I never thought I’d be doing an AorA about someone whose nickname is K-Stew, but she’s difficult not to notice. She is the ultimate California girl, born and raised in Los Angeles, her father is a stage manager and television producer who has worked for Fox and her mother is a script supervisor. So, it was probably inevitable that young Kristen would become involved in the industry in some way. She is anything but a wide-eyed “I wanna be famous” starlet.

Nobody fits into the frame that typical Hollywood young actresses do, but they try to. They try to be this thing. Try to memorize answers and make everybody happy. That’s so horrifying and scary to me. So when you’re not that, you get criticized for it. You get criticized for being honest and criticized for being nervous.

Stewart’s acting career began at the age of eight when she had a bit-part in The Flintstones: Viva Rock Vegas. Not exactly the most illustrious of beginnings, but she didn’t stay at that level for long. In 2001, at the age of 11, she played young tomboy, Sam, in The Safety of Objects, directed by lesbian director, Rose Troche. Next, she worked with another lesbian (are we allowed say that yet), Jodie Foster. In The Panic Room, she played Jodie’s daughter (right) but said that she only got the part because she looked like a young Foster. Her modesty is touching as she shared the screen with Jodie in all of her scenes never looking out of her depth – and she was only 12.

After getting some excellent reviews for The Panic Room, she appeared next with Denis Quaid and Sharon Stone in Cold Creek Manor. However, it was a made-for-tv film called Speak, a film she made when she was only 13, that really put her on the map. In it, Kristen plays a rape victim whose trauma manifests itself as silence; she refuses to speak at all only keeping a commentary in her head. She was enthralling, managing to get across the pain her character was in while keeping the audience laughing with her acerbic wit in the voice-over. Did I mention she was just 13? This level of complexity is something older actors dream of, and, as she gets older, Kristen is only going to get better.

I don’t want to make movies for kids, and I don’t want to make movies for adults either.

Over the next few years, she kept low-key appearing in bit-parts and getting a reputation for showing up and stealing the film with her performances. At the age of 17, she was ready for the next level. Enter Bella Swan.

For those of you who have been visiting Mars recently (welcome back!), Bella Swan is the main character in a series of books called The Twilight Saga. She is a young woman who falls madly in love with a moody bloke who turns out to be a vampire (left). Hate it when that happens.

Twilight has pushed a rather embarrassed Kristen into the limelight. As a California girl, you’d think she’s love it, but this is a shy, serious young woman who doesn’t want to be famous, she wants to be a good actor. Weird these days eh?

I’m not so interested in being a Hollywood star. It’s a job, you know. When you wake up at six in the morning every day for a week, it feels like hard work. A lot of actors think that what we do is so important, like we’re saving people’s lives or something.

She’s contracted to the Twilight series for a few years and could be playing Bella well into her 30s but there is more that Bella Swan to this lady.

She will soon be playing Joan Jett (right)  in the highly-anticipated Runaways, a bio-pic which stars Dakota Fanning as well as K-Stew, showcasing some great future talent. She will also be starring in her mother’s directorial debut, K-11. In it, she will be playing a bloke, interestingly.

This weird thing happens when you’re in a movie that has some level of success. People start offering you all kinds of things, and they just expect you to do them because they’ll be good for your career. It’s not about the project’s integrity or anything like that. It’s about raising your profile and all that crap.

 Loading ...