Kristen Stewart with Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Last year Kristen Stewart made history by being the first American actress to win a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar. This will have no doubt come as a surprise to her many detractors, who regularly flock to Facebook, YouTube and Goodreads threads to endorse proclamations that, “Her facial expression never changes” and “I can’t believe why anyone keeps hiring her” and “Kristen Stewart can’t act”.
Anyone who has seen Clouds of Sils Maria, the Olivier Assayas film for which Stewart won the award, and in which she holds her own opposite Juliette Binoche, of all people, will disagree. One of the interesting things about the film is the way the younger woman fully embraces her supporting status, allowing her uncertainty and acknowledgement of the French star’s greater experience to flesh out her role as factotum to a celebrated actress at a crossroads in her career. It’s a very human, relatable performance – so much so that when she disappears from the film, her absence leaves us as almost as bereft and disorientated as Binoche’s character.
Kristen Stewart with Julianne Moore in Still Alice (2014)
She is impressive in an equally unshowy role in Still Alice, as the daughter whose response to her mother’s distressing medical condition is the very definition of an impeccable supporting performance. Julianne Moore deservedly won the Oscar for her portrayal of as a linguistic professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, but Stewart is there all the way, quietly backing her up.
And this from an actress who has starred in all five films in one of the most profitable franchises of all time; The Twilight Saga, which has grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide. Personally, I prefer my vampires evil, but within their parameters the films were well made, and fortunate in their casting of two leading players, Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who were able to imbue the colourless cyphers of the novels with a modicum of personality as the films recreated all too accurately the endless inarticulate yearning of adolescents in love. It’s noticeable, however, how much more fun Stewart seems to be having in the fifth film, when Bella Swan stops being a passive ninny and turns into a red-eyed vampire with superpowers.
With Robert Pattinson in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012) photo by Andrew Cooper, © 2011 Summit Entertainment, LLC.
It wasn’t as though Kristen Stewart came out of nowhere. By the time she was cast in Twilight (2008), she was already a veteran of nearly a decade’s work in movies. Born in 1990, in Los Angeles, to a father who was a TV producer and mother who was a script supervisor, she was initially more interested in what went on behind the camera than performing in front of it, but gradually built up an impressive résumé in indie films and classy commercial productions. She played a 12-year-old tomboy in Rose Troche’s bereavement drama The Safety of Objects, a surly 11-year-old diabetic in David Fincher’s slick home invasion thriller The Panic Room, the sulky teen heroine of the Pang brothers’ horror movie The Messengers.
Without being girly and ingratiating, and showing remarkable self-possession while still managing to express the vulnerability of her characters, she cornered the market in androgynous rebels, played every conceivable variation on sulky teenage girls, and invested what might otherwise have been boring girlfriend roles (Into the Wild, Adventureland, On the Road) with attitude.
She has shared the screen with a wide range of illustrious co-stars – Glenn Close, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro in What Just Happened, James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo in Welcome to the Rileys, William Hurt and Eddie Redmayne in The Yellow Handkerchief – and has started to push out into unexpected and wholly non-commercial directions, giving a convincing performance, for example, in last year’s Camp X-Ray, as a young soldier assigned to Guantanamo Bay. American Ultra was a belated entry in that subgenre wherein nerdy individuals discover they’re bad-ass assassins with mad killing skills (see also: The Long Kiss Goodnight, Wanted), a one-joke fantasy for anyone who still thinks callous 1990s-Tarantino-style ultra-violence is fun, but Stewart, as the nerd’s girlfriend, gave her role more depth and compassion than it deserved.
Whether thanks to her own judgement, or to that of her agent, her career decisions have mostly been smart. Her sole major misstep was Snow White and the Huntsman; not only she had already accumulated too much baggage to play the sort of fairytale ingenue better left to bland starlets (give her a decade or two, and she could make an interesting Evil Queen), but she was photographed snogging the film’s director, Rupert Sanders, a married man nearly twice her age.
Snow White and the Huntsman (2010)
The reaction was merciless, and out of all proportion to the perceived offence; fiercely puritanical Bella and Edward “shippers” saw it as a betrayal of the sort of chaste romance being peddled by the franchise, its authenticity confirmed, in their eyes, by the offscreen relationship of Stewart and Pattinson. Sanders hardly got off scot-free (his wife divorced him) but the lion’s share of the fury was directed at the 22-year-old actress, who was denounced as a “home-wrecking tramp”, and a “cheating slutbag”. Many will never forgive her for sullying the purity of “Stewpatz” and, by extension, their own romantic illusions. It must be tough growing up in public, where your youthful indiscretions get plastered all over the tabloids, and the internet never lets you forget them.
But never mind Bella Swan and Snow White – Stewart was more clearly more comfortable playing feisty fledgling rocker Joan Jett in Flora Sigismondi’s undervalued The Runaways, about the 1970s all-girl band. Twilight‘s success, of course, has been a poisoned chalice. It has placed Stewart on the hit-list of the legions of Twilight haters who seem pathologically incapable of not sneering at anything aimed at young female audiences. She has been repeatedly admonished for not smiling for the cameras (why on earth should she if she doesn’t feel like it?), for not standing up straight (What are these people? Maiden aunts?) and can’t step outside without being papped – mundane photographs of her “going for coffee” with a girlfriend have been plastered over the tabloids so repeatedly that even their readers seem to have lost interest.
On the positive side, the notoriety has enabled Stewart to write her own ticket, to lend her famous name to smaller independent films in return for more challenging roles, and to give sterling support to some of cinema’s most accomplished veterans in prestigious productions that get her noticed by the right casting directors. And in the meantime, she is surely watching, and learning.
This piece was first posted on the Telegraph website in March 2015. It has since been edited and updated.
MULTIGLOM 
Thanks for this. I confess that, having seen only Snow White and bits of the Twilight series, I was one of those who tended to dismiss her acting abilities. However, I’ve now put in an order for American Ultra and will try to catch a few of the other movies you recommend.
Don’t get TOO excited about American Ultra – she’s good in it, but the film isn’t great. Then maybe try Still Alice, which has haunted me ever since I saw it.
Still Alice is on my must-see list for whenever I emerge from the current swamp of work.
Reblogged this on skinsavant.
I have followed Kristen’s career since she was just a child. I have seen the diversity of her acting rolls. I think she has even surpassed her own realistic expectations. I think it is long overdue and should be said, so I am going to. If it movies and films you love, then it’s time to quit linking her to one youthful indiscretion. I’m truly sick of reading that name everytime I read an article on Kristen Stewart. Let us leave that behind and leave it up to her to write about it in her own memoirs.
Her portrayal of “Joan Jett” was impeccable, flawless, and fearless as she threw herself into that roll. I know Joan Jett is amazed at the dedication that Kristen gave to that performance. The “Runaways” .
I’m not going to break down every movie she has ever done, because there are just to many. Nonetheless, “Meet The O’Rielly’s”, “Clouds of Sils Marie”, “On The Road”, and “American Ultra” are ones that stand out to me. She may not even like some of my faves, but, “The Yellow Handkerchief” was fabulous. The underlying story was relatable and I really enjoyed it. What surprises me is that they almost want her to apologize for “The Twilight Saga” because of the fictional characters were exactly what they were supposed to be. (Why) IT’S FICTION, which leaves the door wide-open to whatever the writer, director, and cast wants it to be. I refuse to apologize for liking them and enjoying those movies. I seen an interview where is openly admits she is proud of those movies as well. Believe me, young girls are not going to sit around and sulk or try to kill themselves if a guy breaks up with them. Ive seen teenage girls today and they are callous and mean to boys before they ever get a chance to dump them. I actually wish there was still a sweetness to girls! Not, coarse, hardcore, vulgar, and slutty female versions of men. I mean we all go through our college years of experimentation and partying, but that is a right of passage into adulthood! You get over yourself and be a woman afterwards.
So I guess my bottom line of this comment is, we are all just human and some of us are lucky enough to have the “IT FACTOR”. Kristen Stewart is one of those women who was born with the (It factor). Love her or hate her, she is going to be here for a very, very, long time!
I went and watched Clouds of Sils Maria the other day, in part due to this piece about Kristen Stewart – which I enjoyed a lot. I didn’t think the film was as hateful as some critics suggested at the time of release. Not that po-faced or self important – well, maybe a little. I thought Kristen Stewart was good. Overworked the specs just a little, and maybe that gesture she did a few times raising her arms – to suggest an overall tightness of being perhaps. The only thing is, that as good as Stewart was, Binoche was better. I don’t know if this had anything to do with Stewart’s efforts, but I don’t think I ever saw until now how good an actor Binoche is. Yes, she’s a bit creepy in apparently needing to be adored, and can be self-regarding too, but she’s also just very strong and impressive and natural. Maybe that’s it, maybe she’s just being herself always. Whatever, I was impressed. Am I right? Or do I have no real insight whatsoever into good versus bad acting? I think this is possibly a problem for me.