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She rose to worldwide fame for portraying the Mary Sue character Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga (2008–2012). The series ranks among the highest-grossing film franchises globally and earned Stewart the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2010.

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"Why does everyone say that Kristen Stewart did a crappy job of playing Bella?", Raddit (2021)

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"Why does everyone say that Kristen Stewart did a crappy job of playing Bella?", Raddit (2021)

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This Reddit discussion shows the ongoing divide among audiences about her. Even after gaining critical respect, the “bad actress” label still circulates online. It reflects her complex position in pop culture. Admired by many, yet persistently misunderstood.

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Explore this post and more from the twilight community

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You probably know Kristen Stewart as fiesty, awkward and a notorious tomboy. But THIS is the reluctant Hollywood darling in her own words...

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"19 Quotes That Prove Kristen Stewart Is Unlike Anyone Else In Hollywood", Marie Claire (2015）

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"19 Quotes That Prove Kristen Stewart Is Unlike Anyone Else In Hollywood", Marie Claire (2015）

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I don't want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie. Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable. I'm an actor. It's bizarre to me that everybody's so obsessive.

This article compiles Stewart’s own quotes. Her words expressed a rejection of Hollywood's polished façade. She proves her authenticity, which becomes part of her anti-celebrity, individualist image.

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19 Quotes That Prove Kristen Stewart Is Unlike Anyone Else In Hollywood

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You probably know Kristen Stewart as fiesty, awkward and a notorious tomboy. But THIS is the reluctant Hollywood darling in her own words…

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During the promotion of Love, Lies, Bleeding, Stewart revisited her Twilight years. By openly framing her breakthrough in a queer lens, describing the film’s subtext as

“a very gothic kind of gayness.”

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Kristen Stewart Thinks “Twilight” Is “Such a Gay Movie”

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“I mean, a Mormon woman wrote this book.”

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Kristen Stewart: ‘I Just Crashed and Burned and Barreled My Way Through’ Twilight Saga, Moviemaker (2024)

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Kristen Stewart: ‘I Just Crashed and Burned and Barreled My Way Through’ Twilight Saga, Moviemaker (2024)

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In this interview, Stewart reflects on how Twilight shaped her youth but also limited her. She admits feeling trapped by playing the same role for six years and finds it strange to keep talking about her past personal life. Her words show signs of independence and a wish to move beyond her old image.

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Kristen Stewart Gets Honest About 4 Years Filming Twilight Saga: ‘I Just Crashed and Burned... My Way Through’

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Kristen Stewart is looking back on how she “crashed and burned” her way through filming the Twilight series in her late teens and early twenties.

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"Kristen Stewart Gives me Seizures", YouTube (2010)

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"Kristen Stewart Gives me Seizures", YouTube (2010)

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This compilation video mocks Stewart's acting by highlighting her so-called awkward expressions and mannerisms. It reveals the lasting controversy surrounding her image and how her unique performance style continues to divide audiences.

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Early media image: Hollywood's ‘‘Teen Idol’’ label

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Early media image: Hollywood's ‘‘Teen Idol’’ label

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Kristen Stewart's early fame was almost entirely manufactured by Hollywood's industrialised machinery through the Twilight series.

She was marketed as an introverted, melancholic, romantic teenage idol. This persona appealed to young female audiences while simultaneously trapping her within a commodified identity.

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This character serves as the most direct link to her early "girl-next-door" star image, perfectly capturing the innocence and yearning that resonated with countless young audiences.

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Her lauded performance in Spencer has its roots in Twilight

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"Actually, Kristen Stewart Has Always Been a Great Actor", The Atlantic (2021)

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"Actually, Kristen Stewart Has Always Been a Great Actor", The Atlantic (2021)

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This article shows how Kristen turned the criticism and awkwardness from her Twilight days into delicate, mature performances. She avoids social media and only talks about her private life in trusted interviews, showing a authentical, independent, and self-aware actor. From early misunderstandings to her Oscar-nominated Spencer, she stays calm and true to herself under public attention.

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Actually, Kristen Stewart Has Always Been a Great Actor

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Her lauded performance in “Spencer” has its roots in “Twilight.”

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"It’s time to admit that Kristen Stewart is a good actress", The Washington Post (2015)

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"It’s time to admit that Kristen Stewart is a good actress", The Washington Post (2015)

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This article explains the early misunderstandings about Stewart from Twilight. In indie films, she challenges herself, portraying characters’ loneliness and anxiety with subtle realism. It shows she is not just a “Twilight girl” but a steady, respected actor. She stays true to herself, turning criticism into performance strength.

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It’s time to admit that Kristen Stewart is a good actress

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After seeing “Clouds of Sils Maria,” there’s no use denying it.

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From “Closeted Twilight Girl” to Authentic Self, The Howard Stern Show (2021）

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From “Closeted Twilight Girl” to Authentic Self, The Howard Stern Show (2021）

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In a popular radio talk show program, Stewart reflected on how she once felt “very closeted” during her Twilight years, pressured to act “super straight” to fit Hollywood’s image of her.

This is the first time she has so openly and in such detail dissected her early identity crisis on such a gossip platform.

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Kristen Stewart on the Howard Stern Show

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Kristen Stewart warned against “holding hands with girlfriend in public”, she added: “I don’t want to work with people like that.”

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"As a standard-bearer of gender fluidity", Harper’s Bazaar (2019)

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"As a standard-bearer of gender fluidity", Harper’s Bazaar (2019)

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On the cover, Stewart is dressed in a fake tuxedo, with short blonde hair in a ponytail, and her style is quite masculine.

In this magazine interview, she openly embraces her gender-fluid identity and the process of gradually learning to truly be herself. By merging queerness, authenticity, and anti-celebrity defiance, Stewart turns self-expression into a quiet form of resistance.

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Kristen Stewart warned against “holding hands with girlfriend in public”

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After the Twilight craze faded, Stewart consciously resisted Hollywood’s star-making machinery. She rejected glamorous red-carpet appearances, refused to pose for paparazzi, and often expressed discomfort with her celebrity status in interviews.

Post-2012, her image shifted to a more androgynous style and a focus on indie films, marking a clear move away from mainstream stardom.

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“The woman Trump tweeted about 11 times”

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"Kristen Stewart Monologue - SNL", Saturday Night Live (2017)

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"Kristen Stewart Monologue - SNL", Saturday Night Live (2017)

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On a talk show, She joked about being tweeted by the president, and humorously mocked Trump’s obsession with her scandal, saying

“I’m like, so gay, dude.”

In a self-deprecating and defiant tone, she used the lighthearted approach of public narrative to directly transform the external humiliation into a declaration of queer empowerment. This moment crystallises her anti-celebrity persona: witty, unapologetic, and resistant to patriarchal judgement.

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Admitting the bisexual sexual orientation, The Guardian (2017)

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Admitting the bisexual sexual orientation, The Guardian (2017)

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In 2017, Kristen openly identified as bisexual, reflecting on shifting cultural attitudes toward sexuality. Her words —

“If you’re bisexual, you’re not confused. For me, it’s the opposite”

demonstrates her attitude of refusing to be defined by identity labels.

She didn't portray herself as a solitary pioneer, but instead framed queerness as a shared social evolution, embracing both visibility and responsibility.

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Kristen Stewart: 'It's not confusing if you're bisexual. For me, it's the opposite'

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Hollywood's most high-profile LGBT actor on her sexuality, her 'ghoulish' appearance in Personal Shopper - and being called out in Trump's tweets

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The "Twilight" actress confirms reports of an affair with 41-year-old "Snow White and the Huntsman" director Rupert Sanders.

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"Kristen Stewart Apologizes for Cheating on Robert Pattinson", Hollywood Reporter (2012)

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"Kristen Stewart Apologizes for Cheating on Robert Pattinson", Hollywood Reporter (2012)

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This report primarily details the exposure of Stewart's affair with Rupert Sanders, director of Snow White and the Huntsman, and her public apology. The article focuses on the factual sequence of events and the prevailing public reaction at the time. These reports branded her as a “betrayer”, which had a significant impact on her career.

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Kristen Stewart Apologizes for Cheating on Robert Pattinson

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UPDATED: The “Twilight” actress confirms reports of an affair with 41-year-old “Snow White and the Huntsman” director Rupert Sanders.

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Stewart may have done a bad thing (Hugh Grant) but with her apology shows she's learned from those who came before her

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"Kristen Stewart sets a new standard for the art of the celebrity apology", The Guardian (2012)

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"Kristen Stewart sets a new standard for the art of the celebrity apology", The Guardian (2012)

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This article reports on Stewart's public apology following her cheating. It shows her sincere yet awkward statement, in which she expressed love and remorse toward Robert Pattinson. The piece highlights her vulnerability amid intense media scrutiny and exposes the double standards Hollywood and the public apply to young female celebrities.

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Kristen Stewart sets a new standard for the art of the celebrity apology

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Stewart may have done a bad thing (Hugh Grant) but with her apology shows she’s learned from those who came before her

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"Presenting the Real Kristen Stewart, in All Her Bold, Brilliant Glory", Marie Claire (2015)

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"Presenting the Real Kristen Stewart, in All Her Bold, Brilliant Glory", Marie Claire (2015)

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This article talks about Stewart's transformation from “rebelling against external judgement” to “learning not to care”. Since rising to her Twilight fame, she has been overly criticised, blamed and humiliated by the media and public. After years, she no longer tries to please or fight back.

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Our August cover girl talks taking risks, fighting haters, and learning to let sh*t go.

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She asks, "Why aren't we [as a society] mentioning the fact that it's so crazy that there are so many people that are so full of it? And why are we consuming them en masse?"

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Kristen Stewart Reflects on the “Huge, Booming, F—ing Money-Making Industry” of Celebrity, Hollywood Reporter (2015)

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Kristen Stewart Reflects on the “Huge, Booming, F—ing Money-Making Industry” of Celebrity, Hollywood Reporter (2015)

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After winning the César Award, Stewart questioned how audiences and media consume female stars as products.

From this point onward, she transformed her star image from that of a celebrity into that of a genuine actress, or rather, an artist. She championed independent filmmaking, challenged the industry's underlying injustices, and resisted in her own way.

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Kristen Stewart Reflects on the “Huge, Booming, F—ing Money-Making Industry” of Celebrity

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The 24-year-old, who recently became the first American actress to win France’s equivalent of the Oscar for ‘Clouds of Sils Maria,’ asks, “Why aren’t we [as a society] mentioning the fact that it’s so crazy that there are so many people that are so full of it? And why are we consuming them en masse?”

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Stewart said some people's aversion to the word feminist may be because younger generations do not have "as much of the anger"

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"Kristen Stewart on gender equality: 'It’s a really ridiculous thing to say you’re not a feminist'"， Independent (2014)

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"Kristen Stewart on gender equality: 'It’s a really ridiculous thing to say you’re not a feminist'"， Independent (2014)

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In this interview, Stewart openly identifies as a feminist, criticising Hollywood’s shallow celebration of gender equality. She also discussed the situation and lack of opportunities for female directors within the industry, expressing an awareness of structural inequality.

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Kristen Stewart on gender equality: ’It’s a really ridiculous thing

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Stewart said some people’s aversion to the word feminist may be because younger generations do not have “as much of the anger”

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"Kristen Stewart For Chanel Confirmed", Vogue (2013)

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"Kristen Stewart For Chanel Confirmed", Vogue (2013)

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This article announces Kristen Stewart as the new face of Chanel and details her collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld. It highlights her unique, confident style that resists external constraints, showing her autonomy and charm in fashion.

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KRISTEN STEWART is new face of Chanel, we can confirm. The 2013 Métiers d'Art Paris‐Dallas collection campaign has been shot by Karl Lagerfeld and will be released in May 2014.

The actress attended the brand's latest Metiers d'Art show last night in Dallas. She wore high-waisted orange leather trousers with a cropped long-sleeved top from the spring/summer 2014 Chanel show. She first met Lagerfeld in January 2012 during a photo shoot in Paris, when she was photographed in Chanel Couture.

Stewart also appears in Balenciaga's Florabotanica campaign. The star follows in the footsteps of Blake Lively, Keira Knightley and Diane Kruger, who have also fronted adverts for the brand.

Read more: Style File - Kristen Stewart

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KRISTEN STEWART is new face of Chanel, we can confirm. The campaign has been shot by Karl Lagerfeld and will be released in 2014.

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"Kristen Stewart stuns in Balenciaga’s latest fragrance ad for Rosabotanica", Fashion Magazine (2014)

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"Kristen Stewart stuns in Balenciaga’s latest fragrance ad for Rosabotanica", Fashion Magazine (2014)

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Although her topless look in the ad sparked controversy, the media still assesses:

Despite KStew’s often-acrimonious relationship with the press, the fashion industry continues to be fixated by her unabashed attitude...Whether or not you still love to hate on the former Twilight queen, there’s no denying her fashion icon status only keeps on rising.

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Kristen Stewart stuns in Balenciaga’s latest fragrance ad for Rosabotanica - FASHION Magazine

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"Kristen Stewart 'CRASHED' Robert Pattinson's Birthday Party With Twilight Director", Entertainment Tonight (2023)

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"Kristen Stewart 'CRASHED' Robert Pattinson's Birthday Party With Twilight Director", Entertainment Tonight (2023)

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This podcast story tells about she attending her ex-boyfriend's 37th birthday party. Stewart’s earlier statement about “losing too much” under public gaze shows how her personal life was deeply shaped—and constrained—by Hollywood’s star system and the culture of surveillance around celebrity intimacy.

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Kristen Stewart 'CRASHED' Robert Pattinson's Birthday Party With Twilight Director

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Kristen Stewart- César Award for Best Supporting Actress (2015)

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Kristen Stewart- César Award for Best Supporting Actress (2015)

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Stewart became the first American actress in 40 years to win a César Award (French Oscar) for Clouds of Sils Maria. In her acceptance, she praised French filmmakers by saying,

“They make films for different reasons than Hollywood does — I like it here a little better.”

This moment highlights her rejection of commercial celebrity culture and alignment with artistic authenticity over fame.

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Kristen Stewart - César de la Meilleure Actrice dans un second rôle 2015

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Kristen Stewart is "incandescent", "tender" and even "stunning" as Princess Diana, according to critics who have seen the new biopic Spencer.

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"Rave reviews for Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in new film Spencer", BBC News (2021)

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"Rave reviews for Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in new film Spencer", BBC News (2021)

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Stewart’s performance in Spencer earned her wide critical praise and an Oscar nomination. Critics said she brought her own struggles with fame into the role, making Diana feel real and human.

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Rave reviews for Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in new film Spencer

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The Twilight star “will be instantly and justifiably awards-tipped” for Spencer, some critics say.

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"Kristen Stewart Tops Our List Of The Highest-Paid Actresses", Forbes (2012)

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"Kristen Stewart Tops Our List Of The Highest-Paid Actresses", Forbes (2012)

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This article reveals that she became Hollywood’s highest-paid actress following the success of the Twilight series. However, her commercial power also exposed her to intense public scrutiny.

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Kristen Stewart Tops Our List Of The Highest-Paid Actresses

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Videosee photosEnzo Fornino/LFI/NewscomClick for full photo gallery: Hollywood’s Top-Earning Actresses Studios are notoriously stingy when it comes to paying young actors for the first film in a planned franchise. Forget about the $10 million they would have had to shell out to get a big name -- an up-and-comer is lucky [...]

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"Kristen Stewart Cheats on Robert Pattinson With Director Rupert Sanders", US Weekly (2012)

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"Kristen Stewart Cheats on Robert Pattinson With Director Rupert Sanders", US Weekly (2012)

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This article covers her scandal with director Rupert Sanders and the public and media backlash. The scandal dealt an irreparable blow to her acting career and reputation. It highlights the intense scrutiny she faced early in her career and her struggle to maintain privacy amid overexposure.

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Kristen Stewart Cheats on Robert Pattinson With Director Rupert Sanders | Us Weekly

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The Snow White and the Huntsman actress was photographed kissing the married father-of-two in L.A. July 17

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"Rob & Kristen’s Undercover PDA", US Weekly(2010)

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"Rob & Kristen’s Undercover PDA", US Weekly(2010)

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This article looks back at Kristen’s romance with Robert Pattinson, highlighting their awkward interactions and media hype. It shows how her early relationships were overexposed, but she later learned to protect her private life from being commodified. This reflects her insistence on personal space and agency in her star image and her gradual move beyond the “Twilight girlfriend” label.

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Rob & Kristen’s Undercover PDA | Us Weekly

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How the Twilight twosome have hidden their affection

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Kristen Stewart’s Dating History: From Robert Pattinson to Dylan Meyer, US Weekly (2025)

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Kristen Stewart’s Dating History: From Robert Pattinson to Dylan Meyer, US Weekly (2025)

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In this article, Stewart revealed her discomfort with having her private life turned into a product for public consumption. Her reflection shows a tension between wanting personal boundaries and recognising her social influence, reinforcing her star image as authentic, self-aware, and honest.

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Kristen Stewart has grown more comfortable with her dating life being public over the years.

The actress remembers struggling amid her first high-profile romance with Twilight costar Robert Pattinson.

"I wasn't hiding anything. I didn't talk about my first relationships that went public because I wanted things that are mine to be mine," she told the Sunday Times in March 2017. "I hated it that details of my life were being turned into a commodity and peddled around the world. But considering I had so many eyes on me, I suddenly realized [my private life] affects a greater number of people than just me. It was an opportunity to surrender a bit of what was mine, to make even one other person feel good about themselves."

She was later linked to model Stella Maxwell before getting engaged to screenwriter Dylan Meyer in 2020. The two wed in April 2025.

The Oscar nominated actress discussed how dating in the public eye affected her journey with her sexuality.

"The first time I ever dated a girl, I was immediately being asked if I was a lesbian. And it's like, 'God, I'm 21 years old.' I felt like maybe there were things that have hurt people I've been with. Not because I felt ashamed of being openly gay but because I didn't like giving myself to the public, in a way. It felt like such thievery. This was a period of time when I was sort of cagey," Stewart explained to InStyle in November 2020. "Even in my previous relationships, which were straight, we did everything we could to not be photographed doing things - things that would become not ours. So I think the added pressure of representing a group of people, of representing queerness, wasn't something I understood then. Only now can I see it."

Scroll down for Stewart's complete dating history:

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Kristen Stewart's Dating History: From Robert Pattinson to Dylan Meyer

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Explore Kristen Stewart's dating history, including her relationships with Robert Pattinson, Stella Maxwell and wife Dylan Meyer

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By declining to fake smiles, she challenged Hollywood's stereotypical expectations of women

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"The many 'sins' of Kristen Stewart and the moment the world turned against her", Mamamia (2023)

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"The many 'sins' of Kristen Stewart and the moment the world turned against her", Mamamia (2023)

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This article explains the public's early hostility towards Stewart, stemming from her role in Twilight and her refusal to perform fake likability in public.

The scandal dealt a severe blow to her career. Although her masterful performances in numerous works following her transformation garnered acclaim, much of this praise failed to translate into favourable coverage, unable to counteract years of criticism against her.

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The many ‘sins’ of Kristen Stewart and the moment the world turned against her.

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She said she enjoyed breaking gender stereotypes and what it means to be feminine

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"Kristen Stewart defends her controversial Rolling Stone cover photoshoot", Independent (2024)

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"Kristen Stewart defends her controversial Rolling Stone cover photoshoot", Independent (2024)

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On the March 2024 Rolling Stone cover, Stewart wore a jockstrap and posed with gym gear, stating,

She used her body and image to challenge gender and sexual norms, reinforcing her queer, anti-star persona by defying what a female celebrity “should” look like.

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"Kristen Stewart Reacts to THAT Rolling Stone Cover (Exclusive)", Entertainment Tonight (2024)

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"Kristen Stewart Reacts to THAT Rolling Stone Cover (Exclusive)", Entertainment Tonight (2024)

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This interview showcases Stewart's relaxed and humorous demeanour at the premiere of Love, Lies, Bleeding. She discusses interactions with her co-stars, amusing anecdotes from the set, and her perspective on her Rolling Stone cover shoot, revealing a confident yet unpretentious side.

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Kristen Stewart Reacts to THAT Rolling Stone Cover (Exclusive)

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Stuart's portrayal of Snow White was reimagined as a resilient, decisive “warrior princess”. This character sought to transform a classic female archetype into a more empowered and independent modern heroine.

Despite crafting a Snow White distinct from tradition in this film, she nonetheless received the Worst Actress award at the 33rd Golden Raspberry Awards for this role.

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It is is a supernatural psychological thriller film. Kristen as a young American woman in Paris who works as a personal shopper for a celebrity and tries to communciate with her deceased twin brother.

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This is a psychological drama co-produced by three countries. Stewart portrays a capable, pragmatic personal assistant who assists a film star in preparing stage production.

The script was created specifically for her by director Olivier Assayas, marking a pivotal turning point in her career that successfully transitioned her from “commercial actress” to “acclaimed arthouse actress”.

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It is a romantic thriller and also an independent queer film.

Stewart portrays a reclusive lesbian gym manager who entangled in a family conspiracy and a passionate affair with an ambitious female bodybuilder who involves two murder.

She also serves as the film's executive producer.

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The film tells the story of Princess Diana (played by Stewart) deciding to divorce Richard Charles, Prince of Wales.

This role earned he some of the greatest critical acclaim of her career, as she not only astonishingly recreated Diana's physical appearance and mannerisms, but also profoundly captured her inner fragility, anxiety, defiance and despair.

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Since publicly acknowledging her queer identity in the mid-2010s, she has become an emblem of queer culture. Her physique and style no longer cater to the heterosexual gaze, instead employing androgynous, gender-ambiguous aesthetics to “use blurring as resistance”. This stance has sharpened her image as a queer icon while revealing a genuine Kristen Stewart unafraid to challenge gender norms.

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It's Stewart's "most dazzling and intricate performance to date", according to reviews.

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"Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana movie Spencer gets rave first reviews", Digital Spy (2021)

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"Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana movie Spencer gets rave first reviews", Digital Spy (2021)

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"While there are some notable supporting roles for Timothy Spall, Sean Harris and Sally Hawkins, it’s Stewart’s film."

In Spencer, Stewart received the most critical acclaim of her career. Critics praised her for capturing both Diana’s grace and emotional depth without imitation. This role redefined her as a serious actress and restored her reputation in Hollywood.

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Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana movie Spencer gets rave first reviews

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It’s Stewart’s “most dazzling and intricate performance to date”, according to reviews.

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From a commercialised star to someone with strong self-awareness, and later a filmmaker, producer, and director, Stewart has gradually built her image as an independent creator. Through collaborations with auteur directors, she reshaped her identity, moved away from big-budget films, and focused on artistic and personal expression. She is now recognised in European cinema as an authentic performer.

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Even resistance can be turned into a product.

Therefore, her image is contradictory. On one hand, she is being herself, but on the other hand, that "real self" is used for business. This reflects the tricky situation celebrities face: they try to be authentic, but that very authenticity often gets commercialized.

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Her earliest defining cultural symbol represented commodity fame. The media tied her to her Twilight character, cementing stereotypes of her as a ‘teen idol’ and ‘object of romantic fantasy’.

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This short film, written and directed by Kristen, marks the beginning of her directorial career.

The film depicts a surreal journey through a man's imagination. Alternating between abstract, artistic expression and jarringly realistic scenes, it takes the audience through a day in which a man grapples with anxiety and heartbreak.

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Come Swim Film Directed By Kristen Stewart | Shatterbox Anthology | Refinery29

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The Twilight actor is at Cannes to show Come Swim, her film about heartbreak starring a man who can’t quench his thirst

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Kristen Stewart on her directing debut: 'The best female film-makers are compulsive freaks', The Guardian (2017)

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Kristen Stewart on her directing debut: 'The best female film-makers are compulsive freaks', The Guardian (2017)

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This article shows Stewart’s shift from acting to directing and her awareness of gender inequality in the film industry. She recognises her privilege as a famous actress but also speaks for female directors who struggle for chances. Her move behind the camera strengthens her image as an authentic and self-aware artist.

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In a suite at the Hotel Majestic Barrière in Cannes, every surface heaves with haute couture. Chanel dresses spun from gossamer threads are draped along the walls and chunky, diamond-studded bracelets are scattered across the dresser. Only the suite's occupant doesn't seem to have received the memo. Kristen Stewart, dressed in a vest and black cargo pants, her hair in a blond crop, looks almost defiantly out of place.

But Stewart is not quite the incongruous presence she might seem at the festival. In 2014, she became the first female American actor in 30 years to win a Cesar, for best supporting actress in Olivier Assayas's Clouds of Sils Maria. More recently, there was her bewitchingly odd performance in Personal Shopper, Assayas's strange, sad, ruminative ghost story.

Just add water ... Josh Kaye in Come Swim. Photograph: Cannes festival

And Stewart has now decided to do the one thing this auteur-worshipping town regards more highly than anything else - become a director. Her debut short film Come Swim, part of the Shatterbox Anthology and which she wrote and directed, has been handed a plum special screening slot. "I feel like they're just being nice to me because I come here a lot," she laughs. "Like they're saying, 'Sure, you can show your little short here.'"

Stewart may be underselling herself. Irrespective of who made it, Come Swim is the sort of daring avant-garde fare Cannes usually laps up. An abstract tale of one man's quest to satiate an unexplained, unquenchable thirst, the film never lacks for arresting imagery, from the hyper-vivid opening shot of a wave cresting in languorous slow motion, to the sight of the film's central character literally cracking up in a moment of Cronenberg-style body horror.

The film, Stewart says, stemmed from an image that seemed permanently lodged in her head - of "a person sleeping contently on the bottom of the ocean floor, and getting such satisfaction from that isolation. I thought, 'Wow, that's pretty dark.' You want to know the situation that would put someone so deep."

The idea of sinking to the bottom of the sea, away from all human contact, might be an enticing one to someone like Stewart - no paparazzi to deal with, for a start. But the subtext concerns something more universal: heartbreak, or more specifically "that first bout of pain where you're just like, 'Nobody has ever felt this' - when actually we all have".

'It's like they're saying, "Sure, you can show your little short here"' ... Stewart in Cannes. Photograph: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty

So the film plays out in two halves, with the opening, more experimental section expressing the extreme sensations we feel after having our heart broken, when even breathing air and drinking water can seem impossible, and the second depicting the more mundane reality of the situation. "I just wanted to externalise a very internal feeling that you don't really talk about until it's past and then you go, 'God, I was losing my mind. It's so crazy, I was such a weirdo for six months, I'm so sorry to all my friends.' Not to be too heavy about it, because it's not clinical or anything, but it is a form of depression."

The subject matter is matched by some bold stylistic choices. Art rocker St Vincent provides a menacing, throbbing electronic soundtrack, and the film is edited in a series of discombobulating quick cuts. Meanwhile, a complex digital technique known as neural style transfer has been used to superimpose Stewart's original sketches of her submerged man on to the footage. Stewart even co-authored a research paper on the technique for Cornell University.

Early ambition ... Stewart with Jodie Foster in Panic Room. Photograph: Allstar/Columbia

Come Swim is a bit rough around the edges - some of the film's whispered dialogue has a hint of perfume ad pretentiousness- but, for a debut, it's impressive. Certainly, it's been better received than some of the bloated actor-director projects that have washed up at Cannes in the past, such as Sean Penn's The Last Face, which elicited howls of laughter when it premiered here last year.

As the daughter of a screenwriter/director and a producer, Stewart always saw herself ending up behind the camera rather than in front of it. When, aged 11, she appeared in the 2002 David Fincher thriller Panic Room, she made the rather bold claim to that film's star, Jodie Foster, that she would become "the youngest director that exists". The sudden leap in her acting career brought about by the Twilight movies put paid to that, but the desire didn't go away.Stewart concedes she's in a fortunate situation, aware that Come Swim probably wouldn't be at Cannes if its director wasn't an A-list actor. "People who are much more talented and inspired couldn't ever have the opportunity to make a short film for the amount of money I was given to make this," she admits. "I had eight days to shoot it. It was the most comfy process."

I don't want to do an impression of a film-maker. I don't want to do it for the sake of it

If opportunities are limited for first-time directors, the situation is markedly bleaker if they're women. Come Swim was produced as part of the Shatterbox Anthology project, run by US lifestyle website Refinery29, which aims to redress the disparity between male and female directors. But it's an uphill struggle: only 7% of the top 250 films in 2016 were directed by women, a figure that's lower than it was in 1998.

For Stewart, the only way to correct such an imbalance is with pure intensity. "The coolest female directors I've ever worked with are such compulsive freaks," she says. "You ask Kelly Reichardt [director of Meek's Cutoff and Certain Women] what it's like to be a female director and she's just like, 'I don't have an answer because I couldn't do anything else with my life.'

"The female artists who do the best work, they're just so focused that nothing is going to get in their way. Kelly, fucking Patti Smith, they're just workers. It's hard to talk about, because you need to talk about it to change it, but at the same time it's like, 'Just do it.'" She pauses, reconsidering this call to arms. "That's the most ridiculous thing to say. Of course, people would just do it if they could. I'm in the craziest, most lucky position."

Whether Stewart will continue making her own films is unclear. She still has plenty of acting commitments, including a drama about the hoax writer JT LeRoy, created by Laura Albert. What's more, she doesn't just want to stumble into any old directing gig. "People keep asking, 'So what's next for you? Do you want to develop projects?' I feel they have to just come to you. I don't want to do an impression of a film-maker. I don't want to do it for the sake of it."

If Stewart does return behind the camera, it's likely to be on her own terms. "I don't like the idea of making movies with any regard for an audience. Because I've worked with people who have been like, 'I want the audience to think this at that moment.' Well, who are you making this for then? Because if you start making this for everyone, you'll end up with something generic. It needs to be its own animal. You can package and deliver an idea after the fact, but if it's what informs you in the first place... pffft, don't make movies!"

Come Swim screens at Sundance Film Festival: London on 2 June.

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Kristen Stewart on her directing debut: 'The best female film-makers are compulsive freaks'

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The Twilight actor is at Cannes to show Come Swim, her film about heartbreak starring a man who can't quench his thirst

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Kristen Stewart ('Come Swim' Director) on Female Directors: "Just Make Stuff", Hollywood Reporter (2017)

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Kristen Stewart ('Come Swim' Director) on Female Directors: "Just Make Stuff", Hollywood Reporter (2017)

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She encouraged female directors to “Just Make Stuff,” showing her awareness of gender inequality in the industry and her proactive attitude. This highlights her star image as an indie icon and a bold, outspoken figure.

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Kristen Stewart ('Come Swim' Director) on Female Directors: "Just Make Stuff" | Sundance 2017

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"I think it's going to be easier now, especially now that we're all so pissed," said the actress turned director.

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The first ever hotpants outfit in the history of the Oscars

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"The Story Behind Kristen Stewart’s Oscar Night Short Shorts", Harper's Bazaar (2022)

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"The Story Behind Kristen Stewart’s Oscar Night Short Shorts", Harper's Bazaar (2022)

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At the Oscars, Stewart appeared in a Chanel tuxedo jacket and shorts, rejecting the traditional gown look. Her stylist says that her style is so captivating precisely because it remains consistently true to herself. She turns fashion into a self-expression rather than performance.

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The Story Behind Kristen Stewart’s Oscar Night Short Shorts

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“Today was her day to do whatever she wanted,” says stylist Tara Swennen.

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"Cover Story: Kristen Stewart Plays It Cool", Vanity Fair (2019)

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"Cover Story: Kristen Stewart Plays It Cool", Vanity Fair (2019)

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This magazine article reinforces Stewart’s anti-celebrity persona. Although Stewart critiques celebrity culture, yet brands like Chanel have commodified this rebellion, turning her authenticity and defiance into a marketable aesthetic.

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Cover Story: Kristen Stewart Plays It Cool

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Charlie’s Angels, Seberg, an upcoming feature-length directorial debut—the actor and Chanel muse has been keeping busy. But K. Stew remains cool as ever as she heads into this next chapter of her career.

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Turner, G. (2014) 'The Economy of Celebrity', Understanding Celebrity,  pp.33-55.

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Turner, G. (2014) 'The Economy of Celebrity', Understanding Celebrity,  pp.33-55.

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As Turner (2014) argues, audiences develop a sense of ownership over celebrity images. During Stewart’s Twilight fame, her body and private life became public property, once mediated by Hollywood’s publicity machine, became a commodity of public consumption.

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Gaylyn Studlar (2019), Poor Little Star: Femininity, Authenticity, and Hollywood’s Class Problem, pp. 8-23.

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Gaylyn Studlar (2019), Poor Little Star: Femininity, Authenticity, and Hollywood’s Class Problem, pp. 8-23.

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This study of another Hollywood female star reveals how Hollywood’s star system builds “authenticity” as both a selling point and a trap for female performers. Similarly, Stewart’s “Teen Idol” image in Twilight was a carefully manufactured product of Hollywood’s machinery. When she refused to play the smiling, compliant star, the media punished her, exposing the gendered double standards of fame and morality.

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Kristen Stewart makes her directorial debut with The Chronology of Water, a adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch's raw memoir. The film, which she also co-wrote, delves into themes of addiction, sexuality, and artistry. She has stated she felt a profound connection to the material, calling the project a personal imperative she felt destined to fulfill.

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Kristen Stewart Directs Imogen Poots in First Look at Feature Filmmaking Debut ‘The Chronology of Water’, Variety (2024)

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Kristen Stewart Directs Imogen Poots in First Look at Feature Filmmaking Debut ‘The Chronology of Water’, Variety (2024)

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This article highlights Stewart’s first feature film as a director, The Chronology of Water. It focuses on how she adapted Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir with a deeply personal approach, exploring pain, identity, and artistic freedom. The report also notes that Stewart’s directing style values emotion over structure, reflecting her creative independence.

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Kristen Stewart Directs Imogen Poots in First Look at Feature Filmmaking Debut ‘The Chronology of Water’

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The first look at Kristen Stewart’s feature directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water,” is finally here.

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Imogen Poots seizes the screen as Lidia Yuknavitch, who embraces swimming and sex and drugs and anger, all to make herself whole

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‘The Chronology of Water’ Review: Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debut Is a Stirring Drama of Abuse and Salvation, Told With Poetic Passion, Variety (2025)

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‘The Chronology of Water’ Review: Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debut Is a Stirring Drama of Abuse and Salvation, Told With Poetic Passion, Variety (2025)

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This review praises Kristen Stewart’s debut feature The Chronology of Water for its raw, emotional intensity. It highlights how Stewart turns the original story into a poetic reflection on trauma and rebirth, using fragmented visuals and a fearless tone. The article sees the film as proof of her bold artistic vision and emotional honesty as a filmmaker.

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I'm always up for a movie directed by an actor I love. Often, that actor will turn out be good at directing other actors, and building a serviceable movie around that, and that's about it. Yet there's still an adventure involved when you feel like you really know an actor. I went into " The Chronology of Water," the first movie directed by Kristen Stewart, with a heightened curiosity and a heightened hope. I've long felt that she's a great actor and a great star. What would she reveal as a filmmaker?

The hope paid off. "The Chronology of Water" isn't some pretty good, prosaic, actor-directs-actors-how-to-read-the-script thing. It's far more artful and captivating than that. It's based on the 2011 memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, who told the story of how she grew up in a sexually abusive household, and how she attempted to squirm away from the legacy of it - through competitive swimming, through sex and drugs and anger and other escape hatches, and ultimately through becoming a writer in the mode of Charles Bukowski. Yet for a long time her escapes didn't work. She was too imprinted with the sickness that had been visited upon her.

All of this is incredibly internal. It's the sort of thing I've seen a hundred filmmakers try to dramatize, and what you tend to get is good intentions, a lot of piety about abusive households, and maybe a workable shadow of the consciousness the film is out to capture.

Kristen Stewart shoots past all that. As a writer-director, she's working on the high wire - making a movie that's all about consciousness, one that shows you everything but never spells it out too obviously. She presents Lidia Yuknavitch's story out of sequence, in impressionistic closeup moments that sear themselves into your imagination, as if every shot were a sentence ripped from a hidden diary. This is the beauty of what movies can do. They can be voyeuristic and honest - give us privileged glimpses of the forbidden, of what people are really like, of all the muck and pain and yearning we cover up.

Lidia, played by Imogen Poots, keeps flashing back to the San Francisco home in which she grew up with her older sister (Thora (Birch); her mother (Susannah Flood), who was lost in a passive fog, always looking the other way; and her father (Michael Epp), in his horn-rims and Clark Kent haircut, who was sharp and handsome and stern, and highly attentive, and full of stinging scornful words, with a rage that snapped like a whip. When they open Lidia's college-acceptance letters in the spring of 1980, even a three-quarter scholarship isn't good enough for him. He's so destructive he regards that as failure.

And that's not the half of it. The film never explicitly shows us his sexual abuse of Lidia, but there are moments that creep up to it, that dramatize everything around it (or you'll hear something he said). And this gathers into the spell the movie casts - of placing the abuse at the center of everything, but it's also as if it were a ghost. When a parent abuses a child, the experience can be too horrible to bear, so that what happens is that the core of the child's identity gets fractured. It becomes torn, compartmentalized. That's part of what's so evil about it.

And that's what happens to Lidia. She goes out into the world as a high-school swimmer, then as a debauched college student, but what she's really doing is putting on a mask. The her - who she is - isn't totally there. Imogen Poots has always had a radiance about her, and she doesn't tamp down on that. She invests Lidia with her full charisma. That extends from when she becomes a couple with a folk-singing sensitive guy (Tom Sturridge), except the passivity that makes him soothing enrages her (so she rages back at him), to the moments when she's drugging and fornicating, to the scene where she finally says "Fuck you, motherfucker" to her father. The film's imagery of water is at once rapt and concrete. Water is the thing that holds Lidia, that allows her to escape, that mirrors the fluid quality inside her that's her way of compensating for unspeakable pain.

Lidia endures, takes big bites out of life, and goes through a lot. She gets pregnant and decides to have the baby (her sister agrees to help her care for it), but the baby is stillborn. She guzzles vodka out of her flask and embraces the ecstasy of sex, fucking men and then women and then men again, always reaching for transcendence, but even when it arrives she can't...transcend. She's chained to those girlhood memories that are her but that she must deny, so that she's never quite anyone.

"The Chronology of Water" invites us to experience each moment as if it were happening, but the movie is really telling the story of a spirit - the one that tries to survive, and become whole, through each moment. And that's what Poots' stunning performance captures: Lidia's hunger and desolation, but also the hidden space inside her, the room where her secrets are. Stewart, working with the cinematographer Corey C. Waters and the editor Olivia Neerghaard-Holm, stages the movie like a numinous documentary that's being lived and remembered at the same time. The drama is pointillistic, the way it was in "The Tree of Life" - the poetry of images that illuminate and scald.

Lidia gets a swimming scholarship to Texas Tech, drops out due to her dissipated lifestyle and then, through the random connection of a friend, gets a chance to join Ken Kesey's class at the University of Oregon. The fabled author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is going to write a collaborative novel with his students, and the 70-year-old Jim Belushi, who plays him, sparks the film with an irascible beatnik joy. Kesey takes Lidia under his wing and gets her to think about words in a new way. The scene where she's invited to deliver one of her prose-poems at a reading is remarkable. Her words don't sound written - they sound like spasms of memory. That's why she's a true writer.

Stewart films virtually the entire movie in close-up, without establishing shots - and, more significantly, without the kind of expository setup that so many scenes in movies have but don't need. We aren't told that Lidia is going to the beach to scatter the ashes of her dead infant, or that one of her mentors (played by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon) is going to liberate Lidia's imagination by beating her with a strap, or that she's going to transition into becoming a writing teacher. These realities just arrive; they're part of the liquid flow of life. But by the end we emerge as if baptized.

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'The Chronology of Water' Review: Kristen Stewart's Directorial Debut Is a Stirring Drama of Abuse and Salvation, Told With Poetic Passion

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Imogen Poots seizes the screen as Lidia Yuknavitch, who embraces swimming and sex and drugs and anger, all to make herself whole.

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Living for the Dead is an American supernatural reality television programme produced for Hulu by Kristen Stewart and C.J. Romero. The series follows a team of paranormal experts, all members of the LGBTQ+ community, as they travel to haunted locations to communicate with supernatural spirits.

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The actor has produced and narrated a Queer Eye spin with a supernatural element, a perfectly silly Halloween treat

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"Twilight Slayance: Kristen Stewart’s queer ghost-hunting show is a scream", The Guardian (2023)

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"Twilight Slayance: Kristen Stewart’s queer ghost-hunting show is a scream", The Guardian (2023)

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This article shows Stewart as narrator and executive producer of Living for the Dead, a ghost‑hunting show with queer perspectives. By openly centering queer voices and themes, she reinforces her queer icon star image while branching into TV, showing a star unafraid to bring her identity and style into new creative spaces.

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More often it is greed and violence or any form of harm against oppressed people that is the true evil, not supernatural spirits.

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"Kristen Stewart-Narrated 'Living for the Dead’ Urges Queer People to Trust Themselves to Heal the World", Teen Vogue (2023)

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"Kristen Stewart-Narrated 'Living for the Dead’ Urges Queer People to Trust Themselves to Heal the World", Teen Vogue (2023)

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Thsi articel highlights Stewart narrates Living for the Dead, openly centering queer voices and humor in her storytelling. This shows her extending her queer icon persona beyond acting, using her platform to highlight underrepresented communities and normalize queer perspectives in mainstream media.

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‘Living for the Dead’ Urges Queer People to Trust Themselves to Heal the World

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More often it is greed and violence or any form of harm against oppressed people that is the true evil, not supernatural spirits.

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"Close-up with Kristen Stewart, Feature Films Jury member",  Festival De Cannes (2018)

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"Close-up with Kristen Stewart, Feature Films Jury member",  Festival De Cannes (2018)

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In this Cannes interview, Kristen shows her thoughtful understanding of cinema and artistic independence. As a jury member, she supports independent filmmaking and female directors, echoing her own path outside Hollywood conventions. Her openness also reflects her queer identity and indie icon.

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Close-up with Kristen Stewart, Feature Films Jury member - Festival de Cannes

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Festival de Cannes, Olivier Assayas, a César, Chanel… are you French at heart? Almost! I’m getting as close as I can. I’m

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"All About Dylan Meyer, Kristen Stewart’s Screenwriter Wife", Elle (2015)

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"All About Dylan Meyer, Kristen Stewart’s Screenwriter Wife", Elle (2015)

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This article introduces Stewart’s relationship with her girlfriend Dylan Meyer, showing her softer and more genuine side.

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Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer Dressed More Casually for Their Wedding

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The pair matched in light-colored outfits for their intimate Los Angeles ceremony.

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"Kristen Stewart And Dylan Meyer Are Married", British Vogue (2025)

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"Kristen Stewart And Dylan Meyer Are Married", British Vogue (2025)

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This article focuses on Stewart’s marriage to Dylan Meyer, highlighting her steady and open attitude toward love and life. By speaking honestly about her relationship, she continues to embody authenticity and courage.

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Kristen Stewart And Dylan Meyer Are Married

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While I do want all the details of Stewart and Meyer’s nuptials to affix to my mental Pinterest board, there’s something so cool about a small wedding at home.

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Richard Dyer, (1998). ‘Stars as specific images’, in Stars. BFI, pp.60-86

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Richard Dyer, (1998). ‘Stars as specific images’, in Stars. BFI, pp.60-86

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As the academic source argues, a star is not a “real person” but a structured polysemy. Stewart’s early persona was a manufactured image shaped by film roles, publicity, and gossip. Her reserved and awkward public behaviour clashed with Hollywood’s expectations of charm, revealing how her supposed “authenticity” was itself a product of industrial and media construction.

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Richard Dyer. 1998. ‘Stars as specific images’, in Stars. BFI, pp.60-86

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Stewart’s fashion performance is shaped by the intersection of her anti-celebrity and queer icon star images. Her endorsement strategy functions as an extension of her personal brand—high-end, avant-garde, and unapologetically authentic. Her partnerships with luxury fashion houses operate less as traditional endorsements and more as creative collaborations, allowing her to express individuality while reinforcing her position as a symbol of aesthetic and gender nonconformity.

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After more than two decades in the spotlight, she knows who she is — and what she wants

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Kristen Stewart Uncensored: ‘I Want to Do the Gayest Thing You’ve Ever Seen in Your Life’, Rolling Stone (2024)

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Kristen Stewart Uncensored: ‘I Want to Do the Gayest Thing You’ve Ever Seen in Your Life’, Rolling Stone (2024)

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This feature highlights Stewart's strength and independence in both her professional and personal growth. The article not only revisits her global fame and controversies during the Twilight era, but also showcases how she has continually challenged herself to become an unconventional anti-celebrity female icon.

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STRONG as fuck, and I do not mean this metaphorically. I am not, for instance, talking about any experience from her past that she has quote-unquote risen above, like that time she was in those vampire-werewolf movies and dubbed the World's Most Hated Actress because she did not appear sufficiently stoked to sit in a room full of journalists and discuss making out with her co-stars. Or the time she was photographed kissing her much older (and married) Snow White and the Huntsman director, and, due to the horror this engendered, was banished from the sequel. I am not talking about the bravery it took to play Joan Jett in front of Joan Jett. Or the bravery it took to play Princess Diana in front of the entire moviegoing world. Or the bravery it took to come out on SNL in the form of a snappy retort to the mean tweets of a demented reality-show host turned president. In other words, I am not talking about "strength" as the gold-star descriptor given to famous women who don't crumble beneath the other labels society lobs at them. No. I am talking, quite literally, about Kristen Stewart's biceps.

OK, let me back up. It's an early afternoon in January. We're on a large deck perched neatly on a hillside of Los Feliz, with a commanding view of tropical foliage. The weather has reverted to that bland meteorological perfection endemic to Los Angeles, despite a morning that was topsy-turvy, bringing down a small tree in Stewart's yard. "Wtf kinda crazy witch energy you bring to L.A.?!!" read an email waiting in my inbox when I awoke. "It's crazy out there!" It was the latest message in a chain we'd started to try to figure out what to do on our second day together, though the back-and-forth had quickly devolved (evolved?) into a series of book and article recommendations and Stewart's confession that, when it comes to these types of interviews, "the disco anxiety is real."

Eventually, she invites me along to what she'd planned to do anyway that afternoon: kickbox with her trainer Rashad. We are ostensibly meeting so she can promote Love Lies Bleeding, a roided-up romantic thriller directed by Rose Glass, in which Stewart plays a gym manager lusting after a bodybuilder (played by Katy O'Brian) who, as Stewart describes it, "comes in and shakes up the Coke can, but it fucking explodes and everyone gets messy" ("messy" being the quaintest way possible to describe the bloody, sweaty, id-driven hellscape that follows). In this context, kickboxing is the sort of cliché, movie-promotion-adjacent thing Stewart would usually refuse to do, and therefore, we figured, the most subversive thing she could do. "Less talk, more rock," she advised.

By now, it's pretty well-established that "subversive" is Stewart's thing. Imagine her, age 17, refusing to play Bella Swan in the perky, bright-eyed manner the adults all had in mind, and choosing instead to mope around like she was actually in love with an undead person. ("The studio was trying to make a movie for kids. They didn't want what actually was the book. When the fuck are [Bella and Edward] smiling, ever?") Then, having spent five years on a franchise that earned more than $3.5 billion worldwide, spawned such things as Twilight-branded blow dryers, and momentarily made Stewart the highest-paid actress in the world, there was the transition once and (mostly) for all to art-house indies - which she'd been making in between all those Twilight installments, sometimes shooting three or four movies a year. There was Clouds of Sils Maria, for which she turned down the part of the starlet in favor of the slightly grubby assistant, and proceeded to win a César (the French equivalent of the Oscar), the only American woman to have done so. There was Spencer, which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for so artfully crawling out of her own skin. After we hung out, she was headed to Park City, Utah, where she was being honored with a Visionary Award while premiering her 11th and 12th Sundance films - Love Lies Bleeding as well as Love Me, a post-apocalyptic romance in which she plays a buoy to Steven Yeun's satellite ("Basically, the internet - the knowable universe - is contained in this machinery, and they start trying to figure out how to date," she explains). "We were starting to film, and it can be a very tense scene," Yeun tells me of working with Stewart on such an unconventional project. "She just put her hand on my shoulder and was like, 'Hey, I like you.' And that just melted away all the brain fog. She's very deep and cool that way."

That depth and cool have long made Stewart a go-to choice for countercultural roles, women who stand out because they are at a remove from whatever world envelops them. But they are also the qualities behind Stewart's ability to make characters seem countercultural by virtue of the fact that she is playing them, bringing a reserve and restraint that might seem like underkill in a franchise in which she has to speak, out loud, lines like "Hello, biceps!" but that scintillates in more nuanced fare. "She understands how people cover, and she is able to play that, which makes her work so interesting and different," says Jodie Foster, who began shooting Panic Room with Stewart when she was 10. "I remember just being in awe of this kid."

By the time I arrive at her house, Stewart, now 33, has been up for many hours. There was a spell when she had "a very fucked-up relationship with sleep," but now she goes to bed early and rises early, waking up to work with fiancee Dylan Meyer on one of the many projects being spearheaded by Nevermind, the production company the two founded with producer Maggie McLean in 2023. (Stewart tells me that it wasn't named after the Nirvana album per se, but that they do share the band's urge to "somehow slip in and fuck shit up for the better.") "Me and Dylan are writing something, so the first three hours, we treasure them. Our brains are just working well at that time," Stewart says. "When she moved into this house, I had no curtains, three forks, and I never drank coffee, and I was like, 'I don't sleep.' She's like, 'In the morning, you drink coffee and you work, and you're alive, and you're awake, and then at night you close the curtains.' In retrospect, it was so obvious."

When Stewart leads me outside, Meyer is already on the deck, limbering up in a white New Order T-shirt while Rashad arranges yoga mats and free weights. Soon Stewart has a playlist going, and Rashad is having us "separate our shoulder blades and engage our core" to the croons of Vivien Goldman as Stewart's black rescue mutt, Cole, meanders between the mats. We stretch. We shadowbox. Then comes the moment Stewart had warned me about: the chin-up competition on a free-standing contraption set up on the deck. I do approximately zero. Meyer manages several. Stewart does chin-up after chin-up after chin-up, then switches to a different grip and does some more, as we all look on admiringly.

"You should know that Kristen is good at everything. It's both inspiring but also annoying," Meyer says to me quietly without a hint of actual annoyance.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go!" Rashad screams. "You're strong as fuck, let's go!"

Stewart finally drops from the bar, panting.

She flashes that famous sideways grin, and then glances toward the body pads: "Let's get in the ring."

It was really fun to be allowed to have the little, dykey sister be the main protagonist.

IT HAD BEEN A SUBVERSION of the idea of a "strong woman" that led Stewart to Love Lies Bleeding, she'd told me a few weeks earlier, sitting in her living room on a black leather sofa under large metal letters that spell out "ASS." This afternoon, it is witchy raining, and the view out the glass doors barely goes past the deck, where in addition to the pull-up stand, there is a claw-foot bathtub Stewart had moved from one of the bathrooms and hooked up outside ("It breaks a lot, but it's really fucking nice to take a bath out there"). Unimposing from the outside, the house slopes down the hillside elegantly, but is haphazardly furnished and a little unkempt. Across from the sunken living room - where a white plastic mannequin perches on a bench laid out with stacks of Nevermind scripts and papers - there is a wall of books to one side (Mary Shelley, Jack Kerouac, Kim Gordon, Kathy Acker) and a sort of game room to the other, complete with an orange-topped pool table, a Playboy pinball machine, a row of metal lockers, and a refrigerator with a large orange biohazard sticker on the door. A room off the kitchen boasts a crumbling sofa, a drum kit, and a collection of acoustic and electric guitars. Near the stairs, water stains mark the ceiling, and the words "life is beautiful" are graffitied in bright-red paint.

"Just so you know, that 'life is beautiful' thing - do you know Mr. Brainwash?" Stewart motions wryly to the graffitied wall. "He came over with a friend of mine and did this, and I was like, 'So I know that I do sort of live in a frat house, but that is psychotic.' Do you know what I mean? To think that you could just do that to someone's fucking house." During the pandemic, Stewart graffitied the word "MAINLY" underneath in all caps. "Anyway," she continues, shrugging, "just to contextualize that: Fuck that guy."

Stewart bought the house about 12 years ago, as a place to "go hide in" during a breakup with Robert Pattinson, back when they were both having to ride around in the trunks of cars to try to thwart the prying paparazzi. In a theoretical way, she understands the interest people still have in that relationship - she really does - but as she'll later tell me: "Rob and I can't just keep talking about that shit, because it's fucking weird. It's like if someone kept asking you - I mean for literally decades - 'But senior year in high school?' You're like, 'Fucking A, man! I don't know!'"

Whatever her reserve on film, today Stewart has an excitable, spring-loaded quality. Soon after we begin talking, she wanders off, without preamble, to change from black leather workman's shoes into sneakers ("I'm a soft-shoe guy. I went somewhere today and got dressed or whatever, but now I'm like, 'Why the fuck am I in these big shoes?'"). A few minutes later, she wanders off again ("She just keeps walking away from me," she narrates from my perspective), and returns from the biohazard fridge with two Coors Lights. "You can have a beer if you want," she announces. "I'm going to have one."

We crack open the cans. She returns to the couch. She wears a worn, black T-shirt with holes in both armpits, baggy black jeans, and chipped black nail polish. Her mullet is pulled into a short ponytail at the back of her head, dark strands escaping errantly.

"Do you already know what you're-" she stops herself. "I know actors are defensive. I don't mean this, like, 'Do you already know what you're going to write?' But are you already - I don't know - a little outlined or something?"

Shirt: Stewart's own. Jeans by Levi's

No, I tell her. We only just met. How could I know what the contours of the story would be?

"OK, cool." She leans toward me, legs wide and elbows on her knees. "We'll figure something out."

There's a lot to say about Love Lies Bleeding, so we might as well start there. And here's how that went: Stewart was in London for the premiere of Spencer. The morning after, having slept not a wink ("We were really Englanding out"), she came down to the lobby of her swanky "press junket" hotel for a meeting with director Rose Glass, whose debut film, Saint Maud - a psychological fever dream about religious obsession - Stewart had loved. They sat at a table off to one side. They sipped tea. Glass explained that her takeaway of what people wanted from her next was a film about a strong woman, a strong lead character.

"What does that mean?" Stewart asks now, narrowing her eyes. "It's bullshit. It means that we're not actually letting women define themselves. It's the assumption that we need to be empowered by the people deciding who gets to have perspective, that we have to provide something aspirational. It's the lowest-hanging fruit there is." Glass told her that she had figured out a way to subvert that expectation: She had taken the note literally. "She was like, 'Strong girl? Bodybuilding. Got it.' Simple as that."

I loved to be sad and shit. Oh, my God. I made a complete art project out of it: my whole life.

By the time she left the meeting, Stewart knew she would take the part that Glass had written with her in mind - the role of Lou, the gym manager, who is butch and tough and closed like a fist, until the bodybuilder, Jackie, explodes her whole world - but she didn't officially sign on until she'd returned to L.A. and read the script. "I had some friends over for dinner when I got the message," says Glass of receiving the news. "I think I was a bit drunk already. I just remember there being lots of very jubilant shouting and excited jumping up and down."

Afterward, Stewart finished the campaign expected of Oscar-nominated actors ("It becomes like you're teaching a curriculum on your movie") and then flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Love Lies Bleeding would film, showing up at Glass' house with a stylist to lay waste to Diana's blond hair, even grabbing the scissors at the end to make it look like Lou had cut her mullet herself. "Once I cut my hair, I was like, 'See you, forever,'" Stewart says of leaving Spencer behind.

Lou was a very different story - a character whose seedy, pumped-up world could not have been more different from Princess Diana's gilded cage, whose sex scenes were about female pleasure and female bodies alone, who wasn't aspirational or going on some journey of self-discovery, and who was not at all the type of person about whom movies are generally made. "It was really fucking fun to be allowed to have the little, dykey sister be the main protagonist in a movie," Stewart says. "That's never the main character in a movie. That's never the one that you want to fuck. I mean, that's the one some people do, but not the one that you are prescribed to want to fuck."

As an openly gay movie star - "and there aren't that many openly gay movie stars" - it felt personal in a way Stewart hadn't quite expected: a queer film that didn't revolve around the "coming out" narrative, and in which the queerness was less a plot point than a vibe. She has long talked about roles as not a form of escapism, but rather a means of exploring different facets of her identity - imagining who she might be if her "nature" had been exposed to an entirely different "nurture." But playing Lou felt like a return to her "first setting," she tells me. "It is a really weird, kind of moving return to form in some way. Kind of like who you are when you're 11 - physically, the clothes you choose to wear - before you've just been pummeled by male expectation."

She takes a swig of beer and leans back into the sofa. "I never have felt like I have performed a femininity in order to reap its benefits in a way that felt like a lie," she continues. "I'm very fluid, and I've never felt like, 'Oh, wow, I was doing this lie for a long time in order to get jobs.' That would be wrong. I have had a good time playing with all of the tonal qualities. But there's so much room for success when you choose the girlie one. There's no room for this other one."

OK, LET ME BACK UP AGAIN. Because nurture does matter, here are some broad strokes.

Stewart grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills. Her dad was a stage manager who worked on shows like the Oscars and Fear Factor, and when Stewart went to work with him, she hated it - all the rushing around and commotion ("I would hide in the engineers' room and play bass with them"). Her mom was a script supervisor who worked on movies like Mortal Kombat and Little Giants, and when Stewart went to work with her, she loved it - the quiet and stillness, the feeling of everyone working together to suspend some fragile bubble of make-believe. When she was eight, and because she had noticed acting was the only job kids could have that allowed them to miss school, she asked her mom to take her to an audition seminar, one of those one-stop shops where you get headshots and the promise of being connected to some agents if you don't suck too much. Stewart - whose drama experience up to that point consisted of reenacting scenes from Titanic on the jungle gym at school - found that she didn't.

She booked a Porsche commercial. Then she booked The Safety of Objects. Then David Fincher saw the Porsche commercial and had his people track her down, and she booked Panic Room. "I mean, everybody said at the time, 'Look, if this kid wants to continue to do this, she's absolutely got the acumen; she's got the sensitivity,'" Fincher tells me. "But when you're standing next to Jodie Foster, and the question for a 10- or 11-year-old is 'What do you want to do with the rest of your life?' - you know, Jodie's extremely protective of people who are not capable of making those decisions: 'She doesn't need to think about that. She needs to think about what we're doing before lunch.'"

Anyway, there was only so much Foster could do: When shit hit the fan for Stewart, career prospects had nothing to do with it. Puberty did. "It's as soon as I started to want to have sex," Stewart specifies of the moment in sixth grade when she went from being like "everything's fucking gravy" to suddenly feeling like "I can't find the words and I want my face to be on the back of my head instead of the front." She takes another gulp of Coors: "Puberty is a real fucker."

There are a few core memories here: the time she went to school with her legs unshaved and someone was like, " Eeeewwww"; the time she accidentally hit a friend in the nuts, and he howled "Oh, you fucking man!"; the way guys treated her girlie friend Britni vis-à-vis the way they treated her. "I was immediately aware that these guys who I was friends with saw me as not fuckable," she says. "My sexuality is totally fluid. I'm all over the fucking map - and I think I was then. But I also really wanted to be normal and hot, so I was like, 'Cool. I'm going to do everything I can to try and fucking figure out how to look like a girl and get these guys to like me.' That's it. It's totally a normal story." Except that it didn't play out normally because by then she was well on her way to filming movies like Into the Wild and Adventureland and - as part of her actual Twilight audition, believe it or not - rolling around with Pattinson on director Catherine Hardwicke's own bed.

Jacket: Vintage WINLIT. Shirt: Stewarts Own

Which means that while Stewart was still figuring out who she was and what being "fuckable" meant to her, the world was busy schooling her on both fronts. She couldn't leave the house without the male gaze following her in the form of TMZ photographers, couldn't arrange her face without becoming the cultural signifier of every single woman who's ever been told, "You're so much prettier when you smile." Plus, it was the aughts ("The Nineties and the early 2000s were really horrific for young women. Don't you feel that way?"). Her anxiety got so bad that she'd lie on bathroom floors, unable to unclench her fists - so bad, at one point she had to be hospitalized ("They were like, 'She's dehydrated.' I was like, 'I'm not dehydrated. I'm fucking flipping out.'  They gave me an IV and a mild sedative, and I started calming down and my hands started opening up, because you fucking atrophy").

There was a span of years when she couldn't enter a room without scoping out the exits, when she needed to know where a bathroom was at all times ("I was always like, 'Who knows? I could spontaneously combust in a puddle of puke right now'"). There was that period when she couldn't sleep, and then got addicted to not sleeping, thought she might die from not sleeping, but then, somehow, didn't. "I loved to be sad and shit," she tells me. "Oh, my God. I made a complete art project out of it: my whole life."

Of course, all of that was a long time ago. Stewart wanders over to the fridge and gets us another round. Here's the thing: She's grown up. That's not who she is now. But also: In a way, it kind of is. As a queer woman in the public eye, she's had occasion to think about identity, and what it all means. She's considered the arc of things. "And it goes: Jodie [Foster], me, boygenius," she says, plainly, of the spots she imagines they all hold on the queer-celebrity continuum. "I'm in the middle. Do you know what I mean? Jodie had such a hard time [as a gay actor], and I'm not speaking for her - I am objectively analyzing the time and place in which she was being her, and that is not easy - I would say fucking near-impossible if you wanted to continue doing what you love.

"For me, it wasn't a problem," she continues. "But that's probably because of the sort of space that I inhabit and the parts that I'm attracted to and the filmmakers that are attracted to me and the audience that exists for those movies. Had I really wanted to carve out more commercial space and maintain that, I don't know if that would've worked."

Still, she points out that, for her, coming out was not a painstaking process. She was "very physically out with my body" long before she publicly came out on SNL. And even that was a "very shoot-from-the-hip moment," she says. "It did not feel like this bloodletting." Nor was it something she'd planned in advance. She was merely sitting with the SNL writers, going, "This is the most boring monologue ever. What are we going to do? What the fuck?" when someone brought up Trump's tweets about her. "He's mad at me for cheating on my boyfriend?" she'd retorted. "Little does he know...." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew she'd use them. (As for her thoughts on Trump? "Of course he had to weigh in on my tarring and feathering. It's like, 'What is this 20-year-old who has no idea about life doing to this man?'" And: "He's such a little baby." And also: "Fuck you, bitch!").

She says that Foster has been a mentor to her - a number she will keep in her phone always, even if they aren't consistently in touch - and she's aware that her own openness about her queerness has likely been a model for others. But she also knows how much the needle has kept moving, at least in the "specialized little nook" of the world where she resides. She directed boygenius' "The Film" - a 14-minute music video that culminates in the three musicians making out with one another - and she can see the evolution from herself to them, how she has an awareness of gender-conformity that feels very "millennial" compared with what's on offer now. "I look at these kiddos that are so chilling on all of those fronts, and can have [gender] be like an accessory, can actually play with the novelty of that - have [femininity] one day, not have it the next." It's a psychological fluidity Stewart covets: "I'm so aware of these things."

And so she did what she could: She leaned into that awareness. She began reading mainly female writers ("I was really obsessed with male writers. I've only recently been like, 'What the fuck are they doing?'"). She began boning up on gender theory, giving herself the college education that, in another life, she might have had. She began thinking of female bodies not just physically and sexually, but also metaphorically ("The coolest fucking part of us is that we have this ever-present and unclosable opening, and we're walking around with it all the time, and we sort of pretend like it's not there, but it's our greatest strength"). She began to interrogate the "violence of the dynamic" when it comes to gender, whether someone has had a #MeToo moment or not (she says that she hasn't). "The violence and the shame that women internalize and then use as triggers for pleasure? We can't get away from it," she says. "To think that we know what we want in a way that's remotely divorced from the patriarchy is impossible. We will never. And I'm so much more interested in leaning into that versus away." In other words, she began, as she puts it, " Vagina Monologue-ing all over the place."

Now, I want to do the gayest fucking thing you've ever seen in your life.

Some years back, Stewart read a memoir that seemed to magically spew onto the page all that was cohering in her mind. Before she'd even finished The Chronology of Water, she emailed its author, Lidia Yuknavitch, asking if she could adapt her story, a cult favorite about female shame and female rage and female art and female-on-female BDSM and a bunch of other things "so taboo it's almost horny." It took Stewart years to complete the screenplay, which she refers to as a "living document." For several weeks while she was working on it, she camped in a van outside Yuknavitch's Pacific Northwest home. Then she read the script to Yuknavitch, out loud, in the writer's living room. Then she cast Imogen Poots to play Yuknavitch. Then she went looking for money to make the actual movie, which proved to be damn near impossible because, as it turns out, female shame and female rage and female art and female-on-female BDSM are topics that are not seen to lend themselves to box-office gold. Which only underscored how every single fucking thing in the book was true.

We'd been having a fairly chill time up until this point, but suddenly Stewart is standing up, pacing back and forth in front of the bookshelf. She knows her screenplay is "radical in a million ways." She knows she's never directed The Tree of Life. But she also knows the misogyny embedded in the system and that she could make something subversive and beautiful and true if only she were given the chance. "And it makes me fucking angry. And not in a way that's like, 'I've been doing this for so long, and so therefore I deserve it.' It's really more like, 'If I were a man, you would fucking believe me! '"

Stewart's voice has risen to the point that she is screaming now, over there by the books. Eventually she strides to the pool table and begins racking the balls.

"Do you want to play a game of pool?" she asks. "It's the party trick of any fledgling lesbian." It may be worth mentioning that we are not entirely sober at this point. Outside the window, it's too dark to tell if it's still raining.

Stewart chalks a cue and then leans over the table and breaks. It's soon clear that she's the better player: When she sinks a ball, it's swift and decisive. Still, she's distracted by the conversation. Have I read any Jeanette Winterson? Or Kate Zambreno? What about Genesis P-Orridge's memoir? That's an extreme experience! Do I realize that we are setting ourselves up for failure here, with this whole cover-story thing? That it's impossible to pin down any moment in time, any fixed identity? Still, she wants the cover image to send a clear message: hyper-sexualized, left of andro, and flipping the gender script. "If I got through the entire Twilight series without ever doing a Rolling Stone cover, it's because the boys were the sex symbols," she points out. "Now, I want to do the gayest fucking thing you've ever seen in your life. If I could grow a little mustache, if I could grow a fucking happy trail and unbutton my pants, I would. Guys - I'm sorry - but their fucking pubes are shoved in my face constantly, and I'm like, ' Ummmm, bring it in.'"

Apropos to that, she won't give up on Chronology, she wants me to know. She's been talking about it with journalists for years - to the point that it's getting embarrassing - but it's now her only plan for the future. She'll keep writing things with Meyer, keep looking for other stories they could tell that she feels aren't being told, but she's not taking other parts; the next movie she films she wants to be her own.

I make a bank shot, and she looks at me with mock horror: "Now get the fuck out of my house."

BY THE TIME WE PLUNK ourselves back down in her living room a few weeks later, Stewart seems more relaxed, and not just from the endorphins released by her millions of chin-ups. About a week before our first meeting, she'd traveled to Latvia to lo-cation-scout for Chronology, and had been astounded by the beauty and diversity of the landscape - beaches that looked like Florida just a few miles from forests that looked like the Pacific Northwest. She'd now calculated that the movie could be shot there for a fraction of the cost, and though it was weird for her to consider making a movie outside of the Hollywood system, she was coming around to the idea. With these set pieces, she felt she could keep the project small and intimate, could suspend that fragile bubble of make-believe. "I don't want 80 people on set," she says. "If I see a truck, I'll lose my fucking mind."

Over the years, Stewart's most intimate relationships have tended to be with people she views as creative partners, which, she admits, has "not been great for having relationships." When it comes to Meyer, she says, "we don't have that separation. I found the right person because I can be so obsessive about what I do. And luckily my girlfriend, my partner, we are into the same shit. We have taken the things that we're spending our time on and interlocked them, and we're so much fucking smarter and stronger together. And you're just like, 'Fuck, that is the best.'"

The two met on the set of American Ultra, connected immediately ("in a way where you aren't sure if you want to fuck or be like, 'Dude, let's think of a handshake'"), and then unconnected immediately because of other romantic entanglements ("We were both so wrapped up in fucking other things, literally"). Six years later, they ran into each other again. Stewart asked why they hadn't stayed in touch. Meyer said she'd emailed. Stewart scoffed and then - oops - pulled up all the messages she'd ghosted. "It was my fault, for sure," she says. "But then I very much made this [relationship] happen. I was intense, because I was just positive."

Which, she found, was an interesting place to be. For so much of her adulthood, Stewart had felt unsettled. Years had been spent "really white-knuckling life and getting off on the highs and lows of things" and running headlong into "fucking horrific relationships" and leaning into experiences that were "emotionally psychotropic" because you can then "put so much into your art." And art had come out of it, art she'd sometimes even been proud of, art where she's been able to "deposit desire in people" and make her feelings their feelings - and, honestly, what's fucking better than that? "There was never a moment where I was like, 'Man, what am I doing with the time that I have on this Earth?'" she says. "I don't know what the fuck else I'd be doing. I love it."

And, look, it has been great to experience all these facets of herself, great to try them on and then figure out how she wanted to cast herself in her real life, which - let's be honest - is what we all do, all the time: "We make choices every fucking day about who we're going to be. Not in a controlling way, but just in a way that acknowledges, 'This is who I am. It's the easiest one. It's the one that's the most comfortable. It's the one I've chosen.'"

But also - and bear with her here; she knows she's about to contradict herself - she's aware that there can be something fundamental to who we are that can be lost and hard to retrieve. "I feel like I'm just getting back to that 11-year-old," she says. "It does take kind of a long period of growing up in order to get back to who you were when you were a little guy." She knows these things "might seem like a contradiction, like I'm presenting something that doesn't play well together." She balks at the concept of "authenticity" ("Are you fucking kidding me? We are all so malleable"). But she still feels like maybe there's something essential that you feel the loss of when it's denied, something that can help you grow into who you once were and stick that out, because "it's boring to not. It is unevolved to not. Now, I'm actually creating a home where I'm an adult and a person."

A few years back, Stewart and Meyer moved into a house down the road, keeping this one to use as the offices of Nevermind and as a landing pad for friends going through breakups or other hard times, as Stewart was when she bought it (she refers to it as the "Heartbreak Hotel," adding that it's otherwise "crazy to have a secondary mansion down the street from your house"). Since Meyer proposed in 2021, they've thrown around ideas of how they want to get married, once joking (or half-joking? Or not joking?) that they wanted Guy Fieri to officiate. Since then, they've realized that their main focus needs to be their two passion projects - Stewart's Chronology and Meyer's The Wrong Girls, in which Stewart will star and which she describes as "a stoner buddy comedy about two slacker girls coming of age." It's the one movie that Stewart says that she would do if it got greenlit before Chronology. With all that percolating, Stewart explains, "we don't have it in us to have a big wedding. We're probably just going to do it soon. We just are busy trying to make movies because they're our babies."

Then again, they've been talking about the possibility of actual babies. "I don't know what my family's going to look like, but there's no fucking way that I don't start acquiring kids," Stewart told me during our first meeting. "And also, ideally at some point soon I go, 'I want to have a kid.' I really want that to happen." Having watched that desire solidify in so many of their friends, she and Meyer have started making preparations for how they might go about getting pregnant, and have discussed the possibility of carrying each other's embryos. "I'm not scared of being pregnant. I'm not scared of having a kid," Stewart tells me. "But I'm so fucking scared of childbirth, it's crazy. Have you ever been too on drugs where you've suddenly needed to be on your hands and knees?" she asks of that sensation of your body operating outside your control. "I hate that. I mean, I smoke a lot of weed - I obviously self-medicate - but I don't like hard drugs. And I've tried - a lot. I just can't deal." Still, the thought of carrying a pregnancy is so "radical" that she'd like to think she could be up for facing that fear.

Right now, though, she can't wrap her head around creating anything - or anyone - before Chronology. She hopes that by March she's in Latvia shooting - she'd love to get there in time to capture some scenes of snow. She shows me the locations deck she put together, then asks if I want to see the sizzle, then spends several minutes fumbling with a remote control ("You know when you're too fucked up and you're trying to get music to play? This is like that"). Finally, she gets the video going, the plot approximated in pastiche, the tone strange and dark and exuberant. This is who she is, is what she's trying to say; she just wants to be able to say it. Less talk, more rock.

So I turn my tape recorder off. We swill some more Coors. The Los Feliz skyline darkens. Eventually Meyer texts to see what's up, and we head to a dive bar a few minutes down the road where we sit at a booth and eat chicken wings and where not a single person approaches the table except the woman who takes our order. Stewart sits close to Meyer, who does most of the talking (about books, about writing, about how these are the best wings in Los Angeles to such an extent that "I'm not interested in other wings anymore"). Periodically, Stewart reaches out to gently touch Meyer's neck. At one point, they go outside to split the joint that's been hanging out behind Stewart's ear and return smiling and chummy. When the wings are done and the beers are finished, I call a car, and they wait outside with me until it arrives. They give good hugs, both of them.

Before we part ways for the final time, Stewart asks me again if I know what I'll write about her, which of course I don't. She's right: We've set ourselves up for failure with this whole cover-story thing. Identity is so fucking malleable, a series of choices made over and over again in service to something elusive. It can take so much strength to drown out all the noise and get to the point where you know how to make those choices in a way that feels true. So, yeah, I guess what I have to say is this: Kristen Stewart is strong as fuck - whatever the fuck that means.

Production Credits

Produced by RHIANNA RULE for PALM PRODUCTIONS. Photography direction by EMMA REEVES. Styling by OLGA MILL for CAA. Hair by ADIR ABERGEL for A-FRAME using VIRTUE LABS. Makeup by JILLIAN DEMPSEY for WALTER SCHUPFER MANAGEMENT using JILLIAN DEMPSEY. Nails by ASHLIE JOHNSON for THE WALL GROUP. Tailoring by LYDIA JAKUBOWSKI. Set design by ALEX CONSTABLE and CJ KEOSSAIAN for MAXIM JEZEK DESIGN for WALTER SCHUPFER MANAGEMENT. Video Editor: BRIANNA DEVONS. Post production by TWO THREE TWO STUDIO. Production manager: XAVIER HAMEL for PALM PRODUCTIONS. Models: GEORGIA STARNES, RHYS ATHAYDE, and KANOR EBEHEAKEY for O MODELS AGENCY. Production assistance: JACK CLARKE and DOUG STUCKEY. Styling assistance by ALYSSA LESSER. Lighting Director ARIEL SADOK, Photography assistance: JACK BUSTER and ALEXIS SOTOMAYER. Digital Technician: MIKE PREMAN. Hair styling assistance by SELINA BOON. Location: ESTLR ATHLETICS.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kristen Stewart Uncensored: 'I Want to Do the Gayest Thing You've Ever Seen in Your Life'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kristen Stewart gets candid about her 'Love Lies Bleeding' role, working with fiancée Dylan Meyer on their production company Nevermind, hating Trump, and more.

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Stewart portrays a young, sensitive, and somewhat rebellious rock singer who develops a pure, shy, and adoring crush on the male lead.

# data[].attributes.headline
Nakassis, C.V. (2025) ‘Person-Indexing Registers, Stardom, Auteurism’, Signata. Annales des sémiotiques (Online), 16(16). pp. 1-25.

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Nakassis, C.V. (2025) ‘Person-Indexing Registers, Stardom, Auteurism’, Signata. Annales des sémiotiques (Online), 16(16). pp. 1-25.

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The concept of "person-indexing registers" frame Stewart's evolution. Her transition from a commercial star to the director was a strategic re-signification of her persona. This move shifted her from a consumable object within others' texts to the authorial source of her own, completing her register as an independent auteur.

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2 Seeing the Celebrity Image: The Celebrity Scan, pp. 30-32

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Redmond, S. (2014) Celebrity and the media Sean Redmond. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Redmond, S. (2014) Celebrity and the media Sean Redmond. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Redmond (2014) describes how celebrities are constantly “scanned” by media technologies that expose their private bodies and lives. Stewart’s post-Twilight behaviour — refusing red-carpet glamour and rejecting paparazzi photos — can be seen as an act of resistance to this surveillance regime, reclaiming her image from the invasive celebrity gaze.

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Seeing the Celebrity Image- Celebrity Gaze, pp. 27-30

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Redmond, S. (2014) Celebrity and the media Sean Redmond. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Redmond, S. (2014) Celebrity and the media Sean Redmond. Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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This article shows how media ask us to stare at stars as objects of desire and proof. For Stewart, that gaze meant her private life was sexualized, scrutinised and sold. Her outing and scandal were parsed like evidence. The passage helps explain why her personal choices became public property.

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"Kristen Stewart Wore Every Vibe Chanel Can Offer To Win Her First Director Award", Vogue (2025)

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"Kristen Stewart Wore Every Vibe Chanel Can Offer To Win Her First Director Award", Vogue (2025)

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In the article, Stewart’s series of bold Chanel looks at Deauville showcase her refusal to simply become a brand cover star. Wearing tweed sets and sheer mini-skirts, she maintains edge and authenticity, even while fronting a luxury label.

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Kristen Stewart Wore Every Vibe Chanel Can Offer To Win Her First Director Award

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“The Chronology of Water” has won its first award at the Deauville American Film Festival in France—and Kristen Stewart brought the tweed skirts and tulle.

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"Has Kristen Stewart Entered Her Experimental Fashion Phase?", British Vogue (2024)

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"Has Kristen Stewart Entered Her Experimental Fashion Phase?", British Vogue (2024)

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This magazine piece highlights Stewart’s “experimental fashion phase,” where she mixes punk aesthetics with high fashion, using style as a form of self-expression rather than publicity. Her gender-fluid outfits including cut-off suits, bold crops, sheer fabrics embody her resistance to traditional femininity and celebrity glamour.

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Kristen Stewart might be a Chanel girl at heart, but this year her personal style has taken a more daring turn than the tweed-centric heritage brand is typically known for. Last week, she made headlines wearing a barely-there Bettter bodysuit and Wolford tights. Following this, she flaunted a provocative interpretation of the three-piece suit this week, opting to go braless and complementing the ensemble with loafers. What's prompted this change? Could it be her forthcoming role in the queer thriller, Love Lies Bleeding, or is she simply embracing a "new year, new me" attitude in 2024?

Her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in New York this week certainly suggests as much. Stewart showcased not one, but two memorable outfits. She arrived wearing an ethereal black halterneck top and a floor-length satin skirt, both from Mônot's pre-fall 2024 collection, along with a black leather biker jacket (which she later removed for photographs). She accessorised with sheer black knee-high Wolford socks, classic black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, a black quilted leather Chanel vanity case and cream Chanel ankle-strap pumps.

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Has Kristen Stewart Entered Her Experimental Fashion Phase?

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During her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in New York this week, Kristen Stewart showcased not one, but two memorable outfits.

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Redmond, S. (2014) Celebrity and the Media, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85-86.

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Redmond, S. (2014) Celebrity and the Media, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 85-86.

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Redmond’s idea of “manufacturing affect” explains how celebrity endorsement works as sensory capitalism. In her Chanel perfume campaign, Stewart’s image becomes a vessel of touch, scent, and emotion — a commodity designed to be felt. The audience doesn’t just see her; they imagine smelling and sensing her, embodying the very affect that Chanel aims to sell.

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Holmes, S. and Redmond, S. (2006) Framing celebrity : new directions in celebrity culture, pp. 19-25

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Holmes, S. and Redmond, S. (2006) Framing celebrity : new directions in celebrity culture, pp. 19-25

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This paper demonstrates that Stewart's “anti-celebrity stance” is in fact a reaction to fame's contradictions. Whilst benefiting from Hollywood's star-making system, she simultaneously expressed open aversion to such exposure and commodification. In subsequent interviews, she repeatedly emphasised the “painful aspects” of fame, echoing Redmond's description of “the suffering and damage of fame”.

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Introduction_ Su Holmes and Sean Redmond_25_10_27_22_51_41

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Hain, M. (2024) ‘From Shy Tomboy to Queer Icon: Kristen Stewart and Embodying/Overcoming Anxiety in Contemporary Hollywood’, Quarterly review of film and video, 41(5), pp. 724–747. 

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Hain, M. (2024) ‘From Shy Tomboy to Queer Icon: Kristen Stewart and Embodying/Overcoming Anxiety in Contemporary Hollywood’, Quarterly review of film and video, 41(5), pp. 724–747. 

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This article highlights how Stewart’s SNL appearance marked a turning point in her star image, moving from the “awkward tomboy” label to a confident queer icon. As Holmes and Redmond (2014) suggest, her open and humorous self-disclosure disrupted the heteronormative gaze, allowing her to reclaim agency and authenticity in a media culture that once ridiculed her.

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Lovelock, M. (2019) Reality TV and queer identities : sexuality, authenticity, celebrity, pp. 203-205.

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Lovelock, M. (2019) Reality TV and queer identities : sexuality, authenticity, celebrity, pp. 203-205.

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This academic source explains Stewart's authenticity no longer rests on the premise of “I am a lesbian celebrity”, but rather on “I wish to exist on my own terms”.

This distinguishes her from the media's earlier singular portrayal of “homosexual identity”, while reinforcing her status within queer communities as a symbol of “liberated, undefinable authenticity”.

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Meyers, E. (2009) ‘“Can You Handle My Truth?”: Authenticity and the Celebrity Star Image’, The journal of popular culture, 42(5), pp. 891-897

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Meyers, E. (2009) ‘“Can You Handle My Truth?”: Authenticity and the Celebrity Star Image’, The journal of popular culture, 42(5), pp. 891-897

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Meyers points out that the audience’s desire for “truth” traps celebrities in a paradox. The more they try to protect their privacy, the more they become the target of public curiosity. Stewart’s acts of resistance, such as avoiding red carpets, wearing masculine clothes, and refusing to explain her private life, show her rejection of this illusion of intimacy. Her “anti-celebrity” attitude is not a total escape from fame but a way to expose the false sense of closeness that celebrity culture creates.

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"Paris in Rome 2015/16 Métiers d’Art Collection Featuring Kristen Stewart – CHANEL", Chanel (2016)

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"Paris in Rome 2015/16 Métiers d’Art Collection Featuring Kristen Stewart – CHANEL", Chanel (2016)

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This advertisement reinforces the core dualistic nature of Stewart's star persona by showcasing her seamless transition between elegant femininity and dashing masculinity.

This approach positions her as a star who navigates conflicting identities with magnetic appeal, emphasising gender and identity fluidity.

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Paris in Rome 2015/16 Métiers d’Art Collection Featuring Kristen Stewart – CHANEL

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"GABRIELLE CHANEL, the film with Kristen Stewart – CHANEL Fragrance", Chanel (2017)

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"GABRIELLE CHANEL, the film with Kristen Stewart – CHANEL Fragrance", Chanel (2017)

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This Chanel film parallels Gabrielle Chanel's story with Kristen Stewart's own path, framing her as a modern rebel. By linking Stewart's break from her "Twilight" fame to Coco's liberation, the ad elevates her personal narrative into a legendary tale of defiance and self-rule, officially anointing her "a rebel at heart."

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GABRIELLE CHANEL, the film with Kristen Stewart – CHANEL Fragrance

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Notably, Stewart avoids mass-market collaborations, maintaining distance from commercial consumerism to preserve her independent, artistic identity.

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The actor paired her see-through top and pants with platinum tresses while promoting her new romance film, "Love Me."

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"Kristen Stewart Wore a Risqué Sheer Chanel Suit to This LA Premiere", L'Officiel USA (2025)

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"Kristen Stewart Wore a Risqué Sheer Chanel Suit to This LA Premiere", L'Officiel USA (2025)

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This article analyzes Stewart's strategic choice of a sheer Chanel ensemble at a film premiere. The look functioning as a deliberate statement on bodily autonomy over than fashion. She employs personal style as a tool for defining her public persona, challenging traditional norms of femininity and celebrity.

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Kristen Stewart Wore a Risqué Sheer Chanel Suit to This LA Premiere

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The actor paired her see-through top and pants with platinum tresses while promoting her new romance film, “Love Me.”

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She portrayed a daughter suffering from diabetes. This portrayal of a vulnerable, sensitive, and endangered young girl established her as a “protected” character type.

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Dyer, R. (1986) Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, p. 27.

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Dyer, R. (1986) Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, p. 27.

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This framework helps explain how Stewart’s red-carpet fashion—blending masculine tailoring with feminine elegance—functions as a visible performance of gender fluidity. Her androgynous styling challenges Hollywood’s binary ideals of beauty and sexuality, positioning her as a contemporary queer icon whose authenticity lies in the refusal to conform.