Kristen Stewart: 'Who wants to talk about themselves all day?'

When Kristen Stewart first broke through with international audiences courtesy of her performance as Bella Swan in teen vampire-cum-werewolf movie Twilight, she appeared similar to her character: strong-willed yet tense and more than a little self-conscious. The now-20-year-old Californian struggled with her new-found position as one of the most famous young faces in Hollywood.

A bit like Bella, however, she’s maturing – Stewart is finally finding her feet when placed in front of the press. ‘I am much better at this kind of stuff than I was before,’ she says as we catch up to talk about Eclipse, the third instalment in the Twilight movie franchise. ‘I used to be really uncomfortable. I mean, who wants to talk about themselves all day?’

Some might suggest that Hollywood A-listers love talking about themselves all day but Stewart is not your typical Tinseltown starlet. In person she is bright and articulate. ‘You talk all day,’ she says, ‘and you don’t have different answers to the same questions. It becomes tiring.’

Her situation is made all the more difficult as hard-core Twilight fans are notoriously vociferous (some dub themselves Twihards) and they scrutinise every aspect of the franchise. Stewart also has to cope with incessant gossip about her co-star Robert Pattinson. The pair have apparently been sharing more than just screen time. ‘You do your job, why should you then have to talk about your personal life?’ she wonders. ‘I find that a bit weird.’

She might find life in the media spotlight ‘a bit weird’, then, but Stewart is very much at home on screen. She took her first acting job at just nine years of age and by the time she was 11 she’d already shot 2002’s Panic Room with Jodie Foster.

‘Starting young was never a problem,’ she says. ‘I didn’t really enjoy all the bitchiness at school. I guess I have always felt older than I am. I felt that I should have been an adult at age five. I thought I was an adult when I was 12.’

A number of her performances have demonstrated that maturity: at just 13, she starred as a teen who is raped and becomes mute in Speak (2004), and in the more recent Adventureland (2009), she plays a teenager who is wise beyond her years. ‘Playing that character in Adventureland, for example, I got how you might not like yourself and how
you might be smarter than other people your age but that no one gets it,’ she says. ‘And then the masochistic aspects that girls are good at, I can so relate on that level.’

Even in the three Twilight films – the first in 2008, New Moon in 2009 and this year’s Eclipse – she’s by far the strongest of the younger actors. She squirms a little when the compliment is passed on.

‘I just think that Bella is written very well and she matures gradually,’ she
says, deflecting the conversation. ‘I think Bella resonates with people because she is extremely well written, and while she goes through very simple emotions, they are always very extreme and very sensory. It’s not like she is ever very confused; she just fully inhabits whatever emotion she is feeling.’ She laughs. ‘She is so dire all the time!’

The film opened in the US last week, scooping more box-office dollars than fellow blockbusters Toy Story 3 and The Last Airbender combined. When the film finishes its run, Stewart will be back on screen playing yet another teenager when she takes on the role of iconic rocker Joan Jett in The Runaways, which charts the real-life rise and fall of the first ever successful all-girl rock band, who erupted in the 1970s with hit single Cherry Bomb. The film reunites her with New Moon and Eclipse co-star Dakota Fanning.

‘I think that story is amazing, the barriers Joan and the band broke through, being young girls in this macho world,’ says Stewart. ‘By starting young and working with Jodie on Panic Room, and with Sean Penn [who directed 2007’s Into The Wild], they taught me to really try to follow projects that I’m totally passionate about and, really, Twilight has given me the chance to do that.’

Metro