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Kristen Stewart moves on from ‘Twilight’ with wary eye, few regrets

Actress Kristen Stewart says she’s “re­lieved” that the five-film se­ries is fi­nally over. “If I say I’m ex­cited the ex­pe­ri­ence is com­plete, it’s only be­cause I don’t have that re­spon­si­bil­ity weigh­ing on me any­more. A typ­i­cal movie, you’ve got a five-week or even five-month com­mit­ment. This was five years."

ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s been five years since Kris­ten Stew­art was plucked from sup­port­ing player/ in­die-film ob­scu­rity and thrust into the spot­light as the fe­male face of the Twi­light fran­chise. Five years … and as of this month, five films will have passed, as Stew­art grew from some­one the New York Times la­beled “a sylph with a watch­ful, some­times wary gaze” into the 22-year-old named by For­bes as “the high­est-paid ac­tress in Hol­ly­wood” — earn­ing some $34.5 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates.

“Those are pretty for­ma­tive years,” the Twi­light muse muses. “It is a lit­tle strange, if you think about it, grow­ing up on cam­era like this. But I don’t think about it.”

She can’t put her fin­ger on how she’s changed as an ac­tress, ei­ther.

“If noth­ing else, I should have got­ten bet­ter at pick­ing up and put­ting down a lot of my in­hi­bi­tions. It’s all about be­ing im­pul­sive and do­ing things that move you. I think I dropped a lot of fears over the course of these films. But I picked a few up, too. And those new fears could be in­ter­est­ing to watch down the road. Or not in­ter­est­ing at all.”

She is guarded, as some­one who has gath­ered the shrieks of teen-fan ap­proval, and the con­dem­na­tions of teen fans up­set when she was caught cheat­ing on her Twi­light co-star and off-cam­era beau, Robert Pat­tin­son. The “char­ac­ter­is­tic hes­i­tancy” that New York Daily News critic Eliz­a­beth Weitz­man noted in her act­ing is her off-cam­era per­sona as well.

But Stew­art, who apol­o­gized to fans over her in­dis­cre­tion and has ap­par­ently re­united with Pat­tin­son, is let­ting it all roll off her back — the fan snip­ing, the crit­i­cal spank­ing the Twi­light mov­ies have en­dured, be­ing the most widely im­per­son­ated ac­tress of her gen­er­a­tion, in hor­ror spoofs on TV and in mov­ies. (Then again, no­body im­per­son­ates Amanda Sey­fried.)

Her goal, Stew­art says, is to avoid be­com­ing a self-con­scious ac­tress, to keep the spon­ta­ne­ity in her work.

She says she didn’t re­al­ize the ex­tent that Twi­light would shake up her life, not even af­ter land­ing the role of Bella.

“There was no ex­pec­ta­tion that we would even get to fin­ish the whole se­ries when we did the first Twi­light,” she says. “On the set, it felt like we were mak­ing an­other in­de­pen­dent movie.” She and the rest of the cast had de­cided to be “re­li­giously faith­ful to the nov­els,” not know­ing how that might look and sound on the screen.

Then the cast made its fa­mous pre-re­lease 2008 ap­pear­ance at San Diego’s Comic-Con fan con­ven­tion, “and we were hit by this wave of en­ergy, that was re­ally baf­fling ... It was a to­tally con­ta­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, feed­ing on it­self. That hall, jammed with 6,000 peo­ple, re­act­ing that way, made me think ‘This is NOT nor­mal.’”

Five years later, it still isn’t.

Stew­art says she’s “re­lieved” that the five-film se­ries is fi­nally over. “If I say I’m ex­cited the ex­pe­ri­ence is com­plete, it’s only be­cause I don’t have that re­spon­si­bil­ity weigh­ing on me any­more. A typ­i­cal movie, you’ve got a five-week or even five-month com­mit­ment. This was five years. I’m go­ing to miss that ‘I won­der how the wed­ding will look,’ or ‘I won­der what I’ll have to do in the birth scene.’ Hope­fully, I will find that feel­ing in other proj­ects.”

Part of that feel­ing, she says, is the “tone, the vibe” of Twi­light.The films changed di­rec­tors and changed lo­ca­tions, but even just gath­er­ing for in­ter­views with the press in a ho­tel “gives it this Twi­light vibe — sur­real.”

But what will she not miss?

“Oh God, I will not miss hav­ing to be so ... per­fect. I mean, these vam­pires are just so ... per­fect. I won’t miss the con­tact lenses, and I don’t think any­body in the cast would dis­agree with me there. And the face paint! To look like mar­ble, we just cake this stuff on. I’m not sure that panned out, and I am more than happy to leave that be­hind.”