An affair to forget
Stewart stays on track despite fan backlash
Twilight actress Kristen Stewart says the furor over her affair with director Rupert Sanders practically drove her into seclusion.
The starlet tells Newsweek that it was “annoying” to live her life from “box to box” as the media scrutinized every facet of her relationship with the married director.
After Stewart was photographed last July in a clinch with Sanders, who helmed Snow White and the Huntsman, the resulting storm saw her make an emotional public apology to Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson.
Fans unleashed a torrent of abuse against the 22-year-old A-lister, culminating in death threats over Twitter and comedian Will Ferrell branding her a “trampire.”
Stewart tells the magazine she is finally moving on from the campaign of hate.
“I’m going out a lot more now,” she said. “I was starting to get closed off and self-conscious, and I’m trudging forth into the world more often.”
Now that the Twilight Saga has ended, Stewart is focusing on new projects, including a film she’s shooting in April entitled Focus.
“The only relief when it comes to Twilight is that the story is done,” she says flatly, adding: “As long as people’s perspective of me doesn’t keep me from doing what I want to do, it doesn’t matter.”
Stewart has kept busy recently promoting her role as Marylou in the film version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the beatnik classic about road-tripping youth bent on upturning the conventions of 1950s America.
She discovered the novel during high school in southern California and says it changed her life. “It holds a special place for me.”
On the Road, which is in theatres from Dec. 21, allows Stewart to reach greater emotional heights than she has in some of her previous movies.
The result, says Newsweek, is “one of her most uninhibited performances yet.”
Stewart is nothing if not a child of Hollywood, having grown up on movie sets with her mother, a script supervisor, and her father, a stage manager.
“I remember being on the set of Little Giants when I was a kid and thinking it was the coolest thing ever,” she tells writer Marlow Stern. “I totally had a crush on Devon Sawa.”
Stewart had no burning desire to perform, despite her silver-screen upbringing, but was discovered during a school play at age eight. However, after numerous auditions in the next 12 months, she had only one appearance — in a commercial — to show for her efforts and was on the verge of quitting showbiz.
“I was just dying. I had one ap- pointment left and my mom said, ‘Have a little integrity and go to your last one (audition).’ And it was The Safety of Objects.
“If I hadn’t gotten that, I would have been done.”
The next year came a star turn as Jodie Foster’s daughter in the thriller Panic Room, then a few indie films — during which she earned her high-school diploma — and then the phenomenon that is Twilight in 2008.
The vampire film franchise has earned more than $3-billion worldwide and turned Stewart into a pop-culture superstar.
Dealing with the flip side of fame — the viral backlashes, the paparazzi stalking, the tabloid headlines — has clearly taken its toll on Stewart.
But she remains defiant in the face of the naysayers.
“It’s not a terrible thing if you’re either loved or hated,” she insists. “But honestly, I don’t care, ’cause it doesn’t keep me from doing my s---. And I apologize to everyone for making them so angry. It was not my intention.”