Kristen StewarAt the time of making Adventureland Kristen Stewar was just another young actress whom most people had never heard of. Then Twilight came out and changed all of that.
In that creepy romantic tale, based on a popular teen novel, she plays a high school student who falls truly, madly, deeply in love with a vampire. The movie grossed more than $370 million worldwide and propelled her to stardom. Stewart now finds herself on the cover of teen magazines answering questions about whether she’s romantically involved with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson (they’re just friends, she insists; her actual beau is actor Michael Angarano) and her style of dressing (“I’ve always had an aversion to looking sexy — it’s gross, you know,” she tells Nylon).
Stewart, who turns 19 on Thursday, showed up at the Sundance Film Festival swathed in layers to protect her from the chill and possibly from fans who would have a hard time recognizing her. She’s learning to deal with becoming suddenly famous, continuing to live with her family to keep things as normal as possible.
An advantage of fame is to be able to call attention to Adventureland, an independent film that screened at Sundance. It opened in theaters Friday.
“Well, that part is good,” Stewart says. “I want as many people as possible to see this movie.”
Kristen Stewar
There are no vampires in the sweet coming-of-age tale about a college graduate whose parents are forced to renege on their promise to send him to Europe because they’re broke. Jesse Eisenberg stars as the young man, who instead finds work at a decrepit amusement park. Stewart is a fellow employee, a confused rich girl who is far more sexually advanced than he is.
The co-stars share a couch at a house in Park City, giggling like the friends they became while making Adventureland. Eisenberg, 25, has been acting for 10 years but has yet to land that career-making role. He’s best known for a couple of indies: Roger Dodger and The Squid and the Whale.
He describes his character in Adventureland as “a smart guy who is saddled with a job that is beneath him intellectually. That is an important thing to do because there are a lot of smart people doing jobs that are beneath them.”
He describes his character in Adventureland as “a smart guy who is saddled with a job that is beneath him intellectually. That is an important thing to do because there are a lot of smart people doing jobs that are beneath them.”
He and Stewart both grew up around show business — though their experiences were quite different. Eisenberg’s mother is a professional clown who performed at children’s birthday parties in their hometown of New Brunswick, N.J., for 20 years. “She’d dress in white face and leave the family every weekend,” he recalls with a laugh. “If I ever wind up doing what she is doing I will, like, kill myself.”
Stewart’s father is a stage manager and TV producer who has worked for Fox. Her mother is a script supervisor in Hollywood.
“She works very closely with the director, so I got special treatment when I would visit her on set,” says Stewart, who was most excited to be on the Flintstones set when she was 5. “I knew about the process before I ever made a movie. I was just comfortable on a set. It is a very foreign place to be if you’re not used to it.”
In third grade, she sang a song at a school play. This being Southern California, someone in the film industry happened to be in the audience and called her parents about having her audition.
“My parents were nice enough to actually run it by me, I mean instead of just, like, hanging up. They were, like, ‘Do you want to do this?’ They were not very enthusiastic. They are realistic about the business. It is not a normal thing to be successful at it.”
Stewart landed an agent and by the seventh grade had dropped out of school and was taking correspondence courses to pursue a career full time. Before Twilight, her best-known role was as Jodie Foster’s moody daughter in Panic Room. Stewart has said Foster’s no-nonsense approach to moviemaking was a big influence on her.
Kristen Stewar
Stewart is a fan of The Squid and the Whale and was delighted to find out she would be playing opposite Eisenberg and that “they didn’t hire someone a little more obvious — like a young Brad Pitt.”
Teasing Stewart, Eisenberg tells her she will be allotted more than the usual 15 minutes of fame. Because a sequel to Twilight (The Twilight Saga: New Moon) is in the works, “You will get at least 30 minutes.”
There’s speculation on who will be tapped to direct Eclipse, the third film in the series. Stewart told Sci Fi Wire that she would be fine with Drew Barrymore, who has been prominently mentioned.
“Drew has been doing this her whole life,” she says, “and she’s pretty cool.”
Source :www.chron.com
