14 DAY TRIAL // Kristen Stewart grew up in the spotlight / in the movie industry, but it wasn’t until 2008’s “Twilight” that she really got a better appreciation of what being famous really meant. By 2012, when the final installment in “The Twilight Saga” came out, she was already weary of it.
In recent years, Kristen has been working more in indie film, earning critical praise for her solid performances, even though the movies she starred in barely left a mark in terms of box office performance. She tells Harper’s Bazaar UK that she’s OK with slipping off the radar a bit: being famous really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Kristen on fame and sexism in the industry
None of Kristen’s interviews have been fluff reading, but she’s really getting serious in this one. She talks to Harper’s about growing up in the industry, on movie sets and then becoming a child actor and being thrust in the spotlight.
She also talks about fame being “the worst thing in the world” because it’s just a side-effect of being an actor - and one with countless disadvantages, at it. Fans know that she never made a secret of how much she hated losing all trace of privacy with the “Twilight” hysteria that swept over the world.
To Kristen, it seems unimaginable to want to be famous for fame’s sake. Hearing young people, both men and women, saying they want to be celebrities even though they don’t have a particular set of skills that would qualify them for it is the very definition of ridiculousness.
She also talks about sexism in the film industry, saying, “Women inevitably have to work a little bit harder to be heard. Hollywood is disgustingly sexist. It’s crazy. It’s so offensive it’s crazy.”
In doing so, Kristen joins a long list of actresses who have taken a stand against sexism, asking for more roles for women and for more places for women in the filmmaking process: directing, producing, writing.
The famous “Twilight” love scene was “agony”
Because no interview with Kristen Stewart is complete without a “Twilight”-related question, Kristen is asked this time about the famous love scene between her character Bella Swan now Cullen and Robert Pattinson’s vampire Edward Cullen.
At the time these two finally get to consummate their relationship, she is still mortal, and obviously, he is still a vampire with more strength in his little finger than thousands of humans combined. The idea is that he could kill her while lovemaking, if he loses control.
This is what made shooting the scene “agony,” Kristen says: here they were, 2 regular people, having to create the impression they were in the midst of the most passionate and incredible and otherworldly lovemaking session.
The pressure was immense for them to deliver, which made the sequence very contrived and awkward for them. On the bright side, if you ask the Twi-hards, it was all worth it.