Kristen Stewart performed a number of promotional duties for On The Road (which will appear at the Toronto International Film Festival the same night as the 2012 MTV Movie Awards although it’s rumoured she’ll attend neither) and Breaking Dawn: Part Two (for which it’s contested whether she’ll go on the promotional tour with Robert Pattinson) before being caught on the casting couch with Rupert Sanders.
The 22-year-old should probably be on her press tour for On The Road right now, but she’s still sequestered; appearing only to make contrived, staged appearances for the paparazzi while clad in Pattinson’s belongings.
This interview was, presumably, conducted before the scandal because the most alluring headline Vogue UK Magazine October 2012 can muster after all these weeks and column inches is: “on love and living dangerously.”
On how she struggles to play it cool: “I know if you haven’t thought about how you want to present a very packaged idea of yourself then it can seem like you lack ambition. But, dude, honestly? I can’t. People expect it to be easy because there you are, out there, doing the thing that you want and making lots of money out of it. But, you know, I’m not that smooth. I can get clumsy around certain people. Like if I were to sit down and think, ‘OK, I’m really famous, how am I going to conduct myself in public?’ I wouldn’t know who that person would be! It would be a lot easier if I could, but I can’t.”
On her empathy for the Beat generation: “There is always going to be that seam of people who want things differently to the standardised version. It’s not necessarily a rebellious thing, it’s just who they are. That world back then, it just seems freer to me than anything I could ever touch and I’m fully nostalgic for it, even though I wasn’t even alive then. It’s the loyalty aspect of it all. I love being on the periphery with a group of people who have the same values that I do. People who don’t get off on fame, who just like the process of making movies and thrive.”
On watching the sex scenes from On The Road: “It’s kind of insane to watch now. I’m like, ‘Who is that?’ But I think, as every actress says when they do this is, it just felt so right. It was so within a different world and so within a different environment that I don’t even really feel… I mean, I am personally connected to it, of course, but it is something outside of myself.”
On going blonde for On The Road: “I feel like my whole body rejects it, but it was really important for the character. It was like learning an accent!”
On looking gothic without make-up: “Dude, get this: I have these oddly brown eyelids. I’ve walked into so many photo shoots, and they go, ‘Sweetheart, would you mind wiping them off?’ So the idea behind Bella’s makeup was just to enhance them. Anything that’s already good on you just gets better when you’re a vampire.”
On growing up: “I’m starting to carry a bag and even put on lipstick. Very mature for me.”
