Kristen Stewart, 29, is renown for being the cool girl of Hollywood who doesn’t feed into tabloid culture, especially after her romance with co-star Robert Pattinson, 33, was forced into the spotlight during the hype of Twilight. But the actress saw how fans could’ve interpreted her wariness to the limelight for something worse. “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 a**hole,” Kristen admitted for her Sept. 2019 cover story with Vanity Fair. Pre-Twilight, Kristen already had roles in big budget flicks like Zathura: A Space Adventure and Into the Wild, but her role as Bella Swan made her a household name.
Explaining her seemingly brooding nature, Kristen further explained, “I am in no way rebellious. I am in no way contrarian. I just want people to like me.” After the last entry into the Twilight saga hit theaters in 2012 (Breaking Dawn – Part 2), Kristen took a different route and opted for movies of the indie and art house variety like Certain Women (directed by Kelly Reichardt) and Personal Shopper (directed by Olivier Assayas). Kristen found her voice in these smaller films, as she told Vanity Fair, “It gave me a chance to not weigh something down. It was so much bigger than me. My baggage was so minuscule in comparison to what [Reichardt’s and Assayas’s] story lines 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.’”
Kristen is making her return to mainstream cinema now, as she’s starring in the Charlie’s Angels reboot alongside Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska, which is directed by Elizabeth Banks! The action flick will premiere on Nov. 15, and even Kristen’s ex and fellow vampire star is excited to see Kristen in this high-profile role. “Rob is very excited for Kristen,” a source close to the High Life star EXCLUSIVELY told HollywoodLife. “He’s hearing good things about the movie and will for sure watch it. Rob thinks Kristen is so talented and he’s glad to see her taking on such a huge, iconic role. He’s proud of her.”
Even Rob has reflected on the Twilight craze of the late aughts in a recent interview. “It seems like with younger people in their late teens, early 20s, it’s sort of become quite a hip thing to like,” the actor for Edward Cullen mused in an interview with USA Today in April 2019. “It’s a fascinating second wave of people appreciating it, which is kind of cool. I think when anything becomes a massive phenomenon, there’s always people who get annoyed because it’s just everywhere. But now it seems like a retro thing: the soundtrack, the fashion. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s so late 2000s.’”