The Book of Kristen

Robert Pat­tin­son. Twi­light. Get­ting naked in indie movies. Fame. These are just some of the things we won’t be talk­ing about with Kris­ten Stew­art. ​“Oh, good!” says the actress, slight­ly tak­en aback when we give her the good news. We’re sat on the roof ter­race of a hotel – heav­i­ly pop­u­lat­ed on the ground floor by secu­ri­ty block­heads – and it’s week two of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. Only 22-years-old, Stew­art is being afford­ed the kind of elite pro­tec­tion from the media usu­al­ly reserved for Hollywood’s biggest megas­tars. But we don’t real­ly want to ask her about that either.

In fact, LWLies only has one ques­tion: what does Kris­ten Stew­art want to talk about? ​“Right,” she says. Then she thinks. ​“I don’t want to sell myself. Peo­ple are so weird. They sud­den­ly find them­selves so inter­est­ing that they think they’re worth sell­ing. Typ­i­cal­ly speak­ing, the most inter­est­ing thing to me about myself is, right now, the fact that On the Road is com­ing out. And I want to talk about On the Road.”

To talk about On the Road is to dis­cov­er that, although peo­ple ask Kris­ten Stew­art a lot of ques­tions, the answers all lead to one place. It’s real­ly sim­ple: she’s a 22-year-old kid who’s mad-crazy in love with her job. ​“Oh my god, I fuck­ing love it so much,” she beams. ​“I’m not Mary­lou; I’m Sal. Right now, I feel so full. I’m, like, burst­ing. I should be work­ing. I don’t want to take a break. It’s fun­ny, on set, I don’t have to go to the bath­room, I don’t have any­thing wrong, I’m per­fect­ly fine, so through-and-through. I’m not hun­gry. I’m lit­er­al­ly not even in my own body. They wrap and they send me back to my trail­er and I fuck­ing fall to pieces. I sud­den­ly realise that I’ve had to pee for about six hours. And I’m starving.”

This kamikaze work eth­ic left her co-star Chris Hemsworth dumb­found­ed on their block­buster Snow White and the Hunts­man. Why, won­dered the Aussie heart­throb, was she attack­ing a basic Hol­ly­wood fan­ta­sy like it was a Paul Thomas Ander­son dra­ma? ​“Awww…” she smiles, affec­tion­ate­ly. ​“He’s the same way. Well, he takes it very much at face val­ue. Some­times I need to make myself do that. I just real­ly am try­ing, try­ing, all the time. I mean, Wal­ter [Salles] actu­al­ly said to me sev­er­al times dur­ing On the Road, ​‘Stop reach­ing. You’re already there.’ But I like to be scared. I love to sud­den­ly feel out of con­trol. Actors walk around wear­ing these lit­tle tool-belts of act­ing skills. And I just don’t find that inter­est­ing to watch. I nev­er want to see some­one who clear­ly can cry at the drop of a hat. That’s so unin­ter­est­ing. And so many actress­es are so fuck­ing crazy. They’re emo­tion­al wrecks, so they pre­tend to be these char­ac­ters. But the emo­tions aren’t com­ing from the right place. Do you know what I mean?” And you have to remind her: this is your inter­view, you tell us.

“At first, the rea­son I start­ed doing this was lit­er­al­ly just because I want­ed a job. My par­ents are crew – my mom’s a script super­vi­sor; my dad’s an AD – and I always looked up to them, I real­ly total­ly com­plete­ly glo­ri­fied the movies. And so at first, I real­ly just want­ed the respon­si­bil­i­ty. I want­ed adults to talk to me. I want­ed to be involved. I was bored. Then I turned 13 and I did this movie called Speak… I mean, to do a date-rape movie at 13, it real­ly affect­ed me and I sud­den­ly felt like things could be real­ly impor­tant and real­ly help peo­ple. I did this PSA [pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment] right after I did the movie and this enor­mous influx of peo­ple called in and said things that they had nev­er told any­one before. And it hit me so fuck­ing hard. I was like, ​‘Wow, some­thing that I love, some­thing that was so per­son­al to me’ – because at that point, I had nev­er got­ten any acknowl­edge­ment for any­thing I’d done, it real­ly was just for me – ​‘sud­den­ly touched peo­ple.’ Movies, they can be impor­tant if you want them to be.”

So here it is. If you want them to be, even teen movies about hair-gelled vam­pires and were­wolves in cut-off jeans can be impor­tant. They can help you make oth­er movies, movies like On the Road, movies that might not get seen or even made with­out you.

In Hol­ly­wood, with great pow­er comes… great par­ties. But here’s the rea­son why you won’t see Stew­art fol­low­ing Lind­say Lohan into the star­let scrap yard. Through some crazy acci­dent, indie actress got bit­ten by a radioac­tive fran­chise and gained spe­cial pow­ers. They won’t last for­ev­er. But while they do… ​“It’s weird to be in this posi­tion of, like…” She sighs, check­ing her­self. ​“Not to sound fuck­ing crazy, but ​‘finan­cial prowess’. I feel bad about it. I feel like you need to do some­thing. I made Wel­come to the Rileys [in which Stew­art played a young woman with emo­tion­al issues] a few years back and now I want to open two halfway hous­es, one in New Orleans and one in LA, and I want to make a doc­u­men­tary about why it’s impor­tant. But all this ridicu­lous­ly emp­ty char­i­ty work that you see? Like, you show up at an event and you wear a dress and you auc­tion your dress off and you sud­den­ly feel impor­tant. I want to do it right. Right now, I just feel it. It’s not to be wast­ed. Because I know my val­ue is fuck­ing strong.”