The Twilight movies may have made Kristen Stewart a worldwide star, but the California native recently opened up about how chaotic it was to film the blockbuster franchise in such a short time frame.
“We did it over a four-year period. We made five movies,” she said on the April 1 episode of the SmartLess podcast. “I have to say I felt like at the time that I could have redirected energy and become an academic, I was so hungry for more work because the Twilight series itself took forever.”
While reflecting on this period of her career, the Oscar nominee confessed that she struggled to find a balance at the time. “I wanted to make other movies at the same time so badly,” she told hosts Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes. “I just crashed and burned and barreled my way through those years and just was really … lacked any balance. I was just working constantly.”
As a solution, Stewart and her coworkers tried to squeeze in more projects whenever they could. “We all, if we were able to, tried to slam one in between,” she said. “That was why it was such a loaded period, because we were either promoting one of these movies, making one of these movies, or trying to shove in something that gave you some variation—not in terms of what it was for other people, but just so you could do something other than play that one part for fucking six years.”
During that time, Stewart sure stayed busy. Besides the five Twilight films, she also appeared in Adventureland (2009), The Runaways (2010), Welcome to the Rileys (2010), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and On the Road (2012).
That tireless work ethic has remained with her since the final Twilight film, Breaking Dawn — Part 2, premiered in 2012. Since wrapping up her time as saga protagonist Bella Swan, Stewart has veered further into indie movie territory, taking roles in films like Still Alice (2014), Certain Women (2016), Seberg (2019), and Spencer (2021), the last of which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, for her lead performance as Diana, Princess of Wales. However, Stewart has continued to dabble in blockbusters from time to time, like the 2019 remake of Charlie’s Angels or the sci-fi thriller Underwater (2020).
Joel is the editorial and social media assistant for HarpersBAZAAR.com, where he covers all things celebrity news. When he steps away from the keyboard, you can likely find him singing off-key at concerts, scavenging thrift stores for loud wardrobe staples, or perusing bookstores for the next great gay romance novel.