Kristen Stewart was hiding more than just emotional wounds at the Thursday premiere of On the Road in Toronto.
The 22-year-old star recently broke her middle finger on her left hand — sporting a blue splint when flying out from Los Angeles on Wednesday, but removing it for her glammed-up appearance in Zuhair Murad on the red carpet.
The splint was back on her hand by Friday, when she endured a spate of press interviews for the film — including one with Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, where she confirmed the broken bone to the writer, but didn't elaborate.
In the interview, the reporter nearly broaches the elephant the room, alluding to the tremendous attention she's received in the light of her July affair with married director Rupert Sanders.
"I cringe asking her whether it was a relief, given the scrutiny she’s under, to play Marylou," writer Sarah Prickett says of Stewart's free-spirited character in the film. Marylou, who does whatever she wants and never feels bad about it. Marylou, who is free."
The reaction of Robert Pattinson's estranged girlfriend? A look crosses Kristen Stewart’s face that makes me want to quit my job and jump out the 10th-floor window," Prickett writes.
A flummoxed Stewart then replies at length about playing the free-spirited character, based on LuAnne Henderson, the real-life wife of beat icon Neal Cassady. "Getting to know the people behind the characters made it a lot easier to play her," she said.
Also chatting with Stewart, the Toronto Star notes that it was a "shock" to see a "tense" Stewart "looking considerably thinner and less poised than she did at the Cannes Film Festival in May."