Backstage (cover + intervista ed una foto)

For our interview with Kristen Stewart, pick up copies of Backstage on newsstands Nov. 08.

Kristen Stewart is not who you might think she is.

By Jenelle Riley

Since her career rocketed into the stratosphere with the first “Twilight” film in 2008, Stewart has frequently been portrayed in the media as serious or sullen, intensely private and uncomfortable with giving interviews. But spend a few minutes with the 22-year-old, and it becomes apparent that nothing could be further from the truth. Seated in the corner of a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant in a simple white T-shirt and a baseball cap just days before the release of the final “Twilight” installment, “Breaking Dawn: Part 2,” Stewart seems at complete ease. She is thoughtful and warm; despite having only met once in passing six weeks earlier, she instantly recognizes and greets her interviewer with a friendly hug. She’s got a sharp sense of humor. And, for the record, “I actually like giving interviews!” She elaborates, “Given that I can talk to a hundred or more people at a press junket, at some point there is going to be something brought up that makes me see things I never considered. It’s fascinating to talk to so many people about one of the most important things in your life.” 

Stewart is also an actor, and a good one at that, a fact that seems to get lost in all the media attention devoted to her personal life. But before “Twilight,” her talent was obvious to the likes of David Fincher, who cast Stewart at age 10 to play Jodie Foster’s daughter in “Panic Room,” and Sean Penn, who handpicked her to appear in his 2007 film “Into the Wild.” There are also her acclaimed turns in the indies “Speak” and as a young woman with a neurological disorder in 2007’s “The Cake Eaters,” a performance so convincing people would always ask director Mary Stuart Masterson where she had found an actor with the actual disease. Next month will see Stewart in one of her most challenging roles to date, as 16-year-old free spirit Marylou in “On the Road,” director Walter Salles’ screen adaptation of the beloved Jack Kerouac novel.
Stewart actually met with Salles in 2007 after the director caught her performance as a melancholy teen in “Into the Wild,” but it took several years for the film to get made. It’s time that Stewart is grateful for. “The role was so beyond me at that point,” she says. “I loved the character, and I would have done craft services to be involved with that movie. But I drove away shaking because I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I think I’m going to get the job, and I don’t know if I can do it!’ ”
Playing someone as uninhibited as Marylou, who romances both her boyfriend, Dean (Garrett Hedlund), and the film’s protagonist, Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), required Stewart to be exposed, figuratively and literally. The nudity didn’t intimidate Stewart, who played a stripper in 2010’s “Welcome to the Rileys,” though she knew it was something the media would latch on to, anticipating headlines like “ ‘Twilight’ Good Girl Bares All!” says Stewart, “I know it’s an odd thing to say, but it didn’t worry me. I really do love taking walls down. I didn’t want to hide, especially as Marylou—she’s the last person who would hide.” As it turns out, it was a simple dance scene that frightened Stewart the most. “But whenever I had doubts, I was able to talk to Walter, and all my apprehensions went away,” she says. She starts to praise her director at length before stopping herself and saying, “What can I say—he’s fucking awesome.” Salles has nothing but kind words for Stewart in return. “Kristen is a seriously talented actress who’s going to surprise us many times in the future,” the director says in a phone call from Brazil. “She has the possibility to do pretty much whatever she wants, and she opts for roles that are very courageous choices—characters you might not expect her to play.”
While “On the Road” might seem like an attempt to break away from her “Twilight” image, that’s another misconception about Stewart; unlike many actors associated with a popular franchise, she’s not interested in putting Bella Swan behind her. “Other people try to distance me from her, but not me,” she says.“I’ve said it a hundred times before: I love Bella.” To that end, she admits to getting frustrated when people label the character as weak or passive; it does seem a faulty argument, considering how many times Bella takes action that endangers her life to fight for what she loves. “If Edward and Bella switched places, he would be viewed as someone to admire, someone who just lays everything on the line,” she says. “It takes such a strong person to completely subject yourself to something and give yourself over to something so wholly. It’s an equal relationship; they both give the same amount, so why is she condemned for it? I don’t get it.”
Aside from this year’s blockbuster “Snow White and the Huntsman,” Stewart has gravitated largely to independent fare between “Twilight” films, like playing Joan Jett in “The Runaways” or holding her own opposite Melissa Leo and James Gandolfini in “Rileys.” But “Twilight” has much more in common with those scrappy indies than people think; the first film was not a guaranteed hit when she signed on, just a modestly budgeted movie with unknown actors from an unproven studio. “It’s funny how people forget that,” Stewart says. “If I don’t look elated in a paparazzi photo, people say, ‘Well, you signed on to this!’ Well…not really, all right?” Stewart can pinpoint the moment she began to realize what the film would become. “It was at Comic-Con, when we were literally hit with the energy of 6,000 people like a brick wall in the face. That was the moment I went, ‘What the fuck is this going to be?’”
No one could have anticipated the phenomenon it would become, let alone Stewart, who tries to take the scrutiny and attention in stride. Which brings us to “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the erotic publishing phenomenon that began as “Twilight” fan fiction. Has Stewart read it? “Not really—I’ve skimmed parts of it,” she says. “When I read the first few pages describing her messy hair, I was like, ‘This is so strange.’” Stewart can’t resist an uninhibited laugh, adding, “But it’s just so raunchy! I mean, obviously, everyone knows that. But when I see people reading it on planes and stuff, I’m genuinely creeped out. Like, you’re basically just reading porn right now! Get that blanket off your lap!”

In 2007, Walter Salles was having dinner with two friends, “Babel” director Alejandro González Iñárritu and composer Gustavo Santaolalla, when he mentioned he was looking for a young actor to play Marylou in “On the Road.” Says Salles, “They both said, in unison, ‘You absolutely have to meet this girl who is in ‘Into the Wild.’” After checking out the film, Salles was taken by the then-unknown Kristen Stewart.“Kristen doesn’t appear for the first two-thirds of the film, but when she comes into the story she just brings a unique light and magnetic quality to the screen that very few actresses possess,” he says. After a meeting at the Sunset Marquis (a place Stewart says now has “a very special place in my heart”), Salles offered her the role. “Several actors were testing for the part at this point, and I didn’t even ask her to test,” he says.
On set, Salles says Stewart impressed everyone with her work ethic. “She is unbelievably concentrated. She can be so tough with herself; she doesn’t give up until she reaches a point where she believes she did her best. That kind of pursuit of excellence is really a gift for any director.” As for her lesser-known talents, he says, “Her iPod had the best selection of music from the ’70s you will ever find, so whenever we wanted good music, we would report to Kristen. Also, she plays pool as well as the boys. Better, in fact. She beat them most of the time.”

backstage

The current issue of Backstage features Kristen Stewart on the cover, talking about her upcoming films “The Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn Part 2” and “On the Road.” However, she chatted with Backstage about much more than that! Here are some outtakes from the conversation, where she talks about her other films, including the Mary Stuart Masterson-directed indie “The Cake Eaters,” in which Stewart delivered a physical tour-de-force playing a girl with an incurable neurological disorder.

On being misrepresented in the press:

“There’s been a couple of things recently where I just went…what the fuck? It always ends up being something that you kind of said but it’s changed so…I don’t even want to say ‘masterfully,’ because it doesn’t take an intelligent person to do this, it just takes a very conniving, manipulative capitalist motherfucker. The thing is, some people live on the battlefield and some people don’t. I just don’t live my life like that so I never anticipate those things. But you encounter people in your life that are about divide and conquer, and it’s crazy.”

On leaving "Twilight" behind:

"I’m so excited that the story is done and we don’t have that hanging over us anymore. There are so many moments that are beloved and typically, you have five months to think about things. We had five years. It’s amazing. How many times are you going to get that chance to focus on that one person for so long? But because everything’s been done so well, I think we’re excited to be moving on. Not that we want it to be over, but it feels right. It did not feel right at any point before this.”

On the question she's asked the most:

“The most common question or comment I get about ‘Twilight’ is, ‘You must be so sick of it. Did things get stagnant? Are you bored?’ Well, no. Because we hadn’t done the whole story. It’s not like we did the same thing over and over. I also get the ‘responsibility’ question all the time, about being a role model. Also, I find it crazy when people ask quickfire questions like, ‘We just have 20 questions really quick, answer these…’ and they’ll be really heavy, deep questions like ‘What’s your greatest fear?’ What? How do I respond?”

On auditioning for director Sean Penn for “Into the Wild”:

“After I did a reading, we met again like a week later and I played a song for him. I botched it so badly, it was awful. I learned “Blackbird” on guitar, but it was difficult to sing at the same time. It was very embarrassing, but he gave me the part anyway. He said he wanted me to be in the movie he just didn’t know in what capacity yet. Then he called me and said, ‘Hey you want to do this thing?’ I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?’ ”

On her most difficult role:

“ ‘The Cake Eaters’ was the most intimidating thing I’d ever done. I got to know a couple families that struggle with that disease, Friedreich's Ataxia. You can’t generalize it at all. It’s so distinct. I wasn’t able to try it before we started shooting, I couldn’t do it. Until it was the moment it was supposed to happen, it felt ridiculous to imitate something like that. Mary was amazing to have enough faith in me to wait until we started shooting.”

On doing indie films:

“There is a part of indie movies that’s really appealing that is like, half of these people will think we’re fucking crazy, but half these people will be our friends. You can find people similar to you with stuff that’s a little bit more obscure. Not everyone’s going to like it. ‘Into the Wild,’ people either love that movie or fucking hate it. It really pissed some people off. But I love it, and he does too, and he does too. Its kind of an appealing part of doing these indies. They’re fun because it’s us and them.”

backstage