A moment of reflection. Kristen Stewart has come a long way since her Twilight days, though she recently reflected on how her behavior early in her fame may have come off to the world.
“I think I’ve grown out of this, but I used to be really frustrated that because I didn’t leap willingly into being at the center of a certain amount of attention, that it seemed like I was an asshole,” Stewart, 29, told Vanity Fair for its September cover story. “I am in no way rebellious. I am in no way contrarian. I just want people to like me.”
Since wrapping production on the Twilight Saga in 2012, the actress has appeared in more serious roles. She scored rave reviews for her performance in 2016’s psychological thriller Personal Shopper, and she held her own opposite Julianne Moore in 2014’s Still Alice.
In 2015, her efforts in Clouds of Sils Maria earned her the best supporting actress César award — making her the first American woman to receive the French honor.
Stewart, whose stars in Elizabeth Banks’ upcoming Charlie’s Angels reboot, said working with independent filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas — in Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria — and Kelly Reichardt — in Certain Women — allowed her to come into her own as an actor and person.
“It gave me a chance to not weigh something down. It was so much bigger than me,” she continued. “My baggage was so minuscule in comparison to what [Reichardt’s and Assayas’s] storylines are, as filmmakers. I was finally given a chance to be looked at, not as this thing in this celebrity-obsessed culture that was like, ‘Oh, that’s the girl from Twilight.’”
Stewart, who is dating model Stella Maxwell, is known for maintaining a very private life. However, she has addressed how garnering fame during the Twilight era has affected her before.
In 2016, the Cafe Society actress revealed that fame caused her to “shut down” and prohibited her from having a “fully-lived life.”
“I got really exceedingly famous at 17, and at 17 you don’t really know how to interact with more than a couple of people,” she previously said at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, according to the Guardian. “You’re trying to figure it out. Who are you? What do I seem like? Can I affect that? Should I think about that? So then when it’s thrust at you and that conversation is owned by the masses and not just you or the closest people to you it kickstarts this weird thought process that is really unnatural.”
Stewart noted that she “found this balance of ignoring the things I find worthless and really letting in the stuff that feels human and that is by not hiding and being honest.”
