Kristen's jury interview with the Cannes Film Festival

There's something simultaneously light and dark about Kristen Stewart. The elusive actor rose to worldwide fame in the Twilight saga before emerging as a rebellious silver-screen icon with an impressive filmography under her belt. Adored by the public, lauded by the industry, Kristen Stewart made an impact on Cannes in no fewer than three In Competition occasions, first in On the Road by Walter Salles, and then with Olivier Assayas in Sils Maria and Personal Shopper. Last year, the Festival followed the actor's first forays behind the camera with her début short Come Swim, a poignant, heart-wrenching film.

Festival de Cannes, Olivier Assayas, a César, Chanel… are you French at heart?

Almost! I’m getting as close as I can. I’m playing Jean Seberg in Benedict Andrews’ Against All Enemies. A lot of the dialogue is in French, although her accent is terrible. So I have to learn more than I ever have, which will be fun. I’m getting a little closer to being even more French!

Did you go on a French film binge?

Not as much as I should have. I’ve watched a lot of movies but I wouldn’t describe myself as a film buff. My experience has been really incredible because I literally feel like I’m attending film school. Everyone can have an emotional response to a film. It's a universal language. I don’t feel intimidated. French film is home to a really diverse group of people who are all very different, yet all really eloquent and informed. They're kind of like my teachers.

Olivier Assayas says you create a sense of space in the way you act. How do you feel about that?

That space is something he gives me. I made five movies in which I felt the opposite of free. I think an environment that gives you the room to create something unexpected actually takes a huge amount of planning and preparation, and a brilliant mind who knows how to put it all together and make sure everything's working together as it should. Once you have all those ingredients in place, you create space that actually provides you with the room to completely lose control.

I don't try to generate any specific emotion, I never felt like he wanted me to achieve anything in particular. It’s a different way of working and it’s great, although I prefer feeling more directed, having someone waiting with a safety net ready for me to fall into.

In Personal Shopper, you blur gender lines, it’s like you could be either a man or a woman…

That’s perfect because I think that the loss of my character's brother is so central, it’s almost like she wants to be him in order to have him closer to her, in order to not have to miss him and she’s going through this really difficult grieving process. I love that there in an ambiguity in the character, you really never quite know who the fuck she is because she doesn’t know herself.

Could you play a man?

Totally! Gender is a bit of a myth if you ask me. Everyone’s individual relationship with gender is totally theirs to define. But I really think because of the flexibility inherent to gender, there's room for all types of approach.

What's your dream role?

I have a hard time defining what I want to do as an actor. As a filmmaker, as a director, the question is easier. As an actor, I want to never know. I want to be present in something and have it feel so real that I feel like it’s not made up, like I’m honouring a part of the story. It’s always a surprise. As soon as I start having a hand in shaping things...like, I’ll never produce a movie, I promise you. I will never set up a production company. I want to write and direct. And act for people who write and direct.

Your first short film, Come Swim, was revealed here in Cannes. What did it teach you?

Thierry Frémaux has been nice to me. To be honest, it kind of closed a chapter for me. I had this kind of awakening. The thing that I took away from it was that I want to fucking make movies because it feels good, because it really is the best way to capture something, to put your finger on something and to bring a group of people together who feel the same way. Movies can educate, they can bring us together, bridge gaps, make us feel less alone. At the end of that movie I just felt totally fulfilled.

What will your first feature film be about?

I’m adapting a memoir. It’s called The Chronology of Water. Lidia Yuknavitch is from Portland. I love her novels but her memoriees… it’s deeply personal to her. She’s in my blood and I knew that before I met her. As soon as I met her it was like we started this race without any sense of competition. I'm making the movie this summer but other than that, my only goal is just to finish the screenplay and hire a really spectacular actor: I’m going to write the best fucking female role. I’m going to write a role that I want so badly but that I’m not going to play.

Source Cannes Film Festival

Running List: Film Critics Awards Wins and Nominations for Kristen and 'Personal Shopper'

"Personal Shopper"

Film Critics Awards

Nominated

Indiana Film Journalists - Best Actress

St Louis Film Critics Awards - Best Actress

Las Vegas Film Critics Awards - Best Actress

Austin Film Critics Association - Best Actress

International Cinephile Society - Best Actress (winners to be announced on February 4)

'Personal Shopper' is nominated for Best Picture, Best Editing and Best Original Screenplay.

Talk Film Society - Best Actress (winners will be announced February 25)

Won

International Online Cinema Awards - Best Actress

"Personal Shopper" also won Best Picture. Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Costume Design and nominated for Best Editing.

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Feel free to add any we may miss in the comments section.

New stills and BTS images from 'Personal Shopper'

 

Stills




BTS

Click on pics for HQ.

Via

Kristen will be in the documentary "Aware, Anywhere - Olivier Assayas"

Kristen will be appearing in a documentary about director, Olivier Assayas.

"Personal Shopper" behind the scenes footage can be seen in the trailer.

For more details on the documentary check it out at IMDB.

We will update the post when there is news on how to watch it.

Thanks for the heads up radassfvck

New/old photo of Kristen from Cannes 2016

Click on photo for full view.

Source Via

New/old fan photo of Kristen on the 'Personal Shopper' set in Paris

Click on pic for full view.

Source Via

'Personal Shopper' will be released on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection on 24 October

Click on image for full view.

Director-Approved Special Edition:

• 2K digital master, supervised by director of photography Yorick Le Saux and approved by director Olivier Assayas, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with Assayas
• 2016 festival press conference featuring members of the film’s cast and crew, including actor Kristen Stewart
• PLUS: An essay by critic Glenn Kenny

The Criterion Collection will release 'Personal Shopper' on Blu-ray on 24 October 2017.

Please note that if you don't live in the US you can still order it. However, your Blu-ray player must be able to play region A Blu-rays to watch it.

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Olivier Assayas talks 'Personal Shopper' and mentions Kristen with South China Morning Post

When the French writer-director Olivier Assayas first cast Kristen Stewart in a movie he had only seen a couple of the Twilight movies. Every accolade that has followed that inspired decision – including Stewart’s best supporting actress prize for her role in Clouds of Sils Maria at the 2015 Césars, as the first American actress to win at France’s most prominent film awards – is a pleasant surprise for Assayas.

“I think the collaboration with Kristen has been extremely inspiring for me,” says the 62-year-old art-house director. “I think it’s the way we function together. Kristen inspires me to go in different directions and function in slightly different ways; I suppose I also give her space she doesn’t really have in her other movies.”

The excitement from that 2014 film was enough to convince both to swiftly reunite for Personal Shopper, which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where Assayas shared the best director prize with Cristian Mungiu. “You never really write a movie for an actress – but I certainly had Kristen in mind for this one,” he says.

“This film started pretty much with the idea of this character of a girl who is torn between the very mundane job she does in the fashion industry, and her inner life – she has bigger hopes, dreams and longings. I wanted to make a movie [set in] a world that is increasingly materialistic, where individuals can be easily crushed. A way to protect oneself is sometimes to be more on the spiritual side. There is some healing, some protection somehow, in accepting that we have a complex inner life.”

In Personal Shopper, a the grief-tinted supernatural drama, Stewart plays a fashion shopper who also happens to be a medium waiting for a signal from her recently deceased twin brother. An American in Paris, her character, Maureen, would go through a series of genre-based situations that, in the hands of Assayas, turn out to be consistently refreshing.

With apologies to the Twilight set, Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper are now commonly regarded by film critics as the films which made the mega-popular Stewart a bona fide movie star. The irony that she plays a celebrity assistant in both films is not lost on Assayas.

“I’ve been lucky to be the one filmmaker who was able to say to Kristen, ‘It’s okay to be yourself in the film. You don’t have to pretend you’re some other character. It’s a movie that tries to capture something of real life. So I’m not interested in your market value, I’m not interested in your fame. I’m interested in you as a person.’

“It’s a way to present Kristen stripped of that layer of celebrity and to allow the viewer to see her as she is, as a person, and somehow to be closer to her,” he says.

Stewart isn’t the first actress to have starred in two Assayas films: the others are Virginie Ledoyen (1994’s Cold Water, 1998’s Late August, Early September); Maggie Cheung Man-yuk (1996’s Irma Vep, 2004’s Clean ), to whom Assayas was married between 1998 and 2001; and Juliette Binoche (2008’s Summer Hours , Clouds of Sils Maria).

Incidentally, that list could also include Mia Hansen-Løve, Assayas’ wife since 2009. Although she has appeared in small parts in Late August, Early September and 2000’s Sentimental Destinies, Hansen-Løve has rapidly become one of France’s best directing talents with her first five features, including the engrossing middle-age drama Things to Come (2016).

“When we first got together, she was not a director, and she hardly was an actress,” says Assayas with a big chuckle. “I’ve seen her evolve from a would-be filmmaker to a filmmaker to a great filmmaker. It’s been a fascinating process. … It’s a surprise how fast it has happened.”

The sudden rise of Hansen-Løve is mirrored in the acclaim that Assayas and Stewart have received for their collaborations: the two are already talked of as one of the most interesting auteur-muse pairings working today. “I’ve been very privileged in the sense of working with great actresses,” says the director.

“Usually, after two movies, we ended up becoming friends; we don’t necessarily have to work again because we’ve already covered a lot of ground. With Kristen it’s a bit different: we’re not exactly friends. We very dearly love each other, but it’s not like we hang out together. We’re from very different generations, and we live in two cities that are very far apart. But something happened when we’re together on the set. So now, I really do want to make another movie with Kristen.”

While his next project with the actress remains an idea that’s still “too abstract right now”, Assayas is having a hard enough time picking between two projects for his next directing gig: one is a “very French”, as-yet-untitled film for which he’s about to finish writing and hopes to shoot in the autumn; the other is Idol’s Eye, a true-crime thriller set in 1970s Chicago that, while slated to star Robert Pattinson and Rachel Weisz, was abruptly called off in 2014 after the production lost its financing.
“Now it’s kind of happening again,” Assayas says of the project, which has reportedly replaced Robert De Niro with Sylvester Stallone for the leading role of mobster Tony Accardo. “But I’m keeping my fingers crossed because this movie has fallen apart once already.”

For the full interview, please go to the source.

Olivier Assayas talks 'Personal Shopper' and Kristen with The Nation News (Thailand)

In a country where films like “Fast & Furious 8” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2” tend to dominate the big screen, it came as a welcome surprise to see that the film which won last year’s Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, had finally come to Bangkok.

Making the arrival of “Personal Shopper” even more special was the fact that its director, renowned French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, had come to Bangkok for a special screening at Alliance Francaise the day before the film opened at Thailand’s cinemas.

Assayas, who appeared pleased to be back in Bangkok, had just been told that that the film he scripted for Roman Polanski, “Based on a True Story”, starring Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seignier, has been added to Cannes’ official selection.

“Personal Shopper” is the second Assayas film to get a theatrical release in Thailand and marks the second time the director Assayas has come to the Kingdom to present a film. The last time was in 2005 when “Clean”, starring his exwife Maggie Cheung, was shown at the Bangkok International Film Festival.

“Personal Shopper” is his latest English speaking film and marks another big step forward in actress Kristen Stewart’s post “Twilight” career.

“I made this film in English because I wanted to work with Kristen and she speaks no French,” says Assayas. “I also liked the idea of making a movie in Paris in a kind of specific space, which is the fashion industry. Paris is the world’s capital of fashion, so it is a city that sees a lot of people coming to work and shop. It has a very globalised industry, and the language of that globalised industry is English, so it is realistic that someone who is an English speaker could be part of that ambience.”

The director’s earlier films like “Irma Vep”, “Clean” and “Demonlover”, all have dialogue in both French and English, but “Personal Shopper” and his 2014 drama “Clouds of Sils Maria” are totally in English, which has posed problems in getting financing at home.

“Shooting films in English is a burden as it prevents me from getting access to subsidies in France. They will support only French speaking films, so making ‘Personal Shopper’ was a challenge. At the same time, though, it gave me the freedom of working with different actors. I was able to work with Lars Eidinger, who was in ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ and is one of the greatest European actors today, and Nora von Waldstatten who was in ‘Carlos’,” says Assayas.

“Personal Shopper” marks the second time Assayas has worked with Stewart, whom he also cast in “Clouds of Sils Maria” as a young American girl serving as the assistant to international film star (Juliette Binoche).

In “Personal Shopper”, Stewart plays Maureen, a personal shopper for rich clients who lives in Paris and has a strange experience when she comes into contact with ghosts.

“When I was writing it, I was not completely sure this film was for Kristen, but ultimately it was. I think it has to do with how we met and how we functioned together. When we worked together in ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’, I didn’t really know her. I wrote the part of a young American girl and could have picked another actress. But I’ve always like Kristen, but when we started shooting, I realised that there is much more to her than I had imagined. She is much more complex. I discovered her in the process of working on ‘Clouds’. She has a supporting role and it’s dependent on the weird dynamic between her and Juliette. Working with her made me want to try doing something more complex, a film where she would have more space to invent or create a character.”

Assayas adds that the idea of a personal shopper for celebrities didn’t cross his mind while he was writing the script. “To me it was about a young woman, a foreigner in Paris doing a job that didn’t give her satisfaction. She finds some sort of salvation in her own spiritual life. The story grew from that and at first I was not sure what job she could have. Initially I thought she might be a stylist, but a foreigner who can’t speak French can’t be in that field of work. It needs specific skills. So I think it was more believable for her to be a personal shopper, which is a job you can do when stuck in a foreign city and need to pay the rent.”

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Kristen's interview with SBS Movies for 'Personal Shopper'

With Personal Shopper you give us an insight into that rarefied world of high fashion, and how it works.

There are a very, very small group of people who actually go and shop at Chanel showrooms and those people are the real “other worldly” wealthy people. It’s couture, it’s delicate, handcrafted, really precious one of a kind works of art so you are investing in an artform when you go and buy their stuff.

Chanel does stand separately from most of the others - they are an independently owned company, still, which is the last of the luxury brands. And you feel that. There is a genuine, very compulsive faithfulness to aesthetic and care for that aesthetic. They really do stand apart from the people who do it for farcical reasons. A lot of people want to look like they appreciate an aesthetic and beauty but… Some people look at a sunset and it brings them to tears. Some people don’t look twice. It’s a really human spiritual thing to be moved by an image. So within fashion, those people really stick out because those who don’t have it are there because they want to be popular, they want attention. They want to be looked at in a certain way and it validates them in some way to be looked at. That’s actually very empty. It’s just really easy to tell the difference between the two.

You’re back working with Olivier again. How was it different this time? How did you build on what you’d learned about each other from Sils Maria?

The roles are very different, for one thing. Olivier and I have a great relationship because we really ‘see’ each other. I feel like he really understands me and I don’t really have to explain myself to him. We usually agree. There’s a great, real friendship and a closeness that provides a trust that, like, just puts you in the perfect position to explore a difficult subject and always feel like you’re going to be caught by this safety net if you ever really, truly, fall too hard. And that only got deeper on the second go around.

Also just by nature of the movie, it’s so much more sad and you know, Sils Maria was bittersweet and a little bit tumultuous between those two characters, and there was pain in that, but it wasn’t as deep and as fundamental as the pain in this movie. It didn’t bring into question things that don’t have answers and that’s what this movie is about. It’s really about finding peace in not knowing where we’re going to end up and who are are and whether or not our reality is just our perception or whether it’s something that we share. We’re never going to know that. But it’s worth asking the question. It’s worth being aware of it. For both of us, we found that you need to be so raw in order to address those things. We’re just so close now. We’ve been through so much together now that we have those footholds to base a relationship off of, and we’ll only go deeper.

What was it like to have an iPhone as your co-star in so many scenes? How did you approach that and try to make those scenes interesting?

Oh God, what you can project onto an iPhone and into messages from somebody can sometimes be so one-sided! I was basically playing with my own version of myself. Also I felt like anytime there was going to be a close-up or an insert of the messages, it should feel like a close-up of me. You should feel the tension in my hands. You should feel every typo. Every choice in punctuation should speak volumes, because it is a new language that we’ve all sort of written ourselves. You have a different text voice, whether you capitalise something. Or put a period on it, or put a lot of spaces in between something, it says a lot! This is this sort of new language that’s interesting. That... [motions texting, with intensity]... I mean… [laughs]

Are you a big texter? Ever feel like you need a digital detox?

I’m not constantly reaching for my phone. I have a personal Instagram that allows me to stay connected to people that I don’t see on a regular basis, but I don’t have social media, I don’t have this heavy phone addiction. So I’ve never had to detox from it. There are times I find myself reaching for my phone for no reason and I just literally, go, ‘What are you looking for? Nothing!’. When i notice myself doing that, I realise that i’m actually just bored and that I should occupy my time with something else.

What did you think about the ghost story aspect of the film?

When I read the script, I kind of missed the fact that it was a ghost story, because my character, the way she was written, wasn’t that afraid. There was such fervent curiosity that drove her towards the ghosts that I didn’t find them scary in the script. I thought that there was just like a need for questions to be answered, and that need overpowered any fear-based impulse. Then when we got to make the movie... the unknown is terrifying and I don’t care who you are. That was much more theoretical, that idea of not being afraid. It was something that i could implicate conceptually, but literally, on the day, nobody could face those things and not be literally, physically, shaken by it because it’s like, I mean it is scary! It’s really scary. It’s just that while I was reading it, I didn’t realise that it was such a - quote-unquote - horror movie.

He really goes for some effective scares

I know, right?! But to be honest, I still find the scarier parts of that movie are when you can see someone suddenly aware of the fact that we’ll never know where we are or who we are necessarily. Those moments where Maureen starts reeling, and things become incredibly uncertain? Those are debilitating, anxiety-inducing, physically stifling thoughts. I know that feeling. I was like, ‘God, I’m so happy I’m not in one of those places, I’m so happy that I’m not um, in that right now’. Because I’ve had moments like that where I’ve been racked with absolute physical manifestations of anxiety, and it was just like, the only way to get out of that is to go for a run or to physically get yourself moving and really exert your physicality and get yourself out of your brain. Because you’re never going to find the answer. Again, it’s finding peace in the not knowing and finding an appreciation for whatever it is that connects us, and i know it is something invisible, it’s worthwhile because it makes you feel less alone. And that’s really what we’re all hoping to do anyway.

On the subject of physicality, I notice you’ve made Maureen intensely tactile. She’s always gripping at belts, and scrunching up these beautiful pieces of jewellery as she inspects them. How did you work that in as a Maureen mannerism? Why does she do that?

I think Maureen’s attracted to things that she’s ashamed to be attracted to. So she’s aggressive with them. These really delicate necklaces, she’s so taken by them but she’s feeling guilty about it, so she almost wants to harm them. Do you know what i mean?

Not personally, but sure.

Because she’s not the most self-assured person and she has so many aspects of herself that don’t typically go together, finding a balance in that is kind of the struggle of the movie. There’s one side of her that’s purely animalistic and very feminine and really just embodies... She’s like a tigress. She’s like a really sensual, immediate, impulsive animal, but there are also other times where she’s so moored by thought and those defences go up immediately. And those defences are very hard and very masculine and androgynous because she misses her brother. She’s half a person and she’s trying to emulate him. It’s like there was a strength that he had that she doesn’t have without him, and she’s trying to do an impression of him in order to feel strong and it’s just not her. It’s sad to watch that kind of thing, it’s clearly just somebody that’s trying to hide.

You’ve played a lot of celebrity assistant roles lately, with this, Sils Maria, and also recently, in the Woody Allen film. Are you referencing relationships that you have with people who work with you?

Yeah, it’s funny role reversal. I know that job inside out. But I don’t have a personal shopper. That’s not a very common job. [Grabs at blazer] These clothes that we wear to press conferences and red carpets and stuff, they’re all lent to us. I don’t have people going out and buying opulent elaborate pieces for me for my own collection, it’s an interaction with that artform which is temporary and within the context of promoting a movie.

Some celebrities seem to use fashion as an escape, or a bit of armour, for want of a better word. You seem really connected to the clothes you wear, though.

Absolutely, I think when clothes really can do their job, they’re the opposite of armour, they can make you feel like you don’t want to hide, and you’re the true version of yourself in the right outfit.

Some people don’t have much interest in it, and some people don’t have very defied taste. A lot of actors really just don’t care, so they hire people that do, to help them. But me? I really like it. The reason I’m not ashamed of that is because it’s coming from a really true place. I don’t find it to be superficial at all. I think that when I put on the right garment I feel like a truer version of myself. I feel there are stories to tell with clothes, and when you find people that feel the same way, it’s really fun to work with them.

I think it’s pretty obvious when there’s the opposite of that - it’s obvious when people are drawn to that world because they want attention. I don’t want to look good because I want everyone to stare at me; I want to look good because I want to feel like myself. It’s about feeling like you, and clothes can help you achieve that.

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Kristen's interview for 'Personal Shopper' with Whimn (Australia)

“With Olivier I learnt things about being female that were new to me, these ideas that can keep you up at night,” Stewart admits. “I’m less moored by anxiety than I was when I was 17 when I had my first debilitating existential thoughts. Sometimes you feel like there is no way out of it, but there is.”

Speaking at her usual rapid-fire pace and in her stream-of-consciousness manner, Stewart admits she’s changed. She’s less restrained and cares less about what people think of her.

“I have an awareness that lack of control leads people to a truer perception of you. I think I’ve really wished for that and found more of it in doing so. I’m not afraid. If I don't know the answer to something I just say, ‘I don't know’ instead of feeling obliged to give an answer. I’ve figured out how to communicate better. That obviously comes from just getting older.”

Does she meditate, given she’s been through so much?

“A lot of people have suggested meditation to me. I really have trouble sleeping and apparently it can be really helpful. But I’m not good at self-manipulation. I like feeling scattered, I really like feeling overwhelmed. Feeling relaxed all the time isn’t necessarily the way to feel creative. The only reason I have the ability to cope is because I’m quite f..king grounded.”

On screen she’s particularly courageous and nude scenes are not a problem. “There’s a strength in feeling stripped down in every sense,” she says. “I know as an actor I want to feel seen, I want to feel accepted and understood. The scene in Personal Shopper was exhilarating; it was not difficult to be naked. I'm not the most modest person, I'm not that precious and I don’t have the shame the character has.”

Stewart has learnt to deal with criticism too. “Not everyone’s going to like you. I prefer to feel love and hate rather than indifference. So I’m fine with it.”

Not everybody has loved Personal Shopper. Yet Stewart adores it. She loves working in Europe and she loves being away from the Hollywood controls. Still it was difficult.

“Olivier wanted to accelerate making the movie so I filmed it before Café Society. I was doing 16 hour days 7-day weeks and was working for Chanel at the same time, doing a photoshoot or flying to Rome for a show on Sundays. Oh man, I’ve never felt so good feeling so bad!”

She likewise put herself through the mill when filming her ambitious directing debut, the 17-minute short Come Swim that debuted in Sundance. “I’m a bit of a masochist. I don’t make things easy for myself.”

She is close to her dad and to her heavily tattooed mum who often dyes her hair jet black as Kristen had done earlier this year.

“My mum definitely carves her own way. The Aussies are very gregarious. I tend to be, I can be, but it’s more difficult for me to pull it out [of me]. I’m getting better at it.”

She reportedly lives between her house in the very cool Los Angeles suburb of Los Feliz and a Malibu beach pad she bought with her mum. She’s not publicising the locations.

“There are people who have driven up to my house and ogled. It’s f..king scary actually.”

"Everybody has an idea of who I am because of the reality show that all of us celebrities are by default involved with."

Social media is as much a hindrance as a help, though she loves to text. “I’m obsessed with formatting my messages and punctuating them perfectly and conveying something specifically. I have a private Instagram. Personally I have social media but I don't have a public anything.”

Of course it’s probably more difficult to be famous than it ever has been.

“Celebrities are so perforated, the holes are gaping. I think it’s really obvious that we’re breakable.”

Is that a good thing?

“Yeah actually I think it is-when it’s truthful and not just the whole tabloid thing. You have to focus on what really matters to you, as there’s a lot of bullshit in that world. You just have to look away.”

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Video: New ''Personal Shopper" Clips (dubbed in Italian)

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Kristen's interview with the Sydney Morning Herald for 'Personal Shopper'

Playing Bella Swan in the phenomenally successful Twilight series brought the teenage Kristen Stewart global adoration and ensconced her as one half of a Hollywood power couple with her onscreen – and offscreen – sweetheart Robert Pattinson.

But far from flourishing under the media's flashing bulbs, the starlet appeared to grow surlier, moodier and more frustrated as each instalment of the gargantuan vampire franchise pushed her further into the spotlight, and for a while it seemed like she may withdraw entirely.

"I was really, really young; I was 17," she says. "It was too insane. It was too scary to try to make peace with how so many people wanted to know every detail about my life. They wanted everything. It was too much. I couldn't break it down and digest what was happening. I was too insecure to lay it out for what it was."

Yet despite the more troubling aspects of her swift rise to fame, Stewart has learnt to appreciate that those years made her who she is today. "It's central to my personal history; it shaped me incalculably and taught me a lot of lessons about myself, about people, about society," she reveals. "It's funny how much I hated the attention. I really hated it – I don't think that was a secret – but now I don't look back at it and mourn and think, 'What an awful time, I'm traumatised.' It more fascinates me."

Now 26, the actress has matured into a confident and outspoken woman. Far from buckling under the pressure to be a cookie-cutter starlet, she is creating her own brand as a punchy LGBTI icon and serious artist, eschewing the commercial dead certs for European arthouse titles like Equals, Clouds of Sils Maria and her most recent venture, Personal Shopper.

Directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas – who previously worked with the actress on Sils Maria – the film tells the tale of Stewart's Maureen, an American living in Paris and working as a personal shopper for a major celebrity. Her life takes a dramatic turn when she begins receiving messages on her phone from her recently deceased twin brother and is haunted by his ghost-like presence, sending her into a downward spiral of self-doubt as she begins to question her own sanity.

The film is a showcase for arguably the best performance of Stewart's career, garnering huge praise from critics and earning Assayas the Best Director gong at last year's Cannes Film Festival. But while enormously satisfying artistically, Stewart admits that making the film was a gruelling and lonely experience.

"It was a very emotional film and it's my way of working that I push myself as far as I can go towards reaching those extremes," she says. "Maureen is constantly expending all her energy and frantically moving around because it distracts her from facing up to her grief. But that's what makes the process of acting exciting for me. I feel more alive and fulfilled when I'm suffering and reaching the point of exhaustion." 

As an isolated and fragile Maureen teeters on the brink of madness, the film doesn't try to explain the supernatural happenings, but rather explores them as a side-effect of her grief. Naturally, Stewart's own experience as a reluctant, lauded A-lister went some way to helping her relate to her character's isolation. But even so, the actress says here was very little she could do to prepare for such a traumatic role.

"She's an American in Paris; she's an alien in every sense. She's entrenched, entombed in the grieving process for her twin brother. She's a half-person, fractured and broken. This is a woman who wants so badly to believe in anything concrete because she's shell-shocked, because her belief system is completely overwrought by what she's going through. There's a never-ending, crucifying string of maybes which chip and knock away at her logic and at herself."

The film, while not exactly providing any answers, does pose a lot of existential questions about life, death and fate, an aspect of the process which Stewart says "scared, excited and moved" her.

"Because every day, we all encounter things and moments and events that we can't articulate," she says fervently. "Like a vibe from a person, an atmosphere of a place that you can't explain, that you can't touch or see but you can feel. All of us can say we've experienced those minutes of prophecy, where we dreamt of what might happen and then it happens." 

It is difficult to determine whether Stewart's career is one she dreamt of, or if it has been a natural evolution of her childhood. Born in LA to parents who both work in the entertainment industry – her father, John, is a TV producer and stage manager; her mother, Jules, who is originally from Queensland, is a script supervisor – Stewart practically grew up on film sets and landed her first big role aged only nine in 2002's Panic Room, which starred Jodie Foster.

She has said she originally wanted to become a filmmaker, an ambition she went some way to fulfilling when directing her first short: Come Swim. "I've never been happier than I've felt working on it," Stewart reflects. "I've wanted to direct since I was nine. With acting, you can work on a project, then walk away after the shoot is over and move on to the next project. As a director, you're involved at every step along the way."

Premiering the 17-minute short at Sundance last year, the Californian beauty promoted it in an interview at the Sundance Studio. Intelligent, sincere and articulate in the interview, she was worlds away from the unresponsive surly teen of the Twilight era. In fact, during her recent stint as a Saturday Night Live host, she appeared to make fun of her "too cool for school" persona with the help of regulars Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, who rode in on an enormous motorcycle wearing ripped clothes and smoking cigarettes.

It was also during this SNL show that Stewart, who's been romantically linked to several women in recent years, came out after joking that President Donald Trump didn't like her because he was in love with Robert Pattinson and because she was "like, so gay, dude". And while she still values her privacy, Stewart is far more open than before. "I've found a way to live my life and not feel like I'm hiding at all," she declares. "And that's pretty apparent for anyone who cares – not that everyone does. But if you had been tracking it in any way, it's more apparent. I'm more relaxed than I used to be."

Alongside her film work, Stewart is fast becoming a fashion icon, having appeared in several campaigns for French fashion house Chanel and developed her own brand of tomboy chic: rolled-up boyfriend jeans with baseball boots; bold pantsuits with elegant heels. Recently she debuted a new hairstyle – a bleach-blonde buzzcut – which sent style blogs into a frenzy, and last year took to Chanel's front row with her rumoured girlfriend at the time, musician St Vincent.

But despite her penchant for Gucci loafers and couture frocks, there's still a side of the fashion industry that Stewart finds frustrating. "I see opposing, duelling sides to the concept of the fashion world and both have a voice – one that speaks to the vulnerabilities of art, the other to superficiality," she says.

"There are those drawn to fashion for the self-gratification: they use it to win the popularity contest. I don't get that, I don't vibe with that. There are the artists, those drawn to beauty, who can't help but weep and be mesmerised at the creation and beauty, which is celebrated alongside the physical form and aesthetic. They appreciate and they live for art."

One might easily mistake Stewart's irritability for apathy, but listen closely and there is evidence to suggest the opposite is true. She is a young artist who almost cares too deeply about the creative process and what art should stand for, and given space to nurture her vision she may, in time, come up with something truly remarkable. Meanwhile, she is finally learning to just enjoy the ride.

"It's so important to be able to understand as soon as you can what you really want in life and to find a way to be happy," she says. "I'm looking forward to everything and I feel really good."

Personal Shopper is in cinemas on April 13 in Australia.

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Scans: Kristen's interview in Who magazine (Australia)

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Olivier Assayas talks about 'Personal Shopper' and mentions Kristen with Interview magazine

Personal Shopper is not what you'd expect from its title or trailer. Written and directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, it is not a film about the glamorous fashion world, though, as a backdrop, it does serve as a jarring contrast to the protagonist's personal life. It isn't entirely about the supernatural, either, in spite of some strange events. Rather, it's an exploration of grief and identity following a tremendous loss.

Starring Kristen Stewart, who previously worked with Assayas on Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper follows Maureen, a young American working in Paris. Just over three months ago, Maureen's twin brother passed away, and she's been trying to communicate with him ever since. She has a life somewhere—a boyfriend waiting for her—but she lingers on in Paris in a job she feels no connection to, hoping for a sign. "Maureen is like half a person," Assayas says when we meet him in New York, midway through Personal Shopper's festival run (it premiered at Cannes, and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the London Film Festival, among others). "It's not like she's just mourning, she's lost half of herself and wants to become one again," he continues. "It's a very lonely process—the process of mourning is always lonely—and it puts into question issues that she never had to deal with before. All of a sudden, she's forced by life to reinvent herself."

EMMA BROWN: When did you first start working on this film?

OLIVIER ASSAYAS: I started working on this film exactly in November 2015. I was coming back from Toronto where I had been preparing a film that fell apart. We lost our financing 24 hours before shooting, so it was like, what's the next move? I just sat down and wrote, fairly fast, this screenplay. I started from scratch. Usually when I write scripts it's a long process. It's layer after layer, I take notes, come back to it six months later, and so on and so forth. Here, I wanted to do something with the energy of the moment—the desire I had to shoot and somehow overcome the frustration of that movie that did not happen. I wrote it in the winter of that year. I like to start preparing the film as early as I can because you need to keep the energy going. I hate to write and spend months just waiting for the film to get financed. Then when you start preparing the film and you shoot it, you've already forgotten why you wanted to make the film in the first place. I like to have some kind of coherent energy that takes you through writing, preparing, shooting.

BROWN: Did you begin with the character of Maureen?

ASSAYAS: Absolutely. I had nothing else but the character of Maureen. It grew from there. I was drawn to this character who was a part of the proletariat of the fashion industry and who did a job she didn't like and found some salvation through imagination, art. It grew into something slightly different, but that's where it started.

BROWN: When did the idea of Maureen trying to communicate with this other world come about? 

ASSAYAS: I just pushed the idea towards that fervor. Initially, it was all about finding consolation in art and music, but that was not enough. That did not give me enough drive. I wanted to make a movie that would deal with what we call the paranormal. I think what inspired this film was also this kind of mood. Except I was not sure where the limit was, where the border was, and gradually I pushed the border and realized that what I really wanted was someone who finds the door to another world. That involved, of course, the ghost and other things.

Movies are explorations; they take you on a path, and I think it's always better if it's a path that you don't know, that takes twists and turns that you can't predict. That's what's entertaining about movies. That's what's entertaining about novels. I like the idea of something that's rooted in the material world, that's very down-to-earth. We're following someone who does this everyday, very mundane job, who carries bags from one place to another and drives her bike. And gradually, it morphs into someone who's involved in something a bit more complex than that. The idea to have both something that belongs to what we call supernatural and, at the same time, is anchored in the real world, I think it gives more strength to whatever has to do with the real world and whatever has to do with some transcendence of the material world. 

BROWN: It's interesting that you chose to make Maureen a personal shopper. As you say, what she's doing is pretty mundane, but she's still in the fashion world, which is something that we think of as very glamorous and not mundane at all.

ASSAYAS: It was interesting to me to have both. I wanted her to deal with something that has to do with the surface. It doesn't get more materialistic than the fashion industry, which is defined by the fact that it deals with surface. Also, there is nothing more alienating than dressing another person—doing a job that is literally separated from whatever is any of your personal or individual concern. That's one side of it. The other side of it, I wanted it to be something she could be ambivalent about, the same way we are ambivalent about our relationship to the modern world and how the world is changing around us. It's both scary and fascinating, and we are afraid of it, but at the same time we want to be a part of it. I was also interested in something that could also be part of her own questioning, trying to connect with her own femininity. She's not sure of the person she is anymore.

BROWN: Did you always know you wanted Kristen to play Maureen?

ASSAYAS: Consciously or unconsciously? I wrote it not sure she would do it; I thought she might be scared of it or think it's too weird. I could've understood it. I did not want to admit that I was actually writing for Kristen because I didn't want to be disappointed. Then when I finished the screenplay she was in Paris and we discussed it and she read it and related to it. I think it had been for her all along.

BROWN: You said at the Toronto Film Festival that Kristen was really a collaborator in terms of the direction. Is that something that has happened to you before with an actor?

ASSAYAS: It happened when I was working with Édgar Ramírez when we did Carlos. Édgar brought a lot to the story, because he was in every single shot, every single day. He carried the burden of the relationship to Carlos. Carlos is a horrible character in many ways, and I think that if I had to deal on my own with the issues of Carlos, it would have been unbearable for me. Édgar just took over in that he carried on his shoulders the weight of Carlos. In that sense, it was a similar collaboration. I think it was also a bit similar when I made Boarding Gate with Asia Argento, who is an actress somewhat similar to Kristen in terms of her mixture of intelligence and instinct. But still, I think that in Personal Shopper I pushed it in a different area. In Personal Shopper, there is basically one character who defines the emotion in the film, who recreates the film from the inside. Whatever the film is, it's a creation we share, Kristen and myself.

BROWN: I saw Personal Shopper at TIFF, and when I was coming out of the cinema, the people behind me where talking about how they thought Maureen was in Limbo throughout the film.

ASSAYAS: Sure. It's not a wrong way of seeing it.

BROWN: Has anyone ever said something to you about one of your films where you felt like, "Oh, I never thought about that before, but that makes sense"?

ASSAYAS: Yeah, including myself in the sense that sometimes when I'm discussing the film, something comes up out of what I'm saying. When I make films I'm very intuitive; I'm instinctive. When you are shooting there's little time to think about abstract ideas, it's about getting things done, getting them right, and trying to channel the energies and get the best of whatever you have on your set. It's only once the film is finished that it's like, "Okay, let's try to figure out what happened." Try to figure out exactly what I did. I think movies are expressions of our imagination; they are expressions of our conscious and of our subconscious. I think that movies can be analyzed the way dreams are analyzed, and sometimes I feel that the viewers or the journalists I discuss the film with are psychoanalysts who are trying to make sense of my dreams. [laughs]

BROWN: When you are developing a movie, making a movie, and the showing it to people and discussing it, it's sort of this living entity. Is there a moment when is no longer alive for you?

ASSAYAS: Totally. I think that the mourning process of the film involves discussing it, dissecting it, and at some point, you get bored with it. I'm not there yet, but I know I will be there at some point. That's the moment when I know I need to turn the page and move on and recharge my batteries.

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'Personal Shopper' costar Sigrid Bouaziz mentions Kristen with W Magazine

Who are your style icons?

Chloé Sevigny, because she's modern and sensual. Or Kristen Stewart; boyish, ultra-feminine, and sensual all at the same time.

You just worked with Stewart, as well as directer Olivier Assayas in Personal Shopper. What was that experience like?

I loved it so much. Both of them were so caring; it was a deep, rare, and generous exchange between us.

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