14 DAY TRIAL // Depending on who you ask, Kristen Stewart is either the most talented actress of the younger generation (the “Twilight” fans, some critics) or the worst lip-bite who can’t act to save her life (critics, other moviegoers for whom vampire love stories mean nothing). In whichever category you fit, Kristen probably doesn’t care what you have to say.
The former “Twilight” star has been taking some time off from her work for the past couple of years, during which time she also waited for the waters to settle on the huge cheating scandal she got caught in with Rupert Sanders. However, 2014 will see her return to the big screen with several movies for which she’s already getting major awards buzz, so she’s doing her best to promote them.
She also talked to The Daily Beast about one of them, “Camp X-Ray,” and in the process, addressed some of the criticism made about her acting skills.
If you don’t like her work, don’t watch
Kristen Stewart knows what many critics and moviegoers are saying about her and her apparent inability to express or convey emotion in front of the camera. From what she’s telling the mag, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and she’s not about to go on the defensive, in the vain hope that she might thus convince her haters to give her a chance.
No, Kristen actually has a better idea: if you dislike her so much, why do you watch? It’s not like you don’t have the option to stop viewing whatever it is that you’re viewing that you hate this much.
“Honestly, I don’t care,” she says of negative comments about her inability to act. “It’s fine. I’m really happy doing what I’m doing. I’m sure there are a ton of people out there who would hate my movies even if they saw all those, just as I’m sure there are people out there who are obsessed with Twilight and say, ‘I watched the series, and she completely let me down, and then I watched every one of her other movies, and I [expletive]ing hate her!’ And that’s cool! Just don’t watch my movies.”
This might sound like a harsh thing to say, but she has a point: whenever she comes out with a new movie, some people (celebrity pundits, most often) try to bring her down even before they see the movie and are able to form an educated opinion of it.
The hate is strong against Kristen, for whatever reason. What’s worse, it’s being propagated online through social media with such speed that, at times, she doesn’t even get the chance to prove herself before she’s labeled a failure.
Mind you, we’re not talking about film critics here, or about people who express an opinion about her work after they’ve seen it, only about haters who keep on trying to bring her down no matter what she does.
Kristen is happy to be doing something that makes her happy
On the same note that she’s happy to be acting and that she really doesn’t need validation / approval from the entire public, Kristen explains that she doesn’t take on projects thinking of whether they have a real shot at success or not. With her, she stresses, everything comes from the heart – so if she likes a project, she will do it regardless of budget or box office chances.
“There’s a lot of risk involved in this job, and it doesn’t bother me… I’ve had experiences that have made me go, ‘Ugh, I have to be careful and make sure that every part is sturdy and that I won’t be let down.’ If I was a director, I would be extremely conscious of my filmography. It says so much about the difference between putting your name on something and owning it instead of being one tiny part of it. Actors get to work all the time. If I make a bad movie every once in a while, I don’t care. I didn’t work after Snow White for about two years, but it’s because a lot of these projects didn’t come together,” she says.
It seems that these 2 years away from the spotlight have helped her grow up, both in the sense that she’s now an actress who knows better what she wants from life and her career, and in that she’s more filtered in her conversations with the media.
Part of the reason Kristen gets such heated reactions online, be they negative or positive, is that she didn’t use to have a filter in her promo chats, which often translated in print as her being uptight, entitled, ungrateful and snotty.