the fans would love,” director Catherine Hardwicke says.

External Links

• Official Website
• Internet Movie Database
• Photo Gallery
• Video clips