New/old photo of Kristen shared by Adir Abergel

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Photo was taken in Cannes 2016 for the 'Cafe Society' press day.

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New/old photos of Kristen from the 'Cafe Society' press conference - 12 July 2016

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New/old photo of Kristen from Cannes 2016

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New/old fan photo of Kristen with Jesse Eisenberg on the 'Cafe Society' set in New York - October 2015

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Kristen on the cover of Sight and Sound magazine + new interview

  

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We will post the transcript of the interview if available online from their site.

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Kristen's interview with Total Film - March 2017

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The interview appears in Total Film (UK) March 2017 issue.

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Kristen's interview with the Daily Telegraph for 'Cafe Society' (Australia)

AFTER finding fame in the 2008 teen smash hit Twilight, you have moved on to some very adult roles. Was that deliberate?

I was psychically drawn to the projects. That’s when it feels the best: when there’s something gut-wrenching that needs to be explored. I’ve wanted to make movies since I was nine years old and you just know when there’s a through-line. You recognise that in other people and if you find the right story to tell, that’s what I’m drawn to.

Is there any common denominator between your roles?

Er… yeah, me! I’m really not a character actor. I know a lot of actors say they can hide behind characters and they can really step outside of themselves. I feel when I’m doing really stimulating, soul-fulfilling work is when I’m finding myself and not hiding. So I would say that there is probably a through-line… but I don’t usually step outside and analyse my career as a whole.

Café Society is your third film with actor Jesse Eisenberg, who has said in the past he was intimidated by you. Did you feel that?

Jesse is so smart. He used to intimidate me. But now there’s a warmth we share that allows me to keep up with him. It used to be debilitating. I used to be like, “I’m not going to try to be on your level,” and now we can really run together. But I don’t know… honestly, life really overwhelms him because of his intelligence. Situations are really over-stimulating for him. I think he’s one of those special minds. I have a nature that is really in stark contrast to his, so I think it trips him out.

Eisenberg also says you don’t care what others think of you. Is that true?

No! I deeply care what people think. I’m an actor: all I care about is being understood. All I want to do is convey myself. When I feel like I haven’t, it drives me crazy. If I feel like I haven’t done a good job – or if I’ve projected a weird, tainted version of myself because I feel insecure – I walk away from those situations being really regretful. So as I’ve gotten older I think, “You’re not going to be happy unless you breathe through this and stay completely yourself.” At the end of the day, you can own that; but what you don’t want to own is saying things you don’t mean and trying to be something you’re not.

What made you want to play Vonnie in Café Society?

I love Vonnie because she also functions from an incredibly pure, sort of shameless place. Especially within that era [the film is set in the 1930s], Vonnie does things that are unconventional. There is something so present about her and something genuinely happy. She really enjoys life and that is contagious as hell.

You worked with writer and director Woody Allen on this film. What is your favourite movie of his?

Annie Hall. I know it’s obvious, but it is my favourite. The first time I saw Annie Hall, it was on an airplane, which is really messed up. It was Air France, and they have good movies on there. I said, “Wow, I’ve never seen that.” And my publicist – who is one of my best friends, I’ve known her for years and years – said, “Watch it now!”

So what’s next – a blockbusting superhero movie?

I didn’t really grow up on comic books but I love big movies, I like the effect of them. I like sharing things on that level.

Do you enjoy the glamorous side of the industry, such as having a stylist and walking the red carpet?

Nobody can style themselves because we have jobs to do. We’re working on other things. I have a really open and involved collaboration with my stylist. I’m not remotely dressed by someone. But she’s known me for so many years. I’ve been working with her since I was 13, so she can highlight who I am, rather than make me something else.

So you’ve never stepped out wearing something you don’t like?

I feel like I dress myself, but there’s no way I could do that alone, because I don’t have time to scour the world for the pieces. There’s a lot of material and clothes out there. Also, I’m into it. I fall into the category of someone who is genuinely attracted to fashion because it is the shiny thing… I’m like a moth to a flame. And that’s purely animalistic. It’s not attention-seeking. I find it pretty.

Do you have a massive wardrobe at home?

I have a lot of sneakers! I’m really sneaker-obsessed. But, no, not really. All this stuff we wear is being lent to us. I try to keep little pieces that feel like mine, but I don’t have that much stuff.

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Audio: Kristen's interview w/ Josh Horowitz on his 'Happy Sad Confused' Podcast

OR LISTEN or download the episode via iTunes here.

Thanks to Korita05 for the YT.

New/old interview for 'Cafe Society' with Kino TV

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Video: Jesse Eisenberg talks 'Cafe Society' and mentions Kristen w/ MTV UK

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Video: Jesse Eisenberg talks about working with Kristen

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Video: Kristen's full interview with Dan Wootton from Cannes for 'Cafe Society' (ITV)

This is the full interview with Dan Wootton from Cannes. Extract from this interview was previously posted here.

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Video: Jesse Eisenberg talks 'Cafe Society' and mentions Kristen w/ This Morning

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Kristen's interview with the Irish Examiner from Cannes

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Brogen Hayes In today's Irish Examiner, I talk to #kristenstewart about #cafesociety and her reinventing her career after #twilightsaga!

Kristen Stewart has emerged from teen queen status to star of the indie circuit. So how has she done it, asks Brogen Hayes.

Girl reinvented...

With two films premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — Woody Allen’s Café Society (released next week) and Oliver Assayas’ Personal Shopper — it is hard to deny that Kristen Stewart is an actress who is going from strength to strength.

Spending time in the south of France presenting work that she loves seems to be an experience that Stewart revels in — “It just feels so genuine here,” she gushes when asked about the festival — but just how good is it to be Kristen Stewart right now?

In the four years since the Twilight series ended, Stewart has pulled off something incredible, and reinvented herself from teen queen to indie darling.

Sitting down in the glamorous Carlton hotel in Cannes with the newly blonde actress feels like a typical Cannes experience; fans are camped outside the hotel to catch a glimpse of the former Twilight star, while inside, wearing a leather jacket that feels entirely too big for her petite frame, Stewart talks passionately and intimately about working with Woody Allen on Café Society, a film which she — even as one of the most famous faces in the world — had to audition for.

Kristen Stewart stars in ‘Café Society’ with Jesse Eisenberg. Stewart praises her co-star for making her feel comfortable on set.

“I really appreciate auditioning for something,” she says, “because it kind of gives you a confidence, not only that you can do it but just that it’s the right fit with the director.”

Stewart’s character in Café Society, a young woman named Vonnie who finds herself torn between love with a man close to her own age (Jesse Eisenberg) and an older man who can give her security (Steve Carell), is a departure for Stewart.

This is not the first period film that the actress has starred in, nor is it the first time she has played a character caught up in a love triangle, but Vonnie feels very different from the elfin, talkative woman sitting across the table, something that Stewart herself acknowledges.

“Her mannerisms and demeanour are more outside my immediate go-to personality traits. I am far from a character actor, so everything I have done, including this… Vonnie was definitely in there somewhere. I wasn’t faking it.”

It certainly doesn’t feel as though Stewart is faking it, with Vonnie as luminous and enchanting as a woman caught between two lovers should be.

Perhaps this is down to Stewart reteaming with Jesse Eisenberg for Café Society – their previous films together being Adventureland’ in 2009 and last year’s American Ultra — and finding confidence in working with someone she knows.

“I feel genuinely like I could mess everything up and fall on my face and just be an idiot around him, and it’s still not embarrassing. Therefore I could really play someone who was light and buoyant and fun. My immediate defences are hard, and with him I don’t have them.”

Playing Bella Swan in the Twilight franchise may have been the cinematic phenomenon that launched Stewart’s career back in 2008, but the superstar fame that came with the wildly successful teen vampire flicks is obviously something the actress still struggles with.

“My interaction with fame has been that it’s put me in a place where I can work as often as I do. 

"I am so unbelievably stimulated all the time, I wouldn’t trade it, but I think its fairly obvious that there’s the nuisance of not being able to walk around and having people already think they know you before they do, and having to rectify that with every single interaction.”

It’s not just the hair cut and colour that has moved Stewart away from her most famous character though.

Last year, she made history as the first American actress to win the French national film award, the César, for her work with Olivier Assayas on Clouds of Sils Maria, something that still seems to excite her.

“It’s crazy,” Stewart says, when asked how winning such an award made her feel.

“I look at other actors that have had a place here and they are all people that I identify with and idolise and look up to, so it’s a good group to be a part of.

“It makes sense; American filmmakers that I like do what they do for the same reasons as French filmmakers and more European filmmakers do. 

"It’s just that there is more risk taken here and it’s not about making a bunch of money all the time; it genuinely is just about desire. 

"You feel that, it’s so strong, it’s so obvious and the fact that there is a little place for me in that, it makes sense to me, but I am also so proud. It’s awesome.”

When she talks, it is very clear Stewart is a woman who has found her passion. Her jacket zips rattling as she gesticulates while talking, Stewart is a person who seems to think about life very deeply.

She is aware that her experience with acting and celebrity is one that not everyone has, while also being aware that two people who work in the public eye have different dealings with fame.

When asked whether Woody Allen was able to give her insight into how to deal with being constantly in the public eye, Stewart is immediately aware that she and the director come at fame from different angles.

“He was famous in a very different time” she says, referring to the fact that Allen’s career now spans more than six decades.

“We have had entirely different experiences with fame and the way we consume the reality show that is the entertainment industry. 

"It has turned into something that it never was and I have been cast as a character that is fully developed by everyone but me, and I have a part in that, for sure.

“People’s impressions of me are not wrong, you can have a cumulative impression of me based on pictures or movies or interviews or whatever, and that is not wrong; that is a genuine impression of me that’s totally subjective.”

Always aware that she is dealing with the public, Stewart is quick to qualify her statement, saying: “It’s different. But it’s still worth it, but it’s not so simple.”

The good must outweigh the bad, however, as Stewart shows no signs of stepping out of the limelight any time soon.

As well as acting in Café Society and Personal Shopper, Stewart has also moved into the world of directing; she helmed a music video for Sage + The Saints in 2014, and is in the process of shooting a short film.

Working with digital publisher Refinery29, Stewart’s film is titled Water. [We now know it's called "Come Swim."] 

Details are scarce on the project at the moment, and the actress is keeping mum.

“I’d rather not talk about what it is about, it’s very short so I’d rather have it speak for itself.” 

What we do know is that Refinery29 have commissioned 12 female directors, writers, and animators to create work around the theme of power dynamics, and Stewart’s project is one of these films.

Stepping behind the camera is not a new passion however, and hearing the actress talk so passionately about this new turn in her career, it is clear that director is a role she intends to explore.

“I have been wanting to make movies since I was a tiny little kid, since I was like 9 years old, and I was introduced to this environment that was so holy, in this weird way. 

"The energy that’s put into a project when its done right is so precious, it’s as if everyone’s holding together this really breakable little object.

“I have followed people down roads that are so worthwhile, and so whole and I want to be the catalyst for that; I want to be responsible for it.”

As our time runs out Stewart is effulgent about the Cannes experience: “I love festivals, but this is the best one. Having two movies with people that I really dig so much is just really cathartic and nothing but awesome”.

Nothing but awesome.

It really is a good time to be Kristen Stewart.

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Note: Some quotes are similar, if not the same, to other interviews from Cannes.

Interview with the Irish Times

More than a few writers give the impression that it requires a leap of faith to admire Kristen Stewart. A war is, it seems, still being fought with the 15-year-old male idiots who reviled the Twilight films because they were “girls’ stuff”. There is a sense of critics patting themselves on their backs for their open-mindedness.

You get little such qualification in France. At 26, Stewart is already a stalwart of the red carpet at Cannes. She stormed the Palais with On the Road in 2012 and Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria in 2014. Last May, she was back with Woody Allen’s Café Society, which opened the event, and Assayas’s Personal Shopper, which won the best director prize.

The French love her like they love cheese. That long face and those arched eyebrows summon up the very American cool of Elvis. But the on-screen insouciance would have suited the Nouvelle Vague nicely. In 2015, the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma presented her with the best supporting actress César award for Clouds of Sils Maria. She is the first American actress ever to win the French equivalent of the Oscar.

As we arrive at the Carlton Hotel – the grandest establishment on Cannes’s bossy Croisette – French magazines featuring her image are scattered on every enormous cushion.

“All my favourite directors I have worked with in the States are like European directors. The list of actors that have found a place here from the States are all people I idolise. So it’s great to be on that list. There is just a risk that’s taken here that stands out. That doesn’t happen so much in the States. It’s obvious why that would be cool.”

You would expect Stewart to be smart. Like her co-star Robert Pattinson, she used the massive success of Twilight to manoeuvre her way into interesting work by interesting directors. By 2010, she was squaring up to James Gandolfini in Welcome to the Rileys. She and Assayas, one of France’s most fashionable film-makers, seem to have formed a dynamic partnership.

What you might not expect is the amount of energy she spits out. There is no sense of the creative introversion she’s exploited throughout her career. Stewart hits her consonants vigorously while firing through answers as if working to an ever-contracting deadline.

So, does she recognise that she’s made an unlikely shift from teen vampire to art-house vamp?

“When I am asked questions like that I can step outside myself and say, ‘Yes, I can totally see what you guys see’. But I have brought the same energy to everything I’ve done from the get. I have thoughtlessly traversed my creative desires.

“That’s just how I fell off the truck. As I have got older I have realised how working with good directors provides good experiences and good films. But I feel like something psychic happens between people who are drawn together to make something. I have so much faith in that.”

Sullen millennial

Actually, “vamp” is neither fair nor accurate. Raised in California to parents who were both in the business, Stewart slipped into juvenile roles largely by accident. You can spot her in a number of TV projects and as Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room. Still, she was unknown to most viewers when she emerged as the sullen millennial forced to wait for vampiric consummation in Twilight.

Woody Allen recently compared her to the young Elizabeth Taylor, but, in truth, no other female star has had quite the same oblique, reticent appeal. “Did he say that? I think that’s what his reference points are,” she says laughing. “Those are the people he really admires. That’s nice of him. It’s insane. It’s very cool. I know he admired all the great old Hollywood actresses. We talked about that a lot and you can see it in his movies.”

Dressed today in a great deal of white, Stewart manages an unlikely combination of post-beatnik cool and gleaming Californian good health. You can see why so many idealise K-Stew.

Her career appears to demonstrate that a young actor can triumph without indulging in triumphalism.

She has also proved that it is possible to live a life in the glare without seeming hounded or constrained. She recently confirmed that, following several relationships with men, she was dating visual-effects producer Alicia Cargile. Few got in a tizzy. No cars were overturned.

“Yeah I don’t want to be too guarded,” she says brightly. “Look I got really, exceedingly famous at 17. At that age you don’t know how to react with more than a couple of people. You are already trying to figure out what people’s perceptions of you are without all that.

“Can I affect all that? Should I think about all that? When it is thrust at you and that consideration is owned by the masses – not just by you and the people close to you – it starts this weird unnatural thought process. So, I really shut down and that doesn’t provide a fully lived life.”

In Café Society, Stewart plays a young woman, assistant to a movie mogul, who romances a young arrival (her frequent collaborator Jesse Eisenberg) in an idealised version of 1930s Hollywood.

Actors bring contrasting reports from Allen sets. Some say he gives barely any direction. Others say he gives no direction at all.

“The script was so perfect that the most direction we got from him was: ‘This is pretty self-explanatory. Go on.’ And it was self-explanatory,” she says.

“It is all explained quite well. Olivier doesn’t talk to me a whole lot either. There are directors who are themselves the spark and they then like to see the fire burn. They are both like that. They don’t like to affect your thought process that much. What they’ve done is kick-start that process and they just want to capture it. That is awesome. You do feel that it’s a true collaboration. That was shocking to me.”

Stewart is currently playing the game very adeptly. Café Society has been reasonably well received. The forthcoming Personal Shopper, a class of meta-ghost story set in suave Paris, had, from an actor’s perspective, the best possible response at Cannes: bovine boos followed by egg-head raves. Later this year, she appears in Ang Lee’s much-anticipated Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

Psychic connection

So, she is sticking with this notion of forging a “psychic connection” with directors? “I have so much faith in that. I will always follow that. I will definitely make a few missteps and maybe make a few bad movies. I will make things that aren’t so sure. That’s why I like making films with people who have reckless intentions.”

Is it too much to argue that Stewart is a new sort of movie star? Charlotte Rampling meandered off to Europe when still young, but she never had the following that Stewart has maintained.

This relaxed engagement with the media also seems new. “There are ways to interact with media. And there are ways to interact with the public,” she says. “Beyond that, there are ways to interact with human beings. These are different things. I have found balance of ignoring the things I find worthless and letting in the stuff that feels human. It’s to do with being honest and acknowledging why someone might ask that question.”

She rises to her feet and prepares to leave.

“So, go write your article.”

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Kristen's interview in Total Film Magazine (UK)

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Video: Kristen's interview with Kjersti Flaa for "Cafe Society"

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Kristen's Interview with S Moda (El Pais, Spain)

Kristen Stewart smiles again

She just dyed her hair blonde and plays a bright woman in the latest Woody Allen film. The actress wants to end the mysterious aura that surrounds and conditions her. Will she achieve it?

To Woody Allen the Twilight actress seems young, bright and seductive. Far from the darkness and mystery that surrounds her, that's how he sees her in his new film, Cafe Society. However, Kristen Stewart (Los Angeles, 1990) cannot escape form the label international independent film queen. Proved by, among others, the fact of having been the first American artist to win a French Cesar, in the latest Cannes Film Festival. But Allen and the second film she has shoot with Olivier Assayas, Personal Shopper, are intended to be her definitive reinvention. Stewart, who began working in Hollywood at nine, has learned to speak honestly, even though shyness still shows up in her non-verbal language she can't stop moving her legs, plays with her rings and hardly look into the eyes. But, yes, she answers bluntly.

Cafe Society is your third film with Jesse Eisenberg. Is he your fetish actor?

Yes, indeed, we had just finished American Ultra, when we started with Woody Allen. I didn't have time to miss him. Jesse and I are friends. We have our own language, conversations that most people will not be interested in because we are too analytical, dark, esoteric...Also, in Cafe Society I play a seductive and vulnerable woman, and with him I was not ashamed. Jesse is easy, there are only a few people with whom I feel so comfortable.

You have said that the most curious parts are those that teach you something about yourself. What did you learn this time?

I thought about the different types of love. It was liberating and revealing. I admire the ability of my character to value time and hang onto it. Parts like this open your mind.

Woody Allen has said that when he saw you he imagines you as "a young woman with white socks living in the countryside".

In the audition he said to me, "I think you're a great actress, you would be perfect for the role, it will be fine if you get this cheerful quality outside. I need to see that you can be funny, spontaneous, impulsive...The film will only work if you are captivating:. I auditioned, a cold reading, and left convinced that he will not call me. But he called.

At Sundance, after Certain Women was screened, you spoke out on women situation in Hollywood.

The only way to change something is talking about it and making decisions to launch women into a position of power. Although, the more you talk, the more you move away from yourself. I shouldn't celebrate "how well women were doing in Sundance". I should talked about the film.

You convey the image of a strong woman. Are you?

I am concerned about people having a wrong impression of me. Sometimes it's kind of like a comic book that has been sold. It is a false story that has been fueled by an industry that is obsessed with money.

Are you still affected when you read things about yourself?

It used to affect me. Now I look to the other side.

Your character in Cafe Society says she would rather be a normal size person, be a good actress rather than see her face on huge posters.

I don't think celebrities are huge anymore. We have been stripped down. Hollywood used to be dazzling and almost untouchable. The stars were on another level. But it is obvious that we are fragile now.

Is that good?

Yes it is. Yellow press sometimes tells truths; others the don't. But you have to focus on what matters to you, because there is enough stupidity in the world.

Source Translation thanks @Uchiland

Video: Kristen, Blake and Parker Posey's interview with IMDB for 'Cafe Society'

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Kristen's interview w/ the Sydney Morning Herald + Olivier Assayas talks about her

In an age of celebrity narratives, the Kristen Stewart story has proved to be an enduring best-seller. Call up Kristen Stewart on Google right now and there is a string of little "news" items with pictures of her holding hands with women in public, with accompanying texts saying she just doesn't care any more, she's going to be just who she wants.

Clearly, that does not include being a person who can ever walk to the corner shop without being bothered. Woody Allen, who directed her in his new film Cafe Society, jokes in Cannes that he can't stand hearing actors "kvetching about privacy and paparazzi" because nobody should complain about being able to get a good table in a restaurant. Next day, Stewart snaps back.

"He's 80 years old. He was famous in a very different time," she says sharply. "We have entirely different answers to that question because we have had entirely different experiences with fame and the way we consume the reality show that is the entertainment industry. It's been turned into something that it never was and I've been cast as a character that is fully developed by everyone but me. And I have a part in that, for sure.

"People's impressions of me are not wrong; you can have a cumulative impression of me based on pictures or interviews or movies or whatever and that is not wrong. That is, you know, a genuine impression of me. But you cannot deny that the booming industry that motivates these stories is not about anything but money."

A moment's break, please, to consider Woody Allen's recent experience of notoriety: whatever he has or hasn't done, fame hasn't exactly been a picnic in the park for him, either. Stewart, however, shoots from the hip; actually, it's the way she talks about fame that marks her out as a new breed of celebrity, perhaps the only example of that breed, who is indeed who she wants to be and says what she wants to say. Even more remarkably, she has become that person while under the spotlight. There was nowhere else to do it; her Twilight years began almost a decade ago, but she is still only 26.

Not that her relationship with fame was ever comfortable. Stewart was not a confident teenager; she says now that she suffered from crippling anxiety. "I don't mean in relation to any pressures of my job. Just when you lay your head down at night on the pillow you are thinking, 'What's going to happen? Do I have any control over it?' And contending with having a physical self and not being able to get away from that, the relentlessness of having a mind as well, not having a break from that. It is really overwhelming."

Now that she says it, you remember how she used to look as if she was trying to escape from her own skin. There is a bit of footage somewhere on YouTube where she is on stage promoting The Runaways with her co-star Dakota Fanning; while Fanning is cool and almost uncannily poised, as if she had been born to stand on podiums, Stewart – who has been acting since she was nine years old, so actually was pretty much born to it – wriggles uncomfortably, as if she has crumbs under her clothes. She doesn't wriggle now.

And whereas she used to be hesitant and snippy in interviews, she no longer shares the common actors' view that doing publicity is the penalty you pay for creative rewards. "When you are staying true to yourself and true to your art there isn't a dark side, because there is not one question that can throw you if you are coming from a very honest place," she says. "I think what used to alienate me and make me feel put on the spot now, actually just alienates the person asking. Because we just don't share the same values so I don't care about that person. And so it doesn't affect me."

Her film choices since Twilight went dark show the same gritty determination to plough her own furrow. At the Cannes Film Festival, we meet to discuss her roles in Cafe Society and in Personal Shopper, a kind of cerebral ghost story by French director Olivier Assayas, who will go on to win the festival's prize as best director. Other recent films have included the misfiring thriller American Ultra and the much stranger, oddly intriguing Equals, where she played an apparatchik in a world where emotions are forbidden.

We have yet to see her in Certain Women, which along with Personal Shopper is showing in this year's Melbourne International Film Festival. It is directed by Meek's Cutoff director Kelly Reichardt and stars Stewart as a young lawyer in the Midwest who strikes up a relationship with a lonely woman ranch hand. In Ang Lee's forthcoming Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, she plays the wife of a damaged Iraq War veteran [this is an error, as we know she plays his sister]; next up, she is supposed to be making a film about the murderer Lizzie Borden. It's all interesting stuff, with none of it – with the possible exception of the Ang Lee – likely to set cash registers jangling. That isn't Stewart's concern.

Admittedly, Cafe Society is classic Allen: a romantic comedy set in Hollywood's heyday, where the art deco houses look like sets from The Gay Divorcee and glamorous people drink martinis until dawn. Stewart plays Vonnie, a sunnily free-spirited agent's assistant who befriends an awkward naif – the usual Allen alter-ego, played here by Jesse Eisenberg – who falls hopelessly in love with her.

"Vonnie's mannerisms and demeanour are pretty outside my immediate personality traits," says Stewart, "but I don't feel like I'm that far from the character … I think for a story that's told in the context of that era, it is really forward and really cool and really modern that she can really indulge in unconventional relationships and not feel bad about it. How do I relate to that? In so many ways, I think we can all relate to that."

That Stewart should leap at the opportunity to work with Allen and her old pal Eisenberg is not so surprising; what is more surprising is that she auditioned for the part, putting herself on tape and presenting for a full read.

"I really appreciate auditioning for something," she says. "It just sort of validates your place in film, rather than the obvious, 'OK, I can get your movie some money'. It's so hard to get a movie made; if filmmakers have to alter their choices in order to do that … well, it happens a lot. I don't want to be that altered choice."

Personal Shopper is the second film she has made with French director Olivier Assayas; she had already auditioned, in a sense, playing Juliette Binoche's personal assistant in Clouds of Sils Maria.

"I think that, right now, Kristen is one of the most exciting actresses," says Assayas. "I'm not sure where her boundaries are. When I made Clouds of Sils Maria with her, that part was not written for her and it was kind of a one-dimensional character. I was kind of frustrated because I kept thinking, 'Oh my God, I can push her further and further – and one day I should try'. Personal Shopper is my shot at that. And I still don't see where she stops."

Assayas is well-known in France for making complex dramas in which personal stories and political contexts play against each other. In Personal Shopper, he uses the vocabulary of horror movies – ghosts, dark corridors, quivering music – to explore bereavement. Stewart's Maureen – whose job shopping for busy rich people gives the film its name – is grieving for her dead twin brother at a point where she believes she starts to see his ghost. Then she starts receiving texts, seemingly from the beyond.

For much of the film Stewart is alone on screen, waiting for signs and wrestling with her own hope, fear and lingering scepticism.

"What Kristen had to do was incredibly complex, because she had to invent her own pacing and her own dynamics and I can't really help her with that," says Assayas. "When it's a dialogue scene, I can cut. I can accelerate, I can extend, I can fix it. Here a lot of the scenes were totally dependent on her own defining of the truthfulness of every action."

Both these characters – all her characters – come from somewhere near Stewart's surface. "That's kind of the goal," she says. "I know a lot of actors like to hide behind characters so they can explore subjects more freely, but I feel the opposite of that. I feel as soon as I feel revealed and visible, that is when I am actually conveying something worthwhile. Vonnie was definitely in there somewhere: I wasn't faking it."

Maureen in Personal Shopper was closer to home; she recalled Stewart's own past anxieties.

"I play somebody who is flitting back and forth between being someone so stuck in her own head, so shut down, that she can't be remotely physical; she's so stifled and debilitated by those thoughts that her body literally atrophies. I know that feeling. And I know how to stop it from ruining your life. So when I looked at Maureen I really felt for her and I wanted to press fast forward, because I know that while it lasts longer for some people, it's kind of temporary. I think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for her and at some point she is just going to say, 'God, I really fell into a hole there!'."

Maureen has another side, however, expressed in shopping. Assayas says he chose to make the character a shopper because he wanted to make a film about "a very modern character". Of course, as Stewart acknowledges, there is some fun to be had in casting her in these roles – as an actor's PA in Clouds of Sils Maria and a personal shopper here – where she can snap about "these cockroaches" of the press or agonise about finding her client the right shoes, "the more apparent superficialities of what I'm so entrenched in". It's ironic amusement. For Assayas, however, there is a larger point to be made.

"I wanted to make a movie about someone immersed in modern life," he says. "To me what defines modern life is the tension between the demented materialism of the modern world and the longings we can have for something more spiritual and abstract. And I think the fashion industry – and the kind of stupid jobs the fashion industry can generate like the personal shopper – are the epitome of materialism. This is the epitome of an alienated job in our modern society. Like all those jobs that have to do with media, it is not fulfilling. How could it be? It is always about frustration. Although, in a way, the person being shopped for is the more alienated of the two."

Stewart doesn't have a shopper, but she has worked for years with the same stylist. Unsurprisingly, she takes a more benign view of that side of her world than Assayas does; for her, it is at least potentially about beauty and sensuality.

"You know it's a whole job, it's like hair and make-up and clothes. I actually have a lot of fun with that. You can either hide behind stuff like that or you can actually let it highlight who you are. Some stylists want to reshape you, but when they are good at what they do, they really see you. And if you put on the right garment, it really helps you to stand proudly and you feel you have a context. It's like you're not lying."

It may well be Maureen's salvation that she is able to immerse herself, as Assayas has said, in the look of things, in the present moment, in things that aren't about too much thinking. "The base of it in Personal Shopper is that you have someone who is really attracted to beauty, but so self-hating that she feels guilty about it," says Stewart. "There is a really shameful quality to wanting to be pretty and liking pretty things. Because she doesn't really like herself, she finds it farcical. Fashion can be a really gorgeous art and there is nothing wrong with appreciating beauty; it is part of what makes us human, it is a version of spiritualism. But it is so f---ing obvious when people are doing it for different reasons and she is not sure where she lies with that."

Where does Kristen Stewart lie with that? All over the place, probably. We see her on the red carpet in Chanel, looking like a space-age Coppelia, her eyelids black as a panda's; next thing, we see her in pap shots with her girlfriend Alicia Cargile​ wearing a plain T-shirt and cut-offs, happy in her skin at last. There is a woman in her life; there have been men, notably her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson; she feels no need either to fudge the truth or define herself as one thing or another. As an actress, she is quoted as saying in today's celebrity news, she thrives on ambiguity.

It's a good line, pumping the story along for another day. At one time, the Kristen Stewart narrative seemed destined to culminate in a fairytale ending, rather after the style of the Twilight saga. Thanks to the strength of its lead character, it's now turned into an arthouse indie in which Stewart, however reluctantly, shares authorship.

"I think what defines Kristen is her sense of freedom," says Assayas. "She's a rebel. She's someone who doesn't want to be put in a box the way most Hollywood stars are put in boxes. She goes for her instincts and that is something very few American actors can do. No one else of her generation, I would say. She is unique."

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