Not everyone can say they’ve seen their life story reflected back to them onscreen—and even fewer people can claim the experience of having said story adapted by an internationally famous actor. But that’s precisely what’s happened to author Lidia Yuknavitch, whose 2011 memoir The Chronology of Water formed the basis for Kristen Stewart’s celebrated directorial debut of the same name.
The film—which stars Imogen Poots as Yuknavitch and chronicles the author’s myriad experiences with sexual abuse, addiction, and competitive swimming, to say nothing of her profound coming-of-age as an artist—is out this week. Ahead of its release, Vogue spoke to Yuknavitch about giving Stewart room to create her own interpretation of the book, shifting gears between writing and painting, the kinship she feels with Stewart and Poots, and (spoiler!) why she still hasn’t seen the film.
Vogue: What does it feel like to see your book adapted into a film?
Lidia Yuknavitch: It’s pretty mind-blowing. I don’t really think of it the way that maybe other people do; I think Kristen made her own autonomous, rebel-yell art and my book was sort of a launching pad, or a kind of artistic inspiration, but what she made is all hers. It’s her art, and I could not be happier for her. I’m over the moon.
What was it like collaborating with Kristen?
Well, I wasn’t collaborating all that much. At the very beginning, she asked me a bunch of questions about people’s reactions or emotional intensities, and I would answer them, and she’d be like, “Cool,” and then I wouldn’t hear from her for a while. [Laughs.] I’d get another set of questions, and I’d answer them, and she’d be like, “Got it.” I think the collaboration was more of the heart and of a kind of sensibility that we share as unapologetic mammals who have something in their hearts and something in their guts and bodies that they have to find a form for. Maybe our deepest, most intimate collaboration just happens because we’re two women artists who found each other in the world, and if we don’t help each other, nobody else will.
What was your experience of seeing the film for the first time like?
You might not like this answer, but I actually haven’t seen it yet! It’s literally killing me that I have not seen it, so hopefully I’m not going to die. I’ve read interviews with Kristen and reviews and things like that, and people I know and love have seen it and eagerly sent me their impressions; plus, I kind of get her vibe, so I feel like I’ve seen it even though I haven’t. It’s still killing me, though, so the day I see it, everyone check on me and make sure I’m still alive.
Had you ever thought about who might play you in a movie prior to this experience?
Not really, because I’m an introvert. I’m wired non-neurotypically, so I don’t think about things like that, but when I see clips or images of Imogen, all the hairs on my body stand up; not because we can look like each other or anything like that, but just because I can see that she has an extraordinary ability to inhabit emotional intensity and a whole range. I can already tell that about her, and I suspect she’s an extraordinary person and clearly an extraordinary actress. I mean, she’s not playing me; she’s stepping into a story that, yeah, sure, it’s my version, because this stuff happened to me personally, but all women step into these stories. Our stories aren’t all the same, but the parts we’re supposed to keep clean and pretty and quiet have stuff underneath them, and she was willing to step into that. I don’t think about who would play me in a movie, but what I do think is, you know, Holy fuck, there’s a woman who is willing to step into the underneath-story and play it out.
What does work look like for you these days?
Well, I haven’t been writing for over a year because I have some personal life stuff going on, but hundreds of paintings are coming out of me, so I’m very curious about that. I’m having to talk to them and ask them what they’re about. Although last week, for the first time in a while, some novel stuff started coming out of me, so apparently I have the very, very beginnings of a novel going, and once they start coming, there’s nothing I can do about it.
When Jim Belushi was playing Ken Kesey — a literary giant gone to seed — in “The Chronology of Water,” he’d hear Kristen Stewart calling out from behind the camera with one consistent note.
“Drunker!” she’d yell.
And Belushi, who is nothing short of a revelation in Stewart’s feature directing debut, would adjust his register, finding the sadness drowning in a sea of booze and revealing the struggling family man hiding behind the prankster persona.
Stewart, whom Belushi describes as having “the mind of a writer, the heart of an actress, and the soul of a director,” created space for him to improvise, to breathe, to live inside Kesey’s skin.
Thank *** you didn't do some of my lesser known stuff because I couldn't remember.
“I studied Ken Kesey for three months,” Belushi says. “But I don’t do imitations. I can’t. My brother John was brilliant at it. I just try to get the essence.”
That essence, it turns out, is grief.
Belushi is one of two surviving members of a family of seven. The death of his brother — celebrated comedian John Belushi — of a drug overdose at 33 left a crater that took decades to navigate. When Stewart’s script — a meditation on survival and connection after unthinkable loss — landed on his desk, Belushi found himself in familiar territory. The story’s central line, “Nobody is big enough to hold what happens to us,” became his North Star.
“I forgave all my ex-wives,” he says, “because what happened to that character and Ken and what happened to me is so deeply sad and troubling that you resent people for not understanding.”
Belushi plays Kesey with a devastating tenderness, channeling personal grief into a performance so raw it feels less like acting and more like exorcism. Stewart created space for him to improvise, to breathe, to live inside Kesey’s skin.
“For me, there was no acting required,” Belushi says. “I just never felt more present and so connected.”
There’s a central paradox to Belushi’s career: He’s worked with Michael Mann, David Lynch, Woody Allen and Oliver Stone — yet somehow remains perpetually underestimated, even dismissed. He’s the guy from “According to Jim.” John’s little brother. The jokester who lands the punchline but never gets the chance to break your heart.
Until now.
Belushi not only gives one of the richest performances of his career in “The Chronology of Water,” but also steals scenes as a kindhearted small-time manager in Craig Brewer’s “Song Sung Blue,” which hits theaters on Christmas Day. What emerges in both roles is something Belushi has been chasing his entire career — what he calls “the magic.”
It’s that moment onstage or on camera when preparation dissolves into pure presence, when the audience connects with something ineffable in his performance. The irony isn’t lost on him that it took a 35-year-old first-time director to unlock what Hollywood’s been missing.
“I don’t know if they’re boxing me in as much as they just don’t understand me because I am kind of all over the place,” he reflects. “I’ve done some independent films where people went, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t realize you could do that.’”
But he’s done it all along. From his film debut in Mann’s “Thief” to “Salvador” with Stone to his delightfully unhinged work in Lynch’s “Twin Peaks,” Belushi has been delivering complexity in plain sight.
If “Chronology” is steeped in sorrow, “Song Sung Blue” gives Belushi a different emotional register — one tinged with gentleness and the hard-won peace of a man who’s survived the whiplash of showbiz cycles.
Now, finally, people are looking. And what they’re finding is an actor who never stopped believing in the craft, who studies for three months even for small parts, who understands that talent doesn’t diminish with age — it deepens.
“There’s this moment when you’re performing and you connect with the audience,” Belushi says. “It’s magic inside your body. And all I do is chase the magic.”
He’s reflective now, but not sentimental. He speaks openly about regret, and about the time it takes to heal.
“I wish my recovery time was a little quicker,” he admits. “You either fall apart or you find a way through it.”
His relationship with grief — his own and the pain others share with him — is almost pastoral. He says he still dreams of his brother frequently. “I have dreams once in a while where he and I are acting at Second City,” he shares. “We were on stage together, and he was so funny that I cracked up, eating the scene in front of everybody. I got so mad at him, because that’s the worst thing you can do, is break character, right? But he was just so funny, and he goes, ‘Ah, come on, kid!’ He was sweet to me. So, I still get little visits.”
Belushi says people have approached him for years, quietly confiding, I lost my brother too.
“They want to know what to do,” he says softly. “And I went, OK, I see. I see now. Some of my purpose is to help guide others.”
Kristen Stewart knew she wanted to be a director when she started her acting career at the age of nine. At 35, her feature directorial debut The Chronology of Water is out in the world, and now it’s up to audiences to digest, figure out how they connect with what she’s offering up, and sit with the experience. The story follows Lidia (Imogen Poots), a young woman in the 1980s who turns to competitive swimming to escape an abusive childhood. Throughout the years, Lidia explores sexuality and love, pushing the boundaries of addiction, and discovers her own voice while pouring her thoughts and feelings onto the page as a writer.
Stewart knew she wasn’t the actor to play Lidia, so she embarked on the process with Poots, whose performance she describes as “a revolution.” More than just director and actor, the duo were partners and collaborators in the creation of the art that they’re now sharing with others. It’s a process that excited Stewart so much that she is ready to jump back in and direct her next project as soon as possible.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Stewart discussed why she felt she had to bring the story of The Chronology of Water to the screen, feeling happy and lucky to get to do what she loves, how deeply she was inspired by Poots’ performance in the film, how she knew the film was ready to release into the world, her hope that she can direct again before returning to her next acting role (she already has a couple of those lined up too), her experience making Full Phil with filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, and believing she’s a better director than she is an actor. In addition, Stewart reveals her Prime Video series, The Challenger, where she will play astronaut Sally Ride, has been given the green light.
Collider: I’m going to be digesting this movie for a long time, so thank you for that.
KRISTEN STEWART: It is to be metabolized. Thank you for watching it and eating it.
I’ve talked to a lot of actors who have said that they wanted to direct, but that it had to be something they felt like they had to do. Why did you feel like you had to do this? What made you feel like it was something you could do?
STEWART: I don’t think that I could direct a plot-driven, straightforward story. The directors that I’ve loved working for ask and never answer questions. And this book really invites you to consume it and to make it a part of your own body and your own story. The shape of it so lends itself to a cinematic language. It’s a dream state. It exists in a synapse neurological experience, like the way that you recall your life, the way that your memories live in your body forever, the way that you have to reorganize and sort them out in order to know who you are. The fact that who you are is actually in your hands to define is something that takes an entire life to figure out. You never really arrive at a landing point. I read the book and I was just like, “This is an opportunity to make a movie about every girl.”
Despite the synopsis and the details of what happened to Lidia Yuknavitch, there is an atmospheric oppression. Language wasn’t even designed for us, the masculine and feminine. It’s a pretty crushing thing to hold. Our systems were designed to alienate us and to keep us quiet. And so, whether or not you’ve had the horrors of certain trespass, certain abuse, there are aspects in the film that are particular to Lidia, but I think if you take out the detail, it’s infused with this invitation to know yourself and to get to know yourself and to listen to your inner voice in order for you to survive. When I read it, I was like, “This is Tarkovsky, this is David Lynch, this is Lynne Ramsay. These are all the filmmakers that make poetry.” There’s nothing prescriptive about this movie, other than it just gives you a hand to step into self and understand that selfhood is fucking yours. I don’t think we’ve all been raised to believe that.
I don’t know what it’s like to be an actor who decides they want to direct. But as a dancer, I knew that I didn’t ever want to become a choreographer, much like I’m sure there are actors who are happy acting and never want to try their hand at directing. Did you get to a point in your acting career where you felt very driven by that desire and need to try directing, or was it something that felt like more of a gradual decision?
STEWART: I’ve wanted to direct movies since I was nine years old. I became an actor because you can’t direct movies at nine years old. The reciprocal relationship that you have with filmmakers that really do it for the right reasons, they’re stunning actors and they’re scene partners. When it’s the best, you’re mirrors of each other. I don’t find a huge distinction between image creation and being the image. I’m so obsessed with process, as an actor, I always want to know where the camera is. I always want to serve the perspective. I’m not somebody who loses myself and I don’t know where I am, and then they call cut and I go, “Oh, right, we’re on a movie set.” I’m on a movie set all the time. It did take this particular piece to break the seal, but now it will never take me another eight years to make one film. I think there are certain barriers and fallacies in place to keep the grandiose, really macho bravado thing that surrounds the director’s status. I’ve wanted to do this forever. I’m probably not supposed to curse in this, but I feel like a pig in shit. I’m just rolling around because I’m so happy and so lucky to be here.
I can’t imagine another description, so swear all you need. Had you ever thought about playing Lidia, or did it always feel like someone else needed to play her for you to direct this?
STEWART: I didn’t want to deprive myself of that relationship. I didn’t want to have it just with me. I didn’t want to scream into an echo chamber. I wanted to meet someone. When I met Imogen [Poots], I felt like I’d known her my entire life, like, “Where have you been my whole life?” We’re both 35. We’ve both been acting for such a long time. I wanted to place my hand on her solar plexus and be like, these inner inklings, these things that we have twisted ourselves into pretzels to avoid because they’re not palatable, or they’re not the way actors, actresses specifically, are supposed to be. You turn a certain age, you enter your mid 30s, and you suddenly can hear yourself in a new way, and I just didn’t want to do that alone. I wanted to see someone crack themselves open and figure out how to breathe together.
All of this sounds really conceptual, but it’s the only way that I can think about it. Mutual recognition allows you to exist, and that is art. Until you say something, until you vocalize something, it just stays within this cage. I really wanted to set someone on that path of self-discovery and be inspired by it. And also, texturally, I’m not right for the part. She’s this soulful, sensual, stunning woman. I’m like the sharpest arrow. I was not the right person for the part. She’s a genius. I think her performance is a fucking revolution, what she did with her body, how she expressed herself, her lack of vanity, how stunning she is in the movie. She plays 17 to 40, and you believe her the entire time. She has such immense integrity. I can’t believe what Imogen was able to do in this movie. It blows me away every time. I could watch it every day.
Had you ever shared that kind of experience with a filmmaker, yourself, as an actress? It seems like this is such a singular experience.
STEWART: I feel the same way. I’ve had incredible experiences with directors. Like I said, when it’s great, they’re scene partners. They become siblings to you. But this felt like a seminal chapter in our lives. We make a lot of movies. Imogen has made a lot of movies. She’s the best thing in every movie she’s in. No movie is ever made the same. The process must change in order to have an identity. This one felt like we were making life memories. This was like a chapter. More than a chapter, it was like a tentpole. It’s like a stake in the ground. When I look back, it’s so defining. I think that me and Imogen will be talking about this in 25 years like it was yesterday. I don’t know. We gave each other keys to our own creative castles, and now we get to live there. It’s such a gift, an unbelievable gift.
When you finished this and had the cut where you wanted it, did you know you were finished? Was that very clear to you? Did you have to have someone pry it out of your hands?
STEWART: Oh, interesting.
How were you with that?
STEWART: At some point, you just run out of time. It’s like, “Okay, the movie is done.” But I will say, I didn’t want to submit to any festivals. I was really tooth and nail, like a psycho animal, holding onto this thing and not showing any of my producers. I wouldn’t let anyone in the room. I was on such a bizarre, squirrely path, creating this jigsaw puzzle of emotional connectivity. There’s no plot in the movie. Sure, things happen. She’s a swimmer. She suffers at the hands of her father. But it’s really not about any of that. It’s about writing, and it is about reiterating, and it’s about style as well.
At some point, the movie stood up, and it had a name, and it had a face. I felt like it was ready to go to school without me. It was like having a kid and being like, “Okay, you have to go out into the world now. I think I’ve dressed you right, but you have to speak for yourself.” It started speaking for itself. I just went, “Oh, man, the sentence is over.” Basically, we threw this movie at the Cannes Film Festival and actually got in by the skin of our teeth. It was shocking because, a week prior, I was like, “Festivals don’t matter. Nothing matters. The movie doesn’t even need to come out. It just needs to exist.” And then, it did. We got very lucky and ended up at the best film festival in the entire world. I’m still like, “I can’t believe we’re here.”
Do you know what you want to direct next? I know you said you don’t want to take that many years to do another one, but do you know what it will be?
STEWART: I’m champing at the bit.
Do you have more than one possibility in mind?
STEWART: Three. There is one where expediency is baked into its ethos. It needs to be buoyant, and it needs to happen fast. There’s one where the whole thing is not laden. It’s about the barriers that keep people from making films and from telling stories and from being themselves in every capacity. Therefore, I think that one will probably go first. And then, there are a couple of others. I’m holding all these balloons in my hand, and I’m like, “I don’t know which one is going to float away, but I think it’s this one.” I can’t tell you about it yet. I’m so bad at this too. I’m always like, “Can I tell you the title?”
You also have Full Phil, which I find interesting because Quentin Dupieux, is a unique filmmaker. I’ve spoken to him a couple of times and I find him fascinating. He also seems to have a very unique approach to his work. What made you want to do that film and play that character? What was it like to work with someone like him?
STEWART: Okay, so he’s more impatient than I am. We’re both Aries. He’s this very tall, hulking, big baby, but a genius. It’s so hard to keep up with him. He gets bored, like that. His movies are so astute and precise, but there’s just nothing precious. If something’s not fun, he’s past it. The one that I did with him is dialogue loaded. As soon as you say something, he’s like, “Moving on.” And you’re like, “I don’t know, maybe I could do that better.” And he’s like, “No, I want it to be fresh. We’re done.” I’ve never seen a process [like that]. He edits his films, he holds the camera, he’s his own DP, he writes, he composes. He was born to do this. Working with Quentin, he works with the same actors, and I’m really hoping I might get to be one of those people that’s entered the circle because it is an incredible summer camp to be a part of. His crew is just so connected and so reverential and so loyal. It just feels like, if he asked me to jump off a balcony, I would have done it.
His work is so interesting. And after seeing this film (The Chronology of Water) and then learning that you were doing that film with him and knowing that you’re teamed up with Woody Harrelson in it, I just feel like I need to see whatever that is.
STEWART: Oh, cool. I’m so glad to hear that. I agree. When I heard about it, I was like, “Please, me?” Charlotte Le Bon is in it as well. She’s a filmmaker and she’s now my favorite actor. We shot the movie over two and a half weeks, but it feels like such an immense, seminal [experience]. It was a biggie. On my list of films that I’ve gotten to help make, that one sticks out like a really beautiful sore thumb.
Do you know what you’re going to be shooting next? Do you already have something lined up, as far as acting?
STEWART: Oh, gosh. I’m scared of that. The pressure and responsibility of being an actor is so much more intense than directing your own thing, because it’s yours. You know what I mean. I know exactly where I’m going. I’m down for things to get sullied by fate, because you always pick up the pieces and find new gifts of surprise and experience and whatever. But working for a director that you love and being like, “I don’t want to drop your ball,” and they’re constantly passing it to you. So, yes, there are a couple of things that I’m attached to, that I’m terrified of, but that I’m excited by. Flesh of the Gods and The Challenger are the ones that are percolating and potentially going to pop off. I really hope they do.
The Challenger has gotten a green light, which is huge. I’m shaking in my boots. But I get to play Sally Ride, and the story is incredible. The team is just so inspired and trustworthy. I think I’m in the safest hands, but you’re not an actor because you want to be safe. I really think I’m a better director. I don’t know. Acting is so scary. Even that question, I was like, “Oh, God, yeah, I am attached to a few things, I guess.” And I really want to make my next movie. I want to make it before I go back to work as an actor. I like answering the call, but I want to make the call. It’s so much more fun.
Imogen Poots has been thinking about a Sam Shepard quote: “People here have become the people they’re pretending to be.”
Those 10 words, from a poem in his “Motel Chronicles” collection, are kind of about her character in “Hedda,” the quietly courageous Thea. But they’re also kind of about everything. After 20 years of acting in movies, television and on the stage, Poots is having a clarifying moment. And Shepard’s words somehow get to the heart of it all: the disorienting paradox of attempting to work as an artist in a big industry like Hollywood and preserving your soul in the process.
“I was always clear about what I wanted to do professionally, if only I could get there, in independent cinema and theater,” Poots told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “But only in the last two years, something’s clicked.”
The 36-year-old English actor has always managed to elegantly navigate her way through the distracting noise of franchises and fame and find the types of interesting filmmakers, stories and projects she’d always dreamed of, working with the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Terrence Malick, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Imelda Staunton along the way.
But this year has been particularly special with three films that she’s enormously proud to be part of: sharing the screen with the great Nina Hoss in Nia DaCosta’s fiery“Hedda” (streaming on Prime Video), delving into the throes of an affair, with Brett Goldstein, in the romantic drama “All of You” (streaming on Apple TV) and giving herself over to what may just be remembered as a defining performance in Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water” (in theaters in Los Angeles and New York, nationwide on Jan. 9).
“You can make these films that simply don’t find their home, or don’t find the right home. And that can be quite devastating,” Poots said. “I feel really lucky that each of these projects found the place that understood what they had in their hands.”
Being in Kristen Stewart’s gaze
While all three films had independent spirits, it’s “The Chronology of Water” that was the biggest unknown — a daring and provocative adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir about escaping an abusive home, dashed dreams of competitive swimming and losing herself in sex, drugs and alcohol before finding her voice through writing.
“This person’s life is so rich with inconsistencies and successes and sabotage. She’s kind of like the weather,” Poots said. “It’s a very present film, despite the fact it’s about memory and reframing that. It really is about being completely present, sometimes too present, like egregiously present in proximity to someone’s life and someone’s body.”
The intensity of it required total trust in Stewart, an artist she’d only admired from a few degrees away until they decided to dive into the deep end together. Work didn’t stop at wrap, she said. It was always spilling out over texts and calls and videos. And it all just felt right, a creative collaboration like she’d never experienced before.
“The two of us only know how to do it this way, which is to completely hurl yourself into it,” Poots said. “The stakes were so high for one another. We didn’t want to let the other one down.”
Someone said something recently to Stewart that she found very illuminating: They never bring the baggage of knowing that Poots has been in other movies when watching her in something. It’s like they’re always meeting her anew.
“It’s because she’s not like an ‘actress,’” Stewart said. “She’s like giving you her life, and it’s full and it’s so generous … you never really know where it’s going to go because she’s, she’s not planning it. She’s genuinely trust falling.”
If there had been any hesitation, Stewart said, there’s no way it would have worked. On screen, Poots just feels alive. And that’s exactly what Stewart needed: a person who knows how to live life, unselfconsciously.
Poots finds it a little embarrassing, even pointless, to talk about the craft of acting. She winces when she hears words like “brave” tossed around about her performance. Is it, she wonders?
“It’s my body, it’s my voice. That does feel very exposing,” Poots said. “But at the same time, what are you going to do? Like, you have this one life. And one day, if I make it that far, I’ll be an old woman and I’ll be like, ‘It’s good that you did something that mattered to you.’”
At the film’s world premiere at Cannes earlier this year, both Stewart and Poots sat there shaking — vibrating for one another, wanting the other to soar.
“We really did something,” Poots said. “We did it together with every cell in our body.”
Staying authentic and finding her people
Acting in the film business is hard for all its myriad contradictions, and projects like “Chronology” and “Hedda” and “All of You” don’t come along every day. It demands a patience and self-awareness to understand what’s right for you and what’s not.
“It’s creative and it’s arbitrary in the one sense, and other ways it’s very, very specific and precise,” Poots said. “You’re fighting against this unknowable, very sort of shiftable force, which is trend. And you’re trying to stay authentic in the face of that.”
She thinks of someone like her friend Jesse Eisenberg appearing in a Superman film, and Stewart, who climbed out of “Twilight” and built a brilliant body of work despite that, and how good you have to be to go back to working with auteurs.
In the beginning of her career, she was happy to take the work where she could, to try new things, to throw paint at the wall, so to speak, and figure out what felt right and what didn’t. And she looks back on jobs that might not have been the best fit with empathy. It’s important to learn what you’re not happy doing, as well.
“It doesn’t matter if everyone around you is like, ‘But it should be fun,’ like, ‘Go to the party!’” she said. “You don’t have to do that, I don’t think. You don’t have to be that uncomfortable. You can find people where you’re on the same page.”
Now she has a resolve that only comes with experience.
“There are such amazing actors working today and such incredible directors. It’s very easy to just to sort of give in and be like, well, everyone else is doing that, so I guess I should. So you have to keep putting the gold into the other pot,” Poots said. “There’s too much potential not to be making original work. Underestimating audiences is a huge thing. They’re so much smarter and more imaginative than the system knows what to do with.”
Next up is a reunion with her “Green Room” director Jeremy Saulnier for a new film with Chase Sui Wonders and Cory Michael Smith. It felt like coming home, she said.
“I don’t know what the alternative is,” she said. “The alternative is to do something where it’s like, oh, they lit you and you look like a supermodel and you didn’t eat for 10 weeks and you made a picture that’s kind of innocuous but people will watch occasionally. That sounds like I’d rather do something else for a living.”
