Kristen Stewart covered this weekend’s issue of the Sun Herald’s Sunday Life Magazine, which is basically the newspaper’s weekend magazine. Kristen is currently promoting Personal Shopper, that strange (but not unappealing) looking film from French director Olivier Assayas, who also directed K-Stew in her Cesar-Award-winning turn in The Clouds of Sils Maria. The fact that Kristen is currently the “muse” to a critical-darling French director is still fascinating to me. Seven or eight years ago, did anyone really believe that Bella from Twilight would have this career? Anyway, this interview is pretty decent – you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
On the Twilight years: “I was really, really young; I was 17. It was too insane. It was too scary to try to make peace with how so many people wanted to know every detail about my life. They wanted everything. It was too much. I couldn’t break it down and digest what was happening. I was too insecure to lay it out for what it was… It’s central to my personal history; it shaped me incalculably and taught me a lot of lessons about myself, about people, about society. It’s funny how much I hated the attention. I really hated it – I don’t think that was a secret – but now I don’t look back at it and mourn and think, ‘What an awful time, I’m traumatised.’ It more fascinates me.”
Her role in Personal Shopper: “She’s an American in Paris; she’s an alien in every sense. She’s entrenched, entombed in the grieving process for her twin brother. She’s a half-person, fractured and broken. This is a woman who wants so badly to believe in anything concrete because she’s shell-shocked, because her belief system is completely overwrought by what she’s going through. There’s a never-ending, crucifying string of maybes which chip and knock away at her logic and at herself.”
She was excited by a story that involved the spirit world, mediums, ghosts: “Because every day, we all encounter things and moments and events that we can’t articulate. Like a vibe from a person, an atmosphere of a place that you can’t explain, that you can’t touch or see but you can feel. All of us can say we’ve experienced those minutes of prophecy, where we dreamt of what might happen and then it happens.”
Being comfortable with her sexuality: “I’ve found a way to live my life and not feel like I’m hiding at all. And that’s pretty apparent for anyone who cares – not that everyone does. But if you had been tracking it in any way, it’s more apparent. I’m more relaxed than I used to be.”
Despite her Chanel contract, she still thinks the fashion industry represents superficiality: “I see opposing, duelling sides to the concept of the fashion world and both have a voice – one that speaks to the vulnerabilities of art, the other to superficiality. There are those drawn to fashion for the self-gratification: they use it to win the popularity contest. I don’t get that, I don’t vibe with that. There are the artists, those drawn to beauty, who can’t help but weep and be mesmerised at the creation and beauty, which is celebrated alongside the physical form and aesthetic. They appreciate and they live for art.”
While many will shake their heads and call me an idiot, I actually totally get what Kristen is saying about “we all encounter things and moments and events that we can’t articulate.” I’m not saying I believe in ghosts 100%, but I’ll say that I’ve had some weird encounters with creepy or weird things, moments, noises and vibes that I can’t explain. I believe that some places have a strange energy, or a dark energy, and that you can sometimes feel malevolence coming in waves from people or places. Does that make me a weirdo? Whatever. Here’s the trailer for Personal Shopper. I swear this creeped me out:
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Is she constitutionally incapable of closing her mouth?
She’s doing her job. She’s answering questions she was asked during an interview to sell a movie she made. That’s literally part of her job.
Stella is still stuck in 2009
I’m pretty sure Stella meant literally, not figuratively. Kristen’s mouth is always open. As in her teeth are always showing. The inside of her mouth is always showing.
I believe K.Stew has a facial structure that makes it not that easy to close her mouth. I recognize it from myself- it’s a combination of a slight overbite, slightly bigger front teeth and just the general lip shape. Of course it’s possible to close them but it looks and feels rather strained and uncomfortable. When I had a photo taken by a professional photographer one time, he saw that and told me to just leave the lips slightly open while still breathing through the nose as that was what was natural for my face. That there wasn’t a law that states your mouth has to be closed at all times except when speaking! I was sooo relieved when he said that and the photos were beautiful!
The amount of sh*t I got for it in high school (everyday several people yelling at you to shut your mouth is not that nice) was ridiculous. And here people comment quite a bit on it, too. I don’t get it. Why does it inspire such hate? 🙁
Katinka I have this too. Passport photos are the worst because they insist on you closing your mouth, I always look strained and weird.
A lot of what is ‘unexplainable’ or a ‘hunch’ is parts of our brain working without our consciousness knowing.
Most choices, even movement, are set in motion in the brain before you are ‘aware’ of them.
This is true for decisions, for discerning patterns, for picking up your cup of coffee. Your brain has already made that choice, and your consciousness is playing catch-up.
Hunches, gut instinct, female intuition, those are all terms for the subconscious data crunching and pattern recognition that goes on below the surface. If you are super sketched out by someone, it is most likely small signals in their tone, or body language that are setting you off.
Superficial side note: I cannot get over how excellent Kristen is looking with the short hair.
And why women cross the street when they see a shady seeming dude walking towards them.
Same here, Detritus — in fact I came on board this thread just to say that. I think I have never seen any girl or woman look so perfectly beautiful with her hair cut like that. I’ve seen pics of Jeanne Seberg (sp?) in an old Joan of Arc film from the ’50s and it was apparently quite a shock to the world when Seberg got her hair buzzed like that for the film, but she looked pretty. Kristin, though, looks better that way than she has ever looked — absolutely gorgeous.
Anyone who knew her career before Twilight would know she was serious about acting and was respected among critics.
The question should be: who else feels smug that she is a critical darling who seems pretty happy in life when most of the internet either bashed her acting constantly or slut shamed her and continue to hold 2012 against her?
And yes .. i agree with the bad vibes thing. Is it that weird?
This statement (only replace 2012 with 2008) is far more applicable to Sienna Miller than to Kstew – who got some very vigorous mainstream and social media defence campaigns against the tabloid slur shaming.
Double standards, gotta love them.
Oh bullshit. Kristen was called trampire on the front page of a newspaper and all the social media platforms she had it worse than sienna was nowhere near as famous as kristen in 2012.
I didn’t believe in ghosts til I moved into my former home. I had so many incidents ( particularly after long absences from my home) For whatever reason I wasn’t frightened at all by her ( I’m guessing it was a her ) presence….
Personal Shopper is such an empty piece of filmmaking – like that French director wanted to work with Kristen again asap and didn’t bother with the script or anything.
Damn, never thought I would say this but not only do I get what she says about supernatural shizz but I also agree. Have had a few odd encounters myself, so.
Her indie darling status isn’t a surprise at all – those were the kind of films she did before and even during the Twatlight years, it’s no surprise she’s gunning for the European arthouse cinema now. Especially since she doesn’t have to pay attention to paychecks ever again and has the freedom to work for next to nothing if she wants. And for what it’s worth, I never thought she was a bad actress overall, just rather tryhard and up herself in real life (much like Rooney Mara).
She’s still a hypocrite though, I mean sure, go ahead and sign your Chanel and Balenciaga contracts but then don’t whine about how other girls who do makeup and fashion contracts are selling out’.
I’m also not surprised by her indie darling status. She’s worked steadily in indie films for years and for the most part received decent to great reviews in those types of films. I think the Twilight mess and that awful Snow White film just kind of overshadowed it all since those were widely seen (and those films were so bad I think someone had to be at Charlize’s level to pull off a decent performance). I imagine she’ll still do the occasional mid-budget film in the future, as even most indie actors do so in an attempt to mix it up a bit…so if it’s good that might fully change the narrative on her acting (more so than the good reviews in her indies).
I don’t think she’s pulled the sell out thing in a while (maybe because she seems to have matured) but she definitely plays both sides of the fence when it comes to fashion in a bit of a hypocritical manner. She’s hardly the first to do so though, and I do kind of laugh because it’s fairly obvious that a lot of these actor/actresses spokesmodels are simply doing their gigs because it’s good business/pr/free clothes rather than a love of fashion.
Rooney and Kristen don’t bother me though, despite the try hard factor at times, and I even kind of like them for the most part…I think there are a lot of male actors who are far more try hard (cough cough Charlie Hunnam and his method acting) that are given a pass.
She was making noises about how women shouldn’t wear so much makeup as recently as last year so I doubt she’s any more self-aware now than she was then when it comes to criticising other women and claiming she’s different from them.
As for male actors getting a pass, no one at her level of fame does. Charlie Hunnam is small potatoes so no one pays as much attention to him – but tryhard male celebs get dragged hard, all right. Anyone remember Leo and his Oscar baiting? Jared Leto and his dead rats to play the Joker? Heck even Charlie Hunnam got universally dragged for method-ghosting his gf, and that was the first time I’d heard of him.
And really, when they do get attention, no one has any patience with the small-potatoes tryhards either (that Eastwood son, Zefron) so it’s not as if they get a pass for being guys and therefore we don’t get to point out that Kstew or Mara are insufferable.
I believe there’s weird things like ghosts out there. When I was 5 years old, I remember seeing someone by my bedroom door that I didn’t recognize. I yelled for my parents, told them what I saw. After they searched the house and yard, they found nobody. When they mentioned it to our neighbor and I described what the person by my door looked like, she said it was how the lady that used to live in our house looked like. The lady had been on vacation and was murdered while away. I’ll always believe it was her visiting her house.
Kristen is beautiful, but would look much better without so much dark eye makeup on and good posture. Love her hair like that
I absolutely believe in ghosts and vibes. I’m 99% sure I had an encounter with a ghost when I was a teenager, and a few months ago, I picked up on some weirdness when I was out with a friend.
Last October (2016), my friend and I decided to spend the evening at a park in the city. Neither of us had ever been down there, and my interest in visiting in particular was piqued by the numerous reports of ghostly sightings and other strange phenomena in the area.
After spending the day wandering around the city and grabbing dinner, we headed down to the park in the early evening hours. We crossed the bridge above the river that goes through the park, and entered via the stairs which lead down to the park from the street. As we began making our way down the stairs, I suddenly began to feel very sick – I immediately felt dizzy, my extremities went numb, and I couldn’t move. There was just a very draining, oppressive feeling in the air. I actually had to make my way down the rest of the stairs holding onto the railing with both hands and walk down sideways very slowly. The stairs aren’t especially narrow or steep, and I don’t suffer from vertigo or any other health condition that would cause me to feel so unwell like that.
After coming home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d picked up on something. A couple months later, I was killing time at work reading about true crime stories on Wikipedia, and I found out that in the summer of 1986, the remains of a girl by the name of Alison Parrot were found next to the river beneath the bridge – the area we’d walked through. Whether any of the ghostly happenings in the area can be attributed to that tragic event I don’t know, but I certainly don’t doubt that it contributes to the overall negative vibe of the area.
I had a similar experience. I visited a friend of a friend’s house and I just had this disturbing, closed in claustrophobic experience. A lot of bad vibes. I later mentioned it, and my friend said that the former owner had been brutally murdered in the house (the real estate agent had to disclose it when their friend bought the house).
Yep, spirits are real. So are ghosts. It’s not at all weird. The hubris people have in assuming they know everything and dismiss what they can’t understand is the weird part. I’ve seen enough.
anyone else feel like trailers give too damn much away these days? i feel like i’ve already seen the whole movie, i know what happens, and the main scary/ creepy parts have been exposed. more than once i ve seen trailers that were so amazing i was dying to see the movie and then was totally disappointed bc the entire movie was less exciting than the trailer. it’s like they’re crying wolf to drum up the maximum of interest to sell tickets, and don’t give a damn about the actual experience of watching the film and how much the spectator discovers along the way. it may work in the short term but perhaps eventually people- like me- are going to get tired of it and quit buying.