Kristen's interview with The Sacramento Bee for 'On the Road'

To meet Kristen Stewart is to want to defend her.

A young-looking 22 , she's practically still a kid. Her features appear even more delicate than they do on screen, and she's devoid of swagger, despite the black leather jacket she wears for an interview about "On the Road." The film adapts the classic 1957 Jack Kerouac novel tracking the thrills- and truth-seeking experiences of Kerouac and his postwar Beat generation nonconformist pals.

Stewart is enthusiastic, conscientious even, in discussing her character, Marylou – fictional stand-in for Lu Anne Henderson, teenage wife of Kerouac's muse, Neal Cassady – in "On the Road," which today starts a three-day run at Sacramento's Crest Theatre and is available on video on demand.

"She was very much an equal part" of the road trips that inspired Kerouac's novel, she said of Henderson. "She was such a formidable partner for (Cassady). She was his counterpart in that sort of crazy life."

Stewart first attached herself to the project at 17, after she met with director Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") to discuss playing Marylou. She had read the novel at 15. Its story of curious young people finding kindred spirits spoke to her, Stewart said.

"What I loved about the book is that (it chronicles) an age when you sort of get to look up and you get to choose your surroundings," she said. "You get to find those people who shock you and also make you aware of those things about yourself that also shock and surprise you."

As she discusses this passion project, Stewart never comes off as sullen, sulky or downcast, as she can in television interviews. It's hard to reconcile this pleasant young woman with the one who draws Lohan-esque levels of scorn in the blogosphere, even though her reputation isn't one of hard-partying excess or courtroom tears.

But she did star in five "Twilight" films, which earned more than $3 billion in worldwide box office and inspired a fandom that bests any other in obsession with its stars. She also made highly publicized mistakes big (the affair with her married "Snow White and the Huntsman" director) and small (those painfully awkward talk show appearances).

Intense scrutiny and criticism became inevitable, and rarely has a movie star been less suited for it. Stewart seems genuinely uncomfortable in the spotlight. When attention focused on her begins to encroach on her personal life, she cannot fake being OK with it, she said.

"I will never kowtow" to media intrusions, she declares. But she's smiling as she says it. And she's fine doing press "when it makes sense – when there is context," she said. "I have no problem sitting here and talking about 'On the Road,' or Walter (Salles) or 'Twilight.' "

But just in case, she has girded herself for today's interview with a pair of Allen Ginsberg-esque tortoise-shell eyeglasses. They are not prescription, Stewart acknowledged, grinning and a bit abashed.

"They are just kind of an extra layer, for when you feel tired," she said. "I envy people that actually need them, because I don't want people to think I am a poseur or something. It is just an extra layer of 'get out of my face.' "

As a stager of tiny, daily rebellions, Stewart can relate to Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg and especially to Henderson, the novel's and the film's female representative of the Beat generation's sex, drugs and jazz-baby-jazz ethos.

Stewart researched her character's life thoroughly, listening to recordings by Henderson and meeting with Henderson's daughter. Stewart said she would like to dispel any idea that Henderson was a vulnerable figure in the Beat boys' club. She was just as sexually adventurous and committed to counterculture pursuits as the famously voracious Cassady (fictionalized as Dean Moriarty and played by Garrett Hedlund in the movie).

"I didn't want to just be ambience," Stewart said of researching her character. "It was always, 'What is she getting? What is she giving up? Is she being taken from?' And I would have to say, having gotten to know her daughter and listened to those tapes … there was nothing you could take from her. She was offering it up, and she was getting so much in return."

Henderson was "ahead of her time by 20 or 30 years," said director Salles, in San Francisco with Stewart.

Yet some fascinations are timeless, and thousands of young Stewart fans who never heard of Kerouac no doubt will arrive at "On the Road" by Googling "Kristen Stewart nude."

Playing an exuberant libertine means the clothes came off.

"There aren't too many scripts or projects that you come across and go, 'It just can't be done without it,' " Stewart said. Remaining clothed in the scenes in question "would have been really dishonest and afraid. All of ('Road') needs to be unabashedly itself and sprawlingly impulsive, and it needs to celebrate life in every way, and that's not by covering up."

Salles said Stewart's acting also pushes boundaries.

"She is constantly trying to reach the best performance she can give in every single take, and that is something I find admirable," Salles said.

Salles met with Stewart after two friends – director Alejandro González Iñárritu and film composer Gustavo Santaolalla – raved about her after seeing an early screening of Sean Penn's 2007 film "Into the Wild." In "Wild," Stewart plays a teen who shares a bond with Emile Hirsch's wanderer.

"I understood completely why they had been so impacted by her, because there is something completely magnetic in Kristen's acting in 'Into the Wild,' " Salles said.

Salles settled on Stewart for the Marylou role then, but it took years to secure financing for "On the Road," the shoot for which traversed Montreal, New Orleans, San Francisco and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta town of Locke (see sidebar) in trying to capture its Beat characters' travels.

Stewart said she now appreciates the delay, since she was not ready at 17 or 18 for the role's racier aspects. As the project sat on the back burner, Stewart became a household name through the "Twilight" movies and also showed range by playing real-life rocker Joan Jett in "The Runaways."

"Her work in independent cinema is very much driven by characters who enter uncharted territories and trespass boundaries that are not immediately acceptable to the culture of the time," Salles said.

Stewart's vibrant, sun-kissed Marylou offers a stark visual and philosophical counterpoint to Bella, her dark-haired, pale Pacific Northwest virgin-until-married and human-until-vampired "Twilight" heroine. But no Stewart role is a reaction to any other, she said.

"I am drawn very naturally and very intuitively to everything I have done, including my commercial films," she said. "I think it is the same thing for those ('On the Road') characters and the people who inspired those characters. They weren't trying to make a statement necessarily. At one point they obviously saw that what they were doing was a statement. But initially, they were just being who they were."

With the "Twilight" films complete, and after so much focus on a private life also inextricably linked to that franchise, Stewart appears to be entering a new chapter.

Or at least she might be. Stewart will not kowtow to any narrative for herself.

"I guess if I stepped outside of my own life and looked at it, you might put a bookmark in, 'Oh, there's a good time to put Chapter 3,' " she said. "But when you are actually living it, no. I don't do things for impact. I have never been able to step outside my career, or especially my life – and you should never, ever mistake the two – and shape it like it is this malleable thing."


Source via @KstewAngel thank you.

Walter Salles talks about Kristen in 'On the Road'

HollywoodChicago.com: I found Kristen Stewart’s performance to be very memorable. What do you think she understood about Mary Lou that audiences would never see if they just know her as Bella Swan?

Salles: I first heard about Kristen about the time she did ‘Into the Wild,’ early 2006, and she was recommended to me for ‘On the Road.’ So we met, and once we started to exchange ideas about the book, not only did she know it inside out, but she also had an in-depth understanding of the Mary Lou character. She realized that Mary Lou was ahead of her time – a free thinker and an independent decision maker, given she was a woman during the 1950s.

Kristen, in her independent film work, drifts towards roles in which women are independent and have a voice. She fought for the role with everything that she could, it was very moving. She got access to hours of interview with the late Luanne Henderson, who was the real life basis for Mary Lou, and that material was truly inspiring for her. She realized how sensitive and how non judgmental her character was, and it freed her to give a three dimensional quality to that character. I find her performance to be moving and generous.

Read Walter's full interview at Hollywood Chicago

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Walter Salles talks about Kristen & 'On the Road'

Click on the photo of Kristen & Walter to watch the interview or at the source.

Walter starts to talk about Kristen at approx. 17:25 mins and then again at 20:44mins about Kristen improvising in a scene. 

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Walter Salles mentions Kristen (Montreal Gazette)

Luckily for Salles, he was able to hang onto key components of his cast, including the skyrocketing Stewart.

“I think she brought an immense passion but also an intelligence to her role,” Salles said. “She knew it really well before we even met, just after I saw Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. This was before the Twilight Saga had started.”

“I said, ‘I really liked Penn’s film and you were wonderful in it. I’m considering the possibility of doing On the Road.’ And she said, ‘It’s one of the books I prefer; it’s on my bedside table. I would love to play Marylou one day.’ I said, ‘This is exactly what I’m talking about.’”

Stewart reveals a more carefree side of herself in the film, even appearing topless as she plunges into a racy sex scene with playful abandon. It was all par for the course, according to Salles.

“There was not a day where she didn’t ask me to try something different and go beyond the page. It was a great experience. And the fact that we were shooting Montreal helped a lot. We were not invaded by paparazzi or other things that are now very present in Kristen’s life.”

Read Walter's full interview at the MontrealGazette via @KstewAngel thank you.

Kristen's OTR NY Press Junket Interview w/USA Today

Scans (+ new TIFF portrait with Walter & Garrett & press junket pic)

NEW YORK — Kristen Stewart has a solid, vigorous handshake.

When she arrives at the darkened restaurant at the Tribeca Grand hotel, precisely seven minutes late, she's guardedly apologetic about her tardiness. A table of men gawks at Stewart as she keeps her head down, her hair loose around her face, clad in jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers, and quickly crosses the room to a more secluded table in the corner.

Stewart, barely out of her teens, has tasted the flip side of fame, and it isn't much to her liking. She's cautious and watchful and ill at ease, until she's not. The thing is, give Stewart a little bit of time, a glass of pinot grigio, and some thoughtful conversation, and she warms up.

Being gaped at, she says, brings out her inner dork.

"I feel like I'm in the sixth grade, and everyone in the room is laughing at me. Some people can come into a room and say hello to everyone, and it's fine. I'm not that person. I don't think I'm very approachable," says the actress, 22.

She's no pushover. If there's one thing you need to note about her, it's this: When she suddenly was anointed the tabloid scarlet woman, after photos surfaced of her getting cozy with married director Rupert Sanders — while ostensibly dating her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson — Stewart didn't hunker down and hide under the covers. She went to Toronto in September to promote her labor of love, On the Road, the adaptation of Jack Kerouac's classic 1957 novel about the Beat Generation. She talked to press. She posed for photos. She attended the premiere of the film.

"I've been working on this thing for five years. When it makes sense, when there's a platform for it, it makes so much sense for me to be there. I can stand tall. I can stand proud," Stewart says. "I've never been the type of person who can stand in the forefront of nothing. That occasionally makes public appearances awkward. It feels a lot different when you're going to unleash something that feels worth it."

A conversation with the actress isn't linear. It ebbs and flows and touches on everything from her love of cooking to her appreciation of Kerouac to her recent fascination with the reality show Duck Dynasty, courtesy of her best friend Dakota Fanning.

"She is 100% herself 100% of the time, which is admirable and difficult to do," Fanning says. "She's very unapologetic of herself. She does everything to the fullest. She's really honest."

Silver Linings Playbook and The Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence calls Stewart "one of the coolest people I've ever met. She's just really laid-back. She's one of those people who owns her own energy. She's down to earth and funny and nice and just cool."

And for someone who has never been at ease in the spotlight, Stewart isn't about to start spilling her guts now. She's not telling whether she and Pattinson are back together, or not, or something in between. And she doesn't really care what anyone thinks, either way.

"People think they knew a lot about me before. They know even less now," she says. "People will project whatever. It's a huge form of entertainment. As soon as you step outside your own life and look at it like that and think that you can shape something — you need to live your life. I'm just going to live my life, actually."

Stewart's career is also at a crossroads of sorts. She just wrapped up the Twilight film series, based on the insanely popular books and starring Stewart as Bella Swan, the love of vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson). The films made her famous beyond belief, rich beyond comprehension, and even more leery of being a superstar who can't go out to dinner without being mobbed. Stewart is grateful to have been part of the Twilight behemoth, and to have played a character who was so pivotal in many teens' lives.

"I never felt stuck in that. Not at all," she says. "I had so many opportunities in the midst of that to do a million things. If it kept me from doing other things, I still wouldn't resent it. You start a project to finish it. I was eager to get back and finish the story."

A different kind of role

As for On the Road, which shows a far more adult side of Stewart, "this wasn't me stepping out to do a different thing to liberate myself," she says.

Playing Marylou, the free-spirited, uninhibited girlfriend of Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) is a departure for Stewart, who is an observer by nature.

"I had to jump into somebody who wasn't watching, who wasn't thinking about being watched," she says. "She's the least vain person who completely lets her face hang out. Those people are few and far between. I was sort of nervous I would be playing the crazy girl, the girl who was wild. She offers the exuberance in the story, as well. I'm so not that person, so it was hard."

Director Walter Salles met Stewart when she was 16, after seeing her in Sean Penn's Into the Wild, and he approached her about playing Marylou.

"She thought the role was very different from who she was but she was tempted to do it. She's been part of this ever since. It speaks a lot to how much she reads, how sharp she is, and how attracted she is by challenging material," Salles says. "She's very different from Marylou and yet — she truly understands that it is important to constantly redefine her sense of the future, which is what Marylou does."

And Stewart felt liberated by playing Marylou, a woman who is free just being herself.

"It's easier to not throw up so many barriers," she says. "Do you have butterflies in your stomach? Great. Don't try and get rid of them. I'm oddly incredibly measured. I take things too seriously sometimes. I take myself too seriously sometimes."

Stewart is loath to sound like a complainer. She's not going to whine about being famous, or her inability to walk through an airport without paparazzi intrusion.

"Rob is (noticed) way more than I am, especially if we're out together. He's so recognizable, and I'm not. I put a hood on, and I'm a girl with long hair. I can go out," she shrugs.

And even though, at the height of her scandal she issued a statement apologizing to Pattinson, she's not going to address what's written about her in endless stories that speculate about her romantic status.

"They don't write about my personal life. You know what I mean? The same exact thing about being able to choose your path and your career — you don't step outside your life and look at it like you're someone else. It's the most disjointed, uninformed, and completely unsatisfying and completely depressing (stuff)," she says. "I have the same friends I've had for years and years. I make new friends. I'm a really good judge of character. I know who I like, and I know who I don't like, almost to a fault."

Fanning says: "People don't know her as a person. What she says is what she believes. She's never fake. She does what she cares about and lives her life and has to deal with a lot and does it the best way she knows how."

This kitchen whiz shoots pool

It's hard to dislike Stewart after spending any amount of time with her. She seems solid and smart, an observant, attentive person to whom quotes and sound bites don't come easily.

"She's a good listener," Salles says. "When you cut for lunch, you can bet the best music will come from her trailer. She can be extremely funny and loose, and she's great company to have around. She's a fierce pool player. There's a lot to Kristen that is very revealing of a personality that is curious and open to the world and certainly very accessible."

And she's a whiz in the kitchen. Stewart eagerly shares her foolproof way of roasting vegetables to ensure that they're fully cooked yet also crisp (heat the oven as high as it will go). Her hobbies are simple: music, books, friends.

"We're homebodies," Fanning says. "She cooks for me. She loves to cook. I go to her house. Certainly there are times it's crazy, but we're also just friends. We go to Target to get wrapping paper. She has to do things like everyone else."

At the top of Stewart's to-do list: getting a script in her hands. She has spent this year doing non-stop press, first for Twilight and then for On the Road. And she's ready to be back on set in the grifter comedy Focus.

"I really want to work," she says. "I'm working in April, but that's too long. I haven't worked in a year. I've been promoting (stuff). I should go and chill somewhere. But at the same time, I haven't done what I do in so long. I need to get back there."

Source via @KstewAngel

HQ Pictures thanks to kstewartfans
Scans thanks to @epnebelle

Portrait of Kristen, Garrett & Walter now in HQ

Click on photo for HQ

Thanks to kstewartfans

Walter Salles talks about Kristen (Shockya)

Question (Q): You cast the film in 2004, and it took a long time to get it made. Would you still have cast Kristen Stewart after the ‘Twilight’ phenomenon?

Walter Salles (WS): We did (cast Stewart in the beginning of the ‘Twilight’ series). Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, the director of ‘Babel’ and ’21 Grams,’ is a friend of mine, and he had just seen a rough cut of Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild.’ We had dinner that night. He said, “Sean’s movie is so beautiful, and there’s this incredible young actress who you should consider for Marylou in ‘On the Road.’ There’s something very impactful about the film. She appears int he last third of the film, but there’s an echo of her presence that’s long lasting, you should meet her.”

I saw Sean Penn’s film, which I also loved. I met Kristen, and she was so knowledgeable about the book, and knew so much about the character. So I invited her to do the film, if it was going to be made. That was a big question, also. It hadn’t been made for so long, that we never knew if it was going to be a reality.

Then, of course, it took us five years to get the financing, which came from independent producers in Europe. All those years, she remained tied to the project, and to do it, says a lot about her, I think.

Q: What kind of research did you do into the gender relationships?

WS: We did very extensive research that took us six years, between 2004 and 2010. I shot a film in Brazil with non-actors between ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ and this. But in doing the research, the characters of the book were still alive. Or we met with the families of the characters, who are not with us anymore. Meeting, for instance, Carolyn Cassady was very helpful to inform the Camille role of Kirsten Dunst.

Carolyn’s a woman of great knowledge and sensitivity. I wanted her to be played by an actress who would not only be extremely talented, but would also have the same degree of intelligence, so I forwarded the invitation to Kirsten. Kirsten was the first actress who signed on for ‘On the Road.’ That was very early on, in 2005, I think. Then Garrett and Kristen and Sam, a little bit later. Everyone was very passionate about this book.

The research allowed us to understand the complexities, and eventually go on beyond the book. When you listen to 50 hours of interviews, who was the person who inspired Marylou in the film, you start to realize there’s so much about her that could be part of the film. Kristen incorporated a lot of that material. Even the voice is influenced by that.

Of course, Garrett met with John Cassady and the whole Cassady family. There were so many hours of interviews with them, and he read all of the Cassady letters, so he was informed. The research was so extensive, they had a better understanding of who the characters were than when we started the film. That allowed us to sometimes improvise some of the characters.

Read Walter's full interview at Shockya.

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Video: Walter Salles at the "Searching for On the Road" Q&A

Mentions Kristen at 13:35mins and 43;15mins

YT thanks to @epnebelle via @KstewAngel 

Photo of Kristen, Walter & Sam on the set of 'On the Road' now in better quality

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New LA Times Celebrity Portraits & Quotes of Kristen, Garrett, & Walter

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One generational change the filmmakers had to contend with was Kerouac’s women — Marylou, who was based on Cassady’s real teenage bride, LuAnne Henderson, and Camille (Kirsten Dunst), based on his wife, Carolyn Cassady, have been criticized as mere sexual objects in “On the Road.”

“We didn’t want them to be victims,” Rivera said. “The girls that just get left behind, get pregnant and cry. We really wanted to make them three-dimensional heroes in their own worlds.”

As a result, Marylou spends much of the film warming men’s beds, but she makes her own decisions. “The reason the book has never been irrelevant is that people have certain fundamental desires,” said Stewart, who couldn’t come along for the ride in the Hudson but spoke by phone. “Marylou would have been well ahead of her time even now.”

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HQ Pics of Kristen at Private LA Screening of "On The Road"

   

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Garrett & Walter Salles talk about Kristen at the 'On the Road' LA Q&A

Stewart, of course, has become known to screaming teenagers everywhere as Bella Swan, the conflicted lead female character in a little vampire movie franchise called "Twilight." The actress actually came aboard "On the Road" before the "Twilight" film series became a reality, with Salles becoming drawn to the actress via her part in the 2007 film "Into the Wild." While her performance in that Sean Penn-directed movie might have opened the door, it was her knowledge of the novel and insight into the Marylou character that sealed the deal.

"I met her and found someone who knew the book inside-out, and also understood that Marylou was 20 years ahead of her time," Salles recalled.

"I think that Kristen in her life, she drifts toward these characters who expand or investigate territories that are forbidden a number of times, and she was very drawn to this."

Read more about the Q&A with Garrett and Walter Salles at The Wrap

Article: @KstewAngel
Video: @abeitotzz via @imTulip via fiercebitchstew
Thank you all.

Walter Salles Mentions Kristen

And Salles gets Kristen Stewart.

As he told me, "She's attracted by roles that trespass borders and she gives life to these characters with passion and intelligence.

"Yes, I do feel she's fearless."

Source

Via @KStewDevotee & @FierceBStew

Video: OTR SAG Q&A in LA

Source ty fiercebitchstew via @kstewfan10

Photos: 'On The Road' Screening in New York

Thanks @kstewartfans