  Actress Kristen Stewart is riding high on the incredible success of Twilight, in which she plays small-town teen Bella Swan. |
LOS ANGELES — The schedule is grueling. So is the fame. But Kristen Stewart remains love-bitten by the Twilight saga.
“I’m looking forward to it,” she says in a Beverly Hills hotel room, days before heading to Vancouver to shoot the sequel, New Moon. “There’s actually a lot more to work with. The second movie is much more quaint. The first one was about ultimate love and abandon, and that was good, but it’s kind of one-note. This one’s a different story.”
In other words, it’s the one where blood-slurping boy loses girl as small-town teenager Bella Swan (Stewart) and conflicted vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) split up. Complicating matters further is the emergence of a romantic rival: Bella’s childhood friend — and sensitive werewolf — Jacob (Taylor Lautner) who lends a furry shoulder to cry on.
“A lot more is introduced. The whole world of the werewolves is coming alive,” Stewart says. “Edward leaves her, which is interesting since the whole first movie is based on their devotion to each other. So to see them cope without each other and to see this character, Jacob, who is supposed to represent light and warmth, pull her out of a rut ... it’s really tragic. I can’t wait to see Taylor’s face when I tell him, ‘It’s him, it’s always been him.’ ”
Twilight’s success — $370 million worldwide at the box office — assured a swift greenlight for the sequels, but even for Hollywood, the turnaround is ambitious. New Moon — under the direction of Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) — will be in theatres in November, just a year after the original’s debut. By then production will be underway on the third instalment, Eclipse, which is slated for a June 2010 release. Presumably the final instalment of author Stephenie Meyer’s quadrilogy, Breaking Dawn, will follow closely thereafter. Daunting as it may sound, the nearly nonstop pace means Stewart — when not squeezing in such smaller projects as a Joan Jett biopic — will be able to portray Bella’s growth from a fragile, love-sick mortal to a strong, wise woman with little interruption. “Over the course of these four movies Bella has to become a formidable partner because — I’m not ruining it for anyone — they end up together. In the first one, he’s very much a man and she’s very much a child, so she has to become a formidable partner. We’re working on that.”
If it seems strange Stewart would refer to her alter-ego as “a child” since they are roughly the same age — Stewart turns 19 on April 9 — it’s probably not to those who know the actress.
“(She’s) this incredibly wise old lady trapped inside this young woman,” says her Adventureland co-star Ryan Reynolds.
In the coming-of-age comedy, which opened Friday, Stewart plays Em, a troubled young woman who attracts both Reynolds’ theme-park electrician and Jesse Eisenberg’s virginal college grad. Although shot last year, the movie has already benefited from the added exposure of her post-Bella stardom.
“This was something I wanted to do because the characters were easy to invest in,” she says. “I don’t have a grand plan. I don’t scope things out. It’s not like, ‘Oh this is the next step. This is smart for me.’ ”
Says Reynolds, “This is such a personal journey and how people handle this much attention speaks volumes of their character. I think she’s handled it incredibly well and gracefully.”
And don’t expect that attention to wane anytime soon. Certainly not as long as there are Twilight movies in the offing — or magazine covers speculating about her relationship with Pattinson (both performers have long insisted they are just friends).
Still, Stewart reveals that, despite the seemingly all-encompassing fandamonium, she is able to move around in public with surprising anonymity.
“People don’t really recognize me. I think I look different in person or something,” she says. “And I’m not that approachable.”
Background
» Born: April 9, 1990.
» Raised in: Los Angeles. Her father is a TV producer, her mother (who hails from Australia) a script supervisor. She has one older brother.
» Breakthrough role: Co-starring as Jodie Foster’s diabetic daughter in David Fincher’s 2002 thriller Panic Room. Other credits include the flop Cold Creek Manor, in which she played the daughter of Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone; Zathura, the science-fiction kids fantasy directed by Jon Favreau; the teen comedy Catch That Kid; David Gordon Green’s dark southern drama Undertow; and director Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, in which she made an impression as the hippie chick Emile Hirsch’s doomed wanderer encounters.
» Dating: Actor Michael Angarano, despite much-publicized reports linking her to Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson.
» Future projects: The Runaways, a biopic of the female rock group, in which Stewart will star as Joan Jett. And, of course, more Twilight films; the first sequel New Moon is due in November, to be followed by Eclipse in June 2010.
» Notable quote: Although hyper-intense fame is something most of Young Hollywood aspires to, Stewart says it never interested her. “It’s not why I started doing this. I don’t look at magazines and say, ‘Oh, she’s so cute. I wish I could do that.’ I don’t put too much stock in it. It doesn’t impress me at all.”
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca
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