Rob & Kristen 'Elle's Most Wanted Portraits'

Painter Richard Phillips explores the dark recesses of the red carpet moment.

Kristen Stewart, 2010
“I think the easiest one right off the bat was Kristen because of her relationship with Pattinson; plus, New Moon and Twilight were such a success. And just at that time she was hitting it big with The Runaways with Dakota Fanning. The Runaways was kind of a great but wasted opportunity, because the film was horribly directed and terribly shot, but their performances isolated from that were great.”

Robert Pattinson, 2009
“The demand for getting things right with Pattinson—getting the lips right, the beard right—is important because all the character he has in his classic ‘I’ve seen it all before’ look is made up of all those constituent parts. A friend of mine stopped by and said, ’There’s a subliminal message in his beard, but I can’t make it out.’ There isn’t [laughs].”

The series began as an assignment for pastels of five leading men for V Man in the summer of 2009. “It’s hard to imagine a pastel having any consequence into today’s age, but when my pastel of Robert Pattinson went out into the media during Miami Art Basel, it was at the same time of the New Moon premiere and it went out onto the Internet like crazy. All the New Moon websites and blogs were going nuts; a drawing, an artwork of their star was an amazing thing. It gave me a sense that there was a real desire to see this work,”

elle via Pattinson-StewartFans