The French journalist should have done his research, although, to the uneducated observer, Stewart might well seem beyond her years. Her conversation, for example, most certainly belies her age. Not many teenagers are quite as articulate or as self-aware — although not many teenagers are carrying the world’s biggest burgeoning film franchise, the teen vampire series Twilight. With JK Rowling’s much-loved characters pottering into their final big-screen chapter, Twilight will soon stand as the top teen-movie franchise, and with their leading lady, the film-makers have snared a supremely talented and highly intelligent young star.
Stewart’s most recent movie, the understated indie comedy Adventureland, is a case in point. In this semi-autobiographical tale, the writer-director Greg Mottola (The Daytrippers, Superbad) draws upon his experience of working in a theme park during his teens in the 1980s. Stewart plays the troubled Em Lewin, the main character’s love interest. The film took only $16m at the US box office, but is better than those figures suggest, working as an ensemble piece (the Saturday Night Live favourites Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig provide hilarious support, while The Squid and the Whale’s Jesse Eisenberg shines in the leading-man role) — although Stewart’s character is, quite deliberately, granted plenty of screen time.
“Kristen was one of the few people I cast without even auditioning, even though she’s younger than the character she plays in the film,” Mottola tells me. “But I think she’s the best actress in her age range. She can make thinking look dramatic.” Mottola’s favourite scene sees Stewart deliver a story about her father having an affair while her mother was dying of cancer. “She tells it in this very matter-of-fact manner and instinctively knew that someone who hasn’t processed those feelings yet wouldn’t know how to talk about them,” he says. Other people he auditioned for the role transformed the speech into what he describes as “some of the most melodramatic monologues I’ve ever heard”.
Stewart looks bashful when I relay the compliment. “I am not a terribly introverted, damaged girl at a theme park in the 1980s,” she smiles, “but I can imagine what it would be like to not like yourself very much, and to be kicking it alone. Also to feel like you're sort of smarter than everybody, but nobody gets it. I get all that, and then the masochistic aspects girls are good at. Also, I guess I have always felt older than I am. I felt I should have been an adult at the age of five. And I thought I was an adult when I was 12. I wasn’t like a warrior, but I have never been that kid who doesn’t care a fig about anything. It’s just the way I’ve been brought up.”
Stewart’s full-time education in her home state of California tailed off when she hit 14. Both of her parents are familiar with the film business (her father, John Stewart, worked as a stage manager and television producer; her mother, Jules Mann-Stewart, as a script supervisor) and trusted her to continue her education via correspondence while she concentrated on her fledgling acting career. The move has paid off, and, as Stewart has already noted, these early years have informed the rest of her life. At only 16, she had already worked with arguably the best actress and actor in Hollywood today, appearing first with Jodie Foster in 2002’s Panic Room (as Foster’s sullen daughter) and then, in 2007, as Tracy, a waif-like trailer-park teen who falls for Emile Hirsch in Sean Penn’s directorial hit Into the Wild. Foster and Penn have proved invaluable mentors.
Head on overs to timesonline to read full article!
nothing like a little kstew to get the day rollin!!
xoxo lovelies.
thanks muchly to Will Lawrence and timesonline
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