Oscar 2022: Kristen Stewart, the star of “Twilight” now nominated for Best Actress for “Spencer”

During the last decade, it is impossible to hear the name of Kristen Stewart without thinking about “twilight” (“Twilight”), the vampire and romance saga that immortalized the American actress with the role of Bella Swan and made her in the highest paid actress of 2012. But now the artist has a new opportunity to get out of this shadow and become known for another role, that of the Princess Diana of Walesa role for which she has been nominated for the prestigious category of Best Actress at the Oscar Awards 2022.

Stewart stars in “spencer”, a biographical film about the popular member of British royalty directed by the renowned Chilean director Paul Larrain (“Jackie”, “Neruda”) that recounts an important weekend in Diana’s life in the early 1990s in which she decided to end her relationship with Prince Charles. She is joined in the cast of the film by top-tier actors like Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins and Sean Harris.

In honor of Kristen Stewart’s first career Oscar nomination, we take a look back at her Hollywood career.

Born on April 9, 1990 in Los Angeles, California, Kristen Stewart had a childhood steeped in the Hollywood industry. Her father, John Stewart, is a television producer, while her mother, Jules Mann-Stewart, is a writer, script supervisor, and director. Her siblings, adopted and biological, are also involved in the entertainment industry.

Curiously, when Kristen was young, her aspiration was not to be an actress, but to be behind the scenes like the rest of her family. However, when she was young she realized that “I was very young to be a ‘grip’ (camera technicians) like my brothers, so I assumed I would act”, he pointed out in an interview for the book “The Art of Discovery” by Jeff Vespa. “It was my only option. The problem was getting a job. She was eight years old and she wasn’t very acting”.

This realization seemed to be prompted by her performance in a school play, which caught the attention of a talent scout. He contacted Stewart’s parents who, despite their apprehensions as industry insiders, decided to allow her daughter to start auditioning.

Thus, at the age of nine, Stewart had his first appearance in front of cameras, as part of the Disney Channel movie “The Thirteenth Year” (1999), a tape where a young man discovers that his biological mother is a mermaid. Kristen briefly appears in the film as a girl waiting in line..

An equally anonymous appearance made his big screen debut a year later with “The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas” (2000) as a girl playing hoops, although on this occasion you can’t even see her face.

But her real debut in the independent drama “The Safety of Objects” (2001) which allowed him to act alongside the veteran actress Glenn Close. In the film Kristen plays Sam Jennings, the daughter of a single mother who lives in a neighborhood interconnected by the pain of a tragedy. Although the film was not very well received by critics, the experience served to prepare the young performer for her upcoming auditions and reaffirm her desire to become an actress. “I thought ‘oh this isn’t just a cool job like my parents did, this is who I am.‘” the actress recalled.

A year later, Kristen Stewart gained further recognition by appearing in David Fincher’s thriller “panic room” (2002) as the character’s daughter Jodie Foster, a woman who has to fight a group of intruders in her home. The role earned first recognition for Stewart, who was nominated for Best Young Actress in a Motion Picture at the Young Artist Awards, but interestingly Foster – who was also a child star – She was not very convinced of her acting future.

As Kristen revealed to Australian magazine Stellar in 2019, “rI remember (Foster) thinking there was no way she was going to continue being an actress. (Jodie) said ‘you’re probably going to direct movies or go back to the studios’”.

Stewart doesn’t seem to hold a grudge against the actress and their relationship remains close. “I really love my job, but I understand why you thought that about me when I was a child. i love jodie“, Held. It is so in 2016, Kristen who gave a speech in tribute to Foster when she finally received her star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

It was at this ceremony that the actress pointed out the reason why she thought Kristen Stewart would not continue her acting career, noting that she “does not have the stereotypical personality” of the profession. The affection between the actresses appears to be mutual, with Foster defending Stewart from criticism in 2012 when her “affair” with filmmaker Rupert Sanders was revealed.

In the following years, Stewart continued to expand her repertoire, appearing in both independent films and Hollywood projects. Thus, between starring in indie films such as “Speak” (2004), “The Cake Eaters” (2007) and “The Yellow Handkerchief” (2008), Stewart also participated in films with multi-million dollar budgets such as the thriller “Cold Creek Manor” ( 2003) and “Zathura” (2005) – curiously Jon Favreau’s last project before “Iron Man” – and “into the wild” (2007). It was this film, directed by Sean Penn, that caught the attention of the director Catherine Hardwicke while preparing for a project titled “Twilight.”

Stewart’s participation in the aforementioned film is brief, playing Tracy Tatro, a young woman who falls in love with the protagonist Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), but is rejected for being underage. “She’s sitting in the trailer and she wants him, she wants to kiss him so badly, and I thought ‘I love that longing that this actress can communicate’”.

It is so after a face-to-face meeting between Stewart and Hardwicke, the actress won the role of Bella Cullen, the young teenager who, after moving to the American Northwest, finds herself as the object of affection of a handsome – although mythologically different – vampire named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson).

Almost 13 years after the release of “Twilight” it is difficult to describe the impact it had on audiences back then. Although critics gave the film a fairly cool reception, the film still grossed a then-unheard of nearly $700 million at the box office worldwide, becoming one of the few book-based franchises to be such a financial success – outside of of “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings” – and guaranteeing its continuity with sequels.

With fame also came extreme scrutiny for its stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, heightened further when both confirmed that the fictional romance had turned into a real one between their actors in mid-2009.

“I used to get frustrated by the fact that I didn’t jump at the chance to be the center of some attention, it seemed like I was a jerk”, the actress pointed out in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2019. “I am not rebellious. I am not a contreras. I just want people to like me”.

The ‘brightness’ of “Twilight” also served to hide other lesser-known projects that were better received, such as his comedy with Jesse Eisenberg “Adventureland” (2009), his biographical film “The Runaways” (2010) – whose performance as Joan Jett delighted the singer- and the drama “Welcome to the Rileys” (2010).

It is so from 2012, with the end of the saga already in theaters and with the disaster that was the film “Snow White and the Huntsman” in the rear view mirror, Stewart decided to focus more on smaller projects.

“I finally had a chance to be seen, not like this thing that the celebrity-obsessed culture said ‘oh, it’s that girl from ‘Twilight’“, Held.

Thus, after a year off, Kristen Stewart returned to work in 2014 with three independent projects that were finally celebrated: “Still Alice”, a drama starring Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin that deals with the struggle of an academic when she discovers that has Alzheimer’s; “Camp X-Ray”, a film about the Guantánamo detention center; Y “Clouds of Sils Maria”, a drama directed by Olivier Assayas about Maria (Juliette Binoche), a veteran actress facing her aging, with Stewart in the role of her assistant Valentina.

This last movie earned Kristen some of the best reviews of her career, as well as the prestigious César Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2015and can be considered his first step in rebuilding his post-“Twilight” career.

This does not mean that all his following projects were successful and among good tapes like “Certain Women” (2016) and “Personal shopper” (2016) also appeared in such flops as the comedy “American Ultra” (2015) and the war drama “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” (2016).

In 2017 she also began a new facet of her career, making her directorial debut with the short film “Come Swim” (2017). Additionally, since 2018 she has stated her intention to direct an adaptation of the book “The Chronology Of Water” to the big screen, fulfilling one of the predictions of Jodie Foster, also an actress turned director.

Seven years after the last “Twilight” movie, Kristen Stewart made her return to mainstream Hollywood starring in the latest reboot of “Charlie’s Angels” (2019) directed by Elizabeth Banks, which was a box office bomb. The same fate had her horror tape “underwater”, about a group of workers trapped at the bottom of the ocean who are terrorized by strange creatures. Better luck had his comedy “Happy Season”, which pleased critics (82% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and was saved from having to compete for the box office when it premiered on the Hulu streaming service. But none of these roles have had a fraction of the popularity that her role as Bella Swan did.

Now her great hope is in “Spencer”, a film that puts her in perhaps the most complicated role of her career, playing a figure as well known and beloved as Diana Spencer. But Larraín’s decision seems to have been the right one, and the specialized critics mostly praised Stewart’s performance as the troubled British princess in what was one of the most distressing moments of her life.

Stewart had in her favor that director Pablo Larraín already has experience showing stories of women close to powerful men, like his film “jackie” (2016), which shows first lady Jackie Kennedy – played by Natalie Portman – in the days after her husband John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Added to this is a script by the creator of “Peaky Blinders”, Steven Knight, and the participation of a solid cast of actors such as Jack Farthing, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins and Sean Harris. All these factors explain why the film resulted in an Oscar nomination for the actress in what can be interpreted as a new stage in her career.

Correction: This note originally came out in July 2021 with the announcement of the release of “Spencer”, but has been updated with information about Kristen Stewart’s Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category.