Kristen Stewart

• 1. Introduction

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  Kristen Stewart is an American actress and filmmaker who says she was never the child who dreamed of fame. She was not, in her words, the "I want to be famous, I want to be an actor" kid. Still, one small habit of celebrity came to her early. "I always practiced my autograph because I love pens," she recalled. "I'd write my name on everything." The girl who scribbled her name on everything would grow up to be one of the most talked-about faces in film. How does someone who never sought acting end up with a career that runs from blockbusters to arthouse dramas? Why would she walk away from enormous franchises for smaller, stranger projects? And what happens when a performer who has spent her life being watched starts to direct?

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• 2. A Valley Childhood

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  Kristen Jaymes Stewart was born in Los Angeles, California, on the 9th of April 1990. Her father, John Stewart, works as a stage manager and television producer. Her mother, Jules Mann-Stewart, is a script supervisor and filmmaker. Jules is a native of Maroochydore, Queensland, in Australia. She studied at the University of Sydney before moving to Hollywood at the age of 16.

  In 1953, Jules had been adopted in California by a Jewish couple, Norma and Ben Urman. In a November 2019 interview, Stewart said that a 23andMe DNA test had suggested she was roughly 24% Ashkenazi Jewish.

  Stewart has an older brother, Cameron B. Stewart, and two adopted brothers, Dana and Taylor. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley and attended local schools until the seventh grade. After that she continued by distance education until she finished high school. In 2012, her mother filed for divorce from John after 27 years of marriage.

  Because her family worked in entertainment without ever acting, Stewart assumed she would become a screenwriter or a director. Acting never crossed her mind. That changed when an agent watched an eight-year-old Stewart perform in her elementary school's Christmas play.

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• 3. Child Roles

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  After a year of auditions, Stewart landed her first part, a small nonspeaking role in the Disney Channel television film The Thirteenth Year. Her next film was The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, where she played the "ring toss girl." In 2001 she appeared in the independent film The Safety of Objects as the tomboy daughter of a troubled single mother, played by Patricia Clarkson.

  Panic Room, released in 2002 and directed by David Fincher, cast her as the tomboy, diabetic daughter of Jodie Foster's character. The role earned her a Young Artist Award nomination. In 2003 she played the daughter of the characters played by Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone in Cold Creek Manor, which brought another nomination.

  At fourteen, Stewart had her first starring role in the children's action-comedy Catch That Kid, opposite Max Thieriot and Corbin Bleu. That same year she played Lila in the thriller Undertow.

  Speak, a 2004 Lifetime and Showtime television film, was adapted from the novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. Stewart was thirteen when it was filmed. She played Melinda Sordino, a high school freshman who nearly stops speaking after being raped. The performance was widely praised, and The New York Times said, "Ms. Stewart creates a convincing character full of pain and turmoil."

  In Zathura: A Space Adventure, released in 2005, Stewart played Lisa Budwing, the irresponsible older sister of two little boys. A board game turns their house into a spacecraft hurtling through outer space. Critics liked the film, but her performance drew little attention, partly because her character is immobilized for most of it. Fierce People, directed by Griffin Dunne, followed in 2006, and then the lead role of Jess Solomon in the supernatural thriller The Messengers.

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• 4. Becoming Bella

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  On the 16th of November 2007, Summit Entertainment announced that Stewart would play Bella Swan in Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer's novel. Director Catherine Hardwicke had visited Stewart on the set of Adventureland for an informal screen test, and it captivated her. Robert Pattinson was cast as Edward Cullen, Bella's vampire boyfriend. Stewart described her approach to Bella as "capturing... that first awakening, that ownership of your body and desire."

  Twilight reached U.S. theaters in November 2008, and critics split sharply over her. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called her "the ideal casting choice." Claudia Puig of USA Today found her acting "wooden" and her expressions "blank."

  The sequel New Moon divided reviewers in the same way. Jordan Mintzer of Variety called Stewart "the heart and soul of the film." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that her "lonely-girl blues soon grow wearisome." Eclipse arrived in June 2010, and critics were warmer toward it than they had been toward the earlier films.

  Breaking Dawn - Part 1 opened on the 18th of November 2011. Dan Konis of The Village Voice said Stewart "beautifully underplays" the role. Part 2, released in November 2012, drew a mixed critical response but grossed $830 million worldwide, making it the 81st highest-grossing film. The whole Twilight Saga brought in $3.32 billion worldwide, placing it among the highest-grossing film franchises.

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• 5. Money and Magazines

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  In 2011, Forbes put Stewart at the top of its list of "Hollywood's Best Actors for the Buck." Vanity Fair ranked her the 13th highest-earning figure in entertainment that year, with an estimated $28.5 million from film roles. In 2012, Forbes named her the world's highest-paid actress, with total earnings of $34.5 million. She earned $12.5 million, including royalties, for each of the last two Twilight films.

  Fashion houses wanted her face as well. On the 13th of January 2012, she became the face of a new, still unnamed Balenciaga perfume, which was later promoted as Florabotanica. In 2014 the brand released a second fragrance, Rosabotanica, with Stewart still its face. On the 11th of December 2013, Chanel announced her as the new face of a Western-inspired fashion collection. Karl Lagerfeld shot the campaign, which was released online in May 2014.

  Her earnings slid as she turned to smaller films. Forbes ranked her third among actresses in 2013 with $22 million, then tenth in 2014 and ninth in 2015, with $12 million in each of those years. Her works have collectively grossed over $4 billion worldwide.

  The lists were not only about money. AskMen placed her seventh on its "Top 99 Women" list for 2013. Glamour UK named her best-dressed woman in 2012-2013 and 2016. In 2020, the Hollywood Critics Association gave her its Actress of the Decade Award. Lagerfeld also directed her in the 2015 short film Once and Forever, in which she played Coco Chanel.

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• 6. The Independent Turn

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  Greg Mottola's Adventureland, released in 2009 with Jesse Eisenberg as her co-star, gave Stewart some of her warmest reviews. James Berardinelli wrote that she makes her character Em "a fully realized woman." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called her "beautiful, enigmatic and very experienced." She next played rock star Joan Jett in The Runaways, directed by Floria Sigismondi. To prepare, she met with Jett and prerecorded songs in a studio. A. O. Scott of The New York Times said her performance "gives the movie its spine and soul." At the 63rd British Academy Film Awards in February 2010, she won the BAFTA Rising Star Award.

  Camp X-Ray premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on the 17th of January 2014. Stewart played a young soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "her best screen work to date." Clouds of Sils Maria, directed by Olivier Assayas, premiered at Cannes that same year, with Juliette Binoche and Chloe Grace Moretz beside her. Peter Debruge of Variety praised her as "the most compellingly watchable American actress of her generation."

  The performance won her the César Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was the first American actress nominated for a César in thirty years, and the second American winner after Adrien Brody, who took the Best Actor César in 2003. The Society and critics' circles in New York and Boston also honored the work, as did the National Society of Film Critics.

  She reunited with Assayas for Personal Shopper, a ghost story set in the fashion industry. In 2016 she also appeared in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women and Woody Allen's Cafe Society, her third film with Eisenberg. That year she became the youngest actress honored by the New York Film Festival.

  Seberg, directed by Benedict Andrews, premiered at the 76th Venice International Film Festival in August 2019, where she played the actress Jean Seberg. Reviews of the film were mixed, but Time magazine named her work the tenth best performance of 2019. She then returned to mainstream films with Charlie's Angels in 2019 and Underwater in 2020. On the 25th of November 2020 came Happiest Season, an LGBT holiday romance directed by Clea DuVall, with Mackenzie Davis.

  In June 2020, Stewart was announced as Diana, Princess of Wales, in Pablo Larrain's Spencer. To prepare, she worked with a dialect coach and studied Diana's posture. She described Diana as someone who "sticks out as a sparkly house on fire," and said she felt "more free and alive and able to move" in the role than in any earlier project. After its premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in September 2021, Jonathan Romney of Screen Daily called the portrayal "brittle, tender, sometimes playful and not a little uncanny." Stewart received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.

  She went on to play an investigator in Crimes of the Future, which premiered at Cannes in 2022. In 2024 she starred in Rose Glass's romantic thriller Love Lies Bleeding, and in Michael Angarano's road film Sacramento beside Angarano and Michael Cera.

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• 7. Behind the Camera

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  In May 2016, it was announced that Stewart would make her directorial debut with a short film for the female-focused digital publisher Refinery29. Come Swim, part of its ShatterBox Anthology, had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. That year she also coauthored a computer science preprint about using neural net techniques in making the short. She had already directed a music video, "Take Me To The South" by Sage + the Saints, in 2014, and she followed Come Swim with Chvrches' "Down Side of Me."

  The year 2017 also brought her first turn hosting Saturday Night Live, with Alessia Cara as the musical guest, and an invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2018 she sat on the jury for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In February 2023 she served as Jury President for the competition section of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival.

  Crickets, released on Netflix on the 30th of June 2020, was a short film that Stewart wrote and directed. It belonged to the anthology series Homemade, which gathered stories from 18 filmmakers around the world during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fabula, the production company of Pablo Larrain, co-produced it. In 2023 she directed The Film, a short and music video for Boygenius.

  The Chronology of Water is her feature directing debut, adapted from writer Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir. She wrote and produced it as well. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on the 16th of May 2025, and reviews were largely positive.

  Filming began in February 2025 on The Wrong Girls, in which she stars and which she co-wrote and produced. Another project, Flesh of the Gods, has her cast as Alex and also producing.

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• 8. Life Off Screen

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  In 2017, Stewart stated that she is bisexual, saying, "You're not confused if you're bisexual. It's not confusing at all. For me, it's quite the opposite." Two years later, she said she had been advised not to be affectionate with her girlfriend in public if she wanted mainstream roles. Her answer was, "I don't want to work with people like that." She identifies as a feminist, lives in Los Angeles, and has equinophobia, a fear of horses.

  Her first heartbreak, she said, was Anton Yelchin, whom she dated while filming Fierce People. She later dated her Speak co-star Michael Angarano from 2005 to early 2009. In mid-2009 she became romantically linked to Robert Pattinson, her Twilight co-star.

  In July 2012, photographs showed Stewart with Rupert Sanders, the director of Snow White and the Huntsman. The photos revealed an affair, and Sanders, who was 19 years older and married, apologized publicly, as did Stewart. The backlash took a heavy emotional toll. She later called it "a really traumatic period in my early 20s that kick-started something in me that was a bit more feral." She and Pattinson split, reconciled in October 2012, and broke up for good in May 2013.

  In mid-2013 she began dating visual effects producer Alicia Cargile. In the following years, she dated Soko, St. Vincent and model Stella Maxwell, whose relationship ended in late 2018. Since August 2019 she has been with screenwriter Dylan Meyer. Stewart said in November 2021 that they were engaged, and they married in an intimate ceremony in Los Angeles on the 20th of April 2025.

  Charity has been a steady thread. In 2012 she signed and donated her Breaking Dawn - Part 2 premiere dress to a CharityBuzz auction for the Robin Hood Foundation's Sandy Relief Fund. In 2016 she helped build a school in Nicaragua with the nonprofit buildOn. The following year she raised $500,000 for Hurricane Sandy relief by meeting an unnamed "Middle Eastern prince" for 15 minutes.

  In early 2026, Stewart said she had bought the Highland Theatre at 5604 N. Figueroa Street in Los Angeles's Highland Park neighborhood. The three-story movie and live theater closed in 2024, and she plans to re-open it.

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