Kristen Stewart’s perceived lack of emotion has, rather ironically, been a punchline for quite some time. SNL skits, supercuts, and countless memes have relentlessly riffed on her outward stoicism — a reputation that’s proven difficult to shake. Less than a minute into her Late Night appearance just last month, her infrequent smiles were brought up yet again. Although Stewart and host Jimmy Fallon joked about her facial expressions, the actress revealed in a new interview that this negative reputation really does bother her. “When I hear that people are intimidated or they think that I’m reposed or unapproachable or something—I hate it,” she told Vanity Fair.
The 25-year-old spoke candidly to the magazine while promoting her latest role opposite Nicholas Hoult in Equals at the Toronto Film Festival. The sci-fi romance takes place in a futuristic utopia in which — fittingly — emotions have been eradicated. Speaking about the process of having to hold back her feels in the film, Kristen opened up about why doing so IRL sucks. “The hardest part was to stifle them,” she explained. “I’m an oversharer, so to keep things in is something I’m familiar with, but it’s just so ugly. I hate it. I hate the feeling.”
Banal press junket interviews — like Cara Delevingne’s viral turn on Good Morning Sacramento — have proven incubators for Stewart’s emotionless reputation. “Anybody who might perceive me as guarded in a given context — typically speaking, it would be a really superficial, fleeting interview that means nothing to me. Therefore, I cannot fully invest myself in it because it would be a lie,” Stewart said, later adding: “I have a really strong aversion to feeling subject to something that doesn’t feel real to me.”
But Stewart isn’t trying to win a popularity contest, or even enter one. With effectively no social media presence, she isn’t using Instagram to rebrand into an outwardly happier presence — she’s just keeping things real. “What I’m dying to do as an actor and as a person all the time is reveal myself because I want to get to know that. There’s this constant curiosity and desire to get down to it.”
Credits
Text Emily Manning