Entrevista con Kristen: About.com

Kristen Stewart's been acting in feature films for a decade, but her starring role in Twilight is easily the biggest role of her career thus far. Stewart plays Bella Swan, a high school student and recent transplant from sunny Phoenix to the perpetually rainy Pacific Northwest. After relocating to Washington to live with her single dad, Bella finds herself drawn to Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson), an extraordinarily handsome 17 year old with cold, white skin and eyes that change color. As Bella soon discovers, those aren't the only traits that set Edward and his siblings apart from the rest of the high school students... Edward and his brothers and sisters are vampires who live by different rules than the rest of their kind, the most important difference being they don't feed on humans.

Stewart and her onscreen love interest, Pattinson, took their roles in Twilight very seriously. Both young actors were determined to not just make another teen movie, but one that fully represented the world Stephenie Meyer created in the Twilight series of books.



Is it true that Rob Pattinson proposed marriage to you?

Kristen Stewart: "Yeah. I mean, I don't know how serious he was, but yes."

How did that happen?

Kristen Stewart: "It just did. We spent a lot of time together, a lot of like really heightened time. We were tired a lot of the time."

You've already been out with the fans at the different premieres. How have the encounters been so far?

Kristen Stewart: "Entirely positive, but entirely overwhelming. It's sort of like I only have to deal with the fans when I go out to do those events and I just have to stand there for a minute and hope that I can keep a smile on my face, and hope that I don't run off at the mouth and say something stupid that they'll put me on a cross for. It's fine. It's good that they can be so passionate about something. I mean, I care about the book just as much as they do."

Have you been approached out in public, either at the airport or at a restaurant?

Kristen Stewart: "No. Really, no. Once or twice just like a very sort of quiet and polite girl will come up to me and say, 'Are you, because all of my friends are telling me that I'm stupid and crazy?' I say, 'Yeah.' And she's like [excited]."

Is there a sense of responsibility to what the book is and what the fans want when you're doing a movie like this and does that affect your performance?

Kristen Stewart: "I felt such a responsibility to the story first and to the character. If you don't get to play the part that really compels you, then they might die right on the page and no one gets to experience them as you have - and that was much stronger than my ideas about the fans. I didn't really know about the fans when I was making the movie. I had tunnel vision and I wasn't paying attention to that. And Summit, our studio, would always be elated on their set visits and everyone was in this celebratory mode this whole time. It was like, 'We haven't even made a movie yet. Have you even looked at dailies? Do you even know what this movie looks like yet?'"

"I also think that if you took into consideration everyone's idea of the character, considering that they project themselves onto it, I mean she's not distinct and you don't read her as like, 'Oh, wow. That's a character that I can really sink my teeth into.' She's the vessel in which you experience the story, through her. So you put yourself in that position and so I'm never going to satisfy everyone. I'd be playing the most disjointed character. It's really a self-conscious role. It's entirely Kristen in the situation. I didn't have a really distinct character to play. It's just this girl caught up in an extravagant situation."

In the book she's a much more passive character in that you experience Edward's story through her. And yet in the film it can't be that way because she's there and has to be living it.

Kristen Stewart: "Right. I can't think about that though because then it's very vain and you're thinking, 'Well, I hope that people like me as this character.' It doesn't matter as long as you're staying true to the story."

Was there a lot of internal debate with you about signing onto a film that could be a franchise?

Kristen Stewart: "I was ready to follow it for as long it decided to go. I would love to do the second, third and fourth. Again, it was that initial responsibility. I can only do a movie if I feel entirely compelled to it or else in every frame I'm just going to look confused."

So there wasn't any hesitation on joining a franchise and possibly being identified with this character for a while?

Kristen Stewart: "No. If this movie flops or if does fantastically I'm still going to be able to do… This movie is either going to make it easier for me to keep doing the things that I've been doing for almost 10 years or it's going to drop me right on my ass and I'm going to keep doing the same thing that I've been doing, which are tiny little independent movies that no one sees. So, no. I just came off of a movie where I play a homeless kid, like a really damaged and really broken little kid and she looks nothing like Bella. In fact, she's a stripper. So I'm not worried about it and I never really was."

Can you talk about working with Catherine Hardwicke and what that process was like?

Kristen Stewart: "Catherine, she's actually quite hard to sum up. She's really eccentric. When you first meet her you're like, 'Wow, you're crazy.' I mean, I love this woman. There's something about her. It's hard, too, because this stuff is going to be written down and maybe it'll be taken in a different way, but she's childlike in a way where she has this understanding of fundamental emotion. She doesn't over complicate things. She takes them for what they are. You might be like, 'Wow, you're just a simpleton. You don't understand.' But it's not that. She's gone through and has cancelled it out. It doesn't matter, and she's gone back to the basics. She doesn't lack enthusiasm. She works twenty four/seven and is right there with you all the time."

There's an Entertainment Weekly story that made it sound like Rob Pattinson was obsessing about the role and that it fell to you and some other people to talk him down from the clock tower a few times. Is that true?

Kristen Stewart: "Yeah, which was perfect the part. I mean, that's why he had to be in it. Especially when you're on location, you're secluded and in this place and we had this big huge cast and they're all actors. They're not just like, 'Oh, we're making this movie.' So even when we went back home at the end of the day, whenever we would hangout it would pretty much revolve around the movie. So we all had that in us, but Rob really sometimes got… We wouldn't be able to shoot a scene. It was like, 'We're not going to be able to get anything in the can if you don't just calm down.' So, yeah, there were times where I had to like sort of do that. And he hated me too when I did that. The problem was that any time you'd say, 'No, you're really good.' 'No! You think that I need that?!' It's like, 'No. I'm just actually being genuinely honest because I really like what's going on here.' I think it had a lot to do with the part that he was playing."

How is that different for you as an actress? Can you turn it on and off easily?

Kristen Stewart: "It's so dependent on so many things. It changes. I just did this movie Welcome to the Rileys, the movie where I play the street kid, there's this weight. I mean, it's easy to lie. If you're not doing that, then this job is really wearing. There are times when you have to step away and start laughing or else halfway through a 16 hour day you'll literally collapse. Sometimes you can't and sometimes you can sort of do that."

Are you involved in the tour of Hot Topics?

Kristen Stewart: "I think I'm going to two Hot Topics next week."

Are you prepared for that because it seems that the fans are very passionate?

Kristen Stewart: "Yeah, that's a good [word]. That's polite. We did a book signing in Rome that while we were leaving the building I couldn't get to the car. It was actually scary. I was being dragged by security. I wasn't even on my own feet. I was thrown into a van because if they hadn't done it I would've gotten…I was literally picked up and thrown into a van and then it shut and then the van just started shaking. It has nothing to do with you. It's a really surreal experience because you're like, 'God. What?' It's fine. I think based on that experience there's like an underground entrance that we've all been told about. There's heightened security. We're going to be very guarded. I'm not going anywhere unless they've got 15 big guys around me." [laughing]

Some actors have worn costumes at Comic Con and walked around, blending right in.

Kristen Stewart: "I know. I've wanted to do that."

Maybe you could do that for your escape.

Kristen Stewart: "Yeah, who knows? I don't know. They have those sweatshirts, probably at Hot Topic too, that zip all the way over your head and you're like skulls, skeleton bodies. That would be funny. I'd like to do that."

Are you able to go incognito in public?

Kristen Stewart: "Yes. I don't know if it's because this is my first incredibly high profile movie or not, but like Rob gets recognized sort of everywhere he goes and I don't."

It's the hair.

Kristen Stewart: "It's the hair. Totally. He's tall. He stands out."

Are you getting sick of yourself with these banners around the town for Twilight? Or are you enjoying it all?

Kristen Stewart: "I'm so glad that I like this movie. I'm so glad that I'm proud of this movie and that I stand in it and that I wasn't trampled by the machine that could've taken over. In that case I would be hiding under this table and this interview would've gone terribly. But I'm excited because I'm proud of the movie. It's not why I started doing this though. I don't look at magazines and say, 'Oh, she's so cute. I wish I could do that.' I don't put too much stock in it. It doesn't impress me at all. If the movie is good then great, but if it's not then God, I feel so bad for that person with their face 50 feet tall, all blown up. Some people would be happy with that, that as long as their face was out there they're stoked about it. I'm not like that."

Was there a scene in this film that was deleted that you were sad to see go?

Kristen Stewart: "I've seen the movie once and nothing stuck out. Well, yeah, one thing stuck out but it was improvisational and maybe really didn't fit in. It was a scene where we're just walking and talking and doing nothing. I think that they thought it was outside of our characters, which I completely and entirely disagree with, but I'm sad to see that go. Some of the lines in the movie are improvised which I thought were all going to be cut because they would say, 'Okay, we're just going to roll MOS and so just ramble off and we're not going to use any of it.' But they actually rolled and some of it is in the movie and that I'm really excited to see."

Like what specifically?

Kristen Stewart: 'The one thing was, and this was a tough day too, when we were in the tree and he takes me up and is showing me the most beautiful view, his favorite view. It sounds so stupid to quote myself in the movie, but I remember the lines. I'm not going to pretend like I don't remember the lines. I say, 'This kind of stuff doesn't exist.' Then he's like, 'It does in my world.' That's all Rob."

They used that a lot. It's in the trailer too.

Kristen Stewart: "I know. It's weird."