Oddly famous
Kristen Stewart’s passion for acting is stronger than ever.
TEN years ago, Kristen Stewart became what she calls “oddly famous”. The California native had started working in films when she was nine but it was the Twilight series that came along almost a declater ade to generate more than US$3.3bil in box office sales and send her stardom skyrocketing.
The one question Stewart kept getasked ting was what she planned to do after Twilight.
What she did was keep making movies ranging from big budget tales like Snow White And The Huntsman to her recent work in the independent-style production, Lizzie.
In Lizzie, Stewart plays Bridget Sullivan, the housemaid in the home where the father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden (Chloe Sevigny) are brutally murdered.
“It’s hard to think of your life as a trajectory,” Stewart says. “It’s easy for an outsider to kind of gauge on what seems to be the most signifihappenings cant in your life and use those as touchstones. I was working rather consistently on smaller independent movies before I did Twilight.
“I kept getting questions about how it felt now that I had all this sucand cess would I be taking advantage of that. Or, did I feel like I couldn’t live the way I wanted to and do independent movies anymore.
“Nothing really changed for me professionally except for an immense amount of access. It’s easier to get a project greenlit.”
Stewart’s approach to her career is to ignore all of the outside chatter and focus on projects that interest her in some fashion.
In the case of Lizzie, it helped that while she liked the script, Stewart was the very first person considered to play Sullivan. Her casting was critical for director Craig William Macneill and writer Bryce Kass.
The moment Sevigny and Stewart started working together, it was clear that they had the chemistry needed to play the two women who bonded over their circumstances.
There has been a lot of fact and fiction related to Lizzie Borden. It was critical that what is presented in Lizzie has been verified as much as possible.
“Lizzie’s what would be considered then as having dysfunctional sexuality. That detail seems to be consistent enough that it must be rooted in some truth,” Stewart says.
“Considering her housemaid, whom she apparently was close with, was the only other person at the house during the two-hour period when the murders happened and she didn’t hear a thing. And she was washing the same window for two hours.
“So I am pretty certain they were in cahoots.”
Stewart has never been a big fan of doing a lot of research and rehearsal. In the case of Lizzie, there was very little information on Sullivan so Stewart’s approach was to get an understanding of the time period and what women would have been going through in terms of social and economic oppression.
The one thing she was concerned about in her performance the most was making sure that her Irish accent was believable.
This approach has been the norm for Stewart who has been acting for 18 years in films such as Panic Room, and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Stewart became the first American actress to be awarded France’s Cesar Award in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in Olivier Assayas’ Clouds Of Sils Maria.
Stewart finds it difficult to evaluate where she was 10 years ago compared to today and where she thinks she will be in a decade.
For her, it all comes down to the same forces that have been inside her before, during and after that period that made her “oddly famous”.
“I am so happy to be working with who I am working with. I am also really happy that my interest has never dwindled. I am still as obsessed with making movies now as I have ever been. Even more,” Stewart says.