KRISTEN STEWART for Vanity Fair 28th Annual Hollywood Issue, March 2022

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Kristen Stewart on Love—Onscreen and Off:
Kristen Stewart is not going to play it cool. “Everyone wants to win an Oscar, you know?” she says. She’s looking at me through rose-colored glasses, glowing in the California sun. Her face is sharp and delicate, like a marquise-cut diamond, framed by blond strands near-black at the roots. Her dog, Cole, barks in the Zoom background, lounging somewhere in the spacious Palm Springs Airbnb where Stewart is on vacation. Stewart is in the midst of an awards campaign for Spencer, Pablo Larraín’s haunting portrait of three gasping days in the life of Princess Diana. The role has earned the actor—whose career began at 9 and exploded at 18—a new level of critical acclaim.

“I’m totally touched,” she says, smiling and taking off her sunglasses. It’s actually less about a particular statuette and more about the zeitgeist buoying a piece of work that she’s extremely proud of. She’s happy to be in the conversation and didn’t expect it—which is to say that after starring in the blockbuster Twilight franchise, she has used her clout to pick surprising films, like Clouds of Sils Maria, an Olivier Assayas drama that earned Stewart a César.

For years, Stewart’s appeal lay in her coolness, in the mumbling, angsty thing she projected in Twilight and refined over time. There have always been those who argue she’s among the best female actors of the millennial generation, and that sentiment is spreading. In the past, she tried to learn lines as close to filming as possible, allowing the words to stay alive longer. The Ram Dass school of acting; be here now, or nowhere. But Stewart had to eschew all that to play Diana, which required months of research and accent training. Larraín had unwavering faith in his American star—“He was always like, ‘If you wanted it to be, it could be as good as A Woman Under the Influence!’ ”—and Stewart went inward, channeling Diana’s loneliness. “One of the remarkable things is that she was so friendless,” she says, saddened. “I’m constantly going, ‘Where was your fucking homie?’ ”


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