Kristen Stewart guesses lines from some of her most well-known movies. She discusses how Twilight affected her approach to acting, the movie she "hated" making and the two movies she is debuting at Sundance.
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00:00 Is this like a Twilight movie?
00:01 No, okay, hold on.
00:02 What does that mean?
00:03 Oh God, I hated this line.
00:04 I hated this line.
00:05 Variety, it's the spice of life.
00:09 [upbeat music]
00:11 Will they kill me, do you think?
00:16 I know what that's from.
00:17 I have a visceral memory of this.
00:19 I say that at some point in Spencer.
00:22 Will they kill me, do you think?
00:24 Primarily it was about kind of absorbing her feeling.
00:28 I know that sounds so obvious,
00:29 but I had to focus on how she made me feel
00:32 and just kind of internalize that,
00:34 take it on physically somehow.
00:35 I had a really brilliant coach
00:37 that helped me kind of source my inclinations toward her
00:40 and kind of the ways that we were similar
00:45 were what I wanted to focus on
00:46 versus the things that made us dissimilar.
00:48 The things that I felt tied to her with
00:51 were really palpable to me,
00:52 so I just sort of kind of thought
00:54 if I could focus on those things
00:55 and distract people from the things that were not the same
00:58 and then kind of forget all of that
01:00 and take the ride, which was pretty surreal
01:03 and not very factual.
01:07 It was like a weird, fevery, poemy experience.
01:11 I had to kind of trust fall into it.
01:13 Thank you.
01:16 Okay, how long have you been 17?
01:18 I still feel 17 sometimes,
01:20 or at least in contexts such as these.
01:22 Oh, this is from "Twilight."
01:24 [bell dings]
01:25 The first one.
01:26 How long have you been 17?
01:28 Started when I was 17.
01:30 We finished up when I was like around,
01:32 yeah, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
01:34 I'm really good at math, five years.
01:35 To stick with something for that long,
01:37 it's not like a very actor-y thing to do.
01:40 We all have this embedded, flitty nature.
01:45 I wanna try on all the shoes,
01:47 and they were the same shoes for so long.
01:48 It was a trippy experience to create something
01:50 that was entirely your own,
01:51 but then in the service of something
01:53 that people love so much.
01:54 The guttural nature of the word Bella.
01:56 I can't hear Bella, the name Bella.
01:58 Like, that has really, all I can hear right now
02:01 when I'm trying to just press rewind is just, "Bella."
02:04 Everyone just referring constantly to her,
02:09 even if she's not in the scene, or yeah,
02:11 like, I was just like, "Enough.
02:13 Bella needs to go to bed.
02:15 Bella needs to just go chill for a while."
02:17 No, guys, I wanna start an all-girl rock band.
02:25 That's from "The Runways."
02:27 No, guys, I wanna start an all-girl rock band.
02:29 I was so scared to play her.
02:31 I was so obsessed with Joan,
02:33 and the movie itself was such a kind of,
02:35 just a droplet in such a larger life
02:37 that I did feel an immense pressure
02:39 to kind of get all of it in,
02:41 even though it was just a glimpse
02:42 in sort of the formative years
02:44 of really just the band that made her wanna be in a band
02:47 for the rest of her life,
02:47 which is a pretty revolutionary thing
02:48 for a girl at that time to wanna do.
02:51 The whole time, I was just like,
02:53 turning myself inside out,
02:55 wondering if she was down with how it was all coming out.
02:57 It was such a nice opportunity to kind of go in a mosh pit
03:01 and get out some energy
03:03 and be able to come back to everything else like lighter.
03:07 "Did you know that it takes men
03:09 an additional seven seconds to perceive,"
03:11 this was a mouthful at the time,
03:13 "a woman as a threat compared to a man?"
03:16 "Did you know that it takes men
03:18 an additional seven seconds to perceive
03:19 a woman as a threat compared to a man?"
03:22 Yeah, I remember saying that.
03:23 That was from a little film called "The Charlie's Angels."
03:27 "Did you know that it takes men
03:28 an additional seven seconds to perceive
03:29 a woman as a threat compared to a man?"
03:32 We wanted a strong opener, you know?
03:33 We wanted to really broadcast what the movie was about.
03:37 It was a good idea at the time.
03:39 I hated making that movie.
03:44 I don't know what else to say to you.
03:46 Honestly, the three, you can't touch,
03:47 like Cameron, Lucy, and Drew.
03:50 I love that movie.
03:51 I love that movie, if that says anything.
03:55 It's not about owning her,
03:57 it's about building a life with her.
03:59 Is this like a "Twilight" movie?
04:03 No, okay, hold on.
04:03 I'm gonna do a Kristen Stewart impression to get it.
04:08 It's not about owning her,
04:09 it's about building a life, happy season.
04:11 [laughs]
04:12 It's not about owning her,
04:13 it's about building a life with her.
04:15 It's a gay Christmas movie.
04:16 All Christmas movies are pretty gay.
04:18 I think it's just sort of like
04:19 the most straightforward one.
04:21 I really love little tiny movies.
04:24 I love ones that you don't always know
04:27 how you feel about them.
04:28 Those don't sell as easily.
04:30 And so it was nice to be a part of something
04:32 that you just know exactly how you feel about it.
04:35 And it was nice to not feel like
04:39 we were doing human impressions,
04:40 but to actually be the humans that we are
04:42 in a context that felt easy and light.
04:45 In a time where we're kind of finally starting
04:47 to broaden perspective,
04:49 it was kind of the most rebellious thing we could do
04:50 is acknowledge that it hadn't been done before.
04:53 And then we could go do the wild, bloody,
04:55 you know, edgy, in your face stuff
04:59 because we were also like,
05:00 also we're just wanna have a good time.
05:03 Thank you for bringing this back to my memory.
05:05 It was a good one.
05:06 Surgery is the new sex.
05:09 Yeah, what does that mean?
05:11 [laughs]
05:12 I don't know if anyone on the movie actually knows.
05:15 Yeah, so that's from Crimes of the Future.
05:18 It's a David Cronenberg movie.
05:19 Surgery is the new sex.
05:21 It's a part of David's like utter genius
05:24 is that you go, this made me feel a lot.
05:28 And it put me in my body.
05:29 And it kickstarted a thought process
05:31 that nobody can untangle,
05:33 but nobody can stop talking about.
05:34 I loved making that movie.
05:36 Also, Viggo's like a legend.
05:37 He's the hottest guy I've ever seen in my life.
05:38 I was like, I can't believe I'm allowed to do this.
05:40 I was there for two weeks.
05:41 We were in Athens.
05:42 It was like so fucking hot the entire time.
05:45 I can't believe I got to be in that movie.
05:46 Like, so lucky.
05:48 You know, a little reefer would take the edge off him.
05:53 When, what year is it?
05:54 A little reefer would take the,
05:57 you know, a little reefer.
05:58 American Ultra?
05:58 No.
05:59 [buzzer]
06:01 Oh, okay, that makes sense.
06:02 Oh yeah, oh God, I hated this line.
06:04 I hated this line.
06:05 I felt like it was like a faux.
06:06 In fact, I have the same response to it right now.
06:08 I'm like, what is this, like 1970?
06:10 Like I just, yeah, a little reefer.
06:13 You know, a little reefer would take the edge off him.
06:16 There's not like tons and tons of information
06:18 about this person.
06:19 She was like such a suppressed person.
06:21 She was an activist in a time where her government
06:23 really had villainized her to the extent
06:25 that she was like a dangerous reject.
06:28 The end of her life is tragically cut short.
06:30 She's an actress that I think was like very present
06:32 and honest and wanted to work for the kind of similar
06:35 reasons that I do, which is you want to get closer
06:38 to people and yourself versus tell other people's stories
06:41 and kind of be a puppet or a mouthpiece.
06:43 But I had to fill in a lot of the blanks.
06:45 So actually, it was a personal endeavor,
06:46 more so than it was getting her right.
06:48 So we made this oath.
06:52 Whoever died first would send the other a sign.
06:54 That's from "Personal Shopper."
06:57 Whoever died first would send the other a sign.
06:59 It's an Olivier Assayas movie.
07:01 It's the second one we did together.
07:03 And while making this movie, we were like so tired
07:08 and like so scared.
07:11 It was the weirdest existential spiral I've ever had
07:14 on a movie that was not fake at all.
07:18 Like I wasn't generating that.
07:19 I think that movie is probably different for everyone.
07:24 So I don't want to like lead the witness,
07:25 but you don't have to believe in ghosts for them
07:28 to be real.
07:29 There are present feelings that are more legitimate
07:32 than alive things.
07:34 And there are dead things that are more present
07:36 than alive things.
07:37 I'm definitely scared of ghosts,
07:39 but I don't know if they're real.
07:41 I don't think we have words for this.
07:43 I think that we definitely have goosebumps for a reason.
07:46 I think that there are through lines and coincidences.
07:49 And I think there's an internal life
07:51 that is inarticulatable.
07:53 Do you drink to drown your sorrows or your conscience?
07:57 This is in an accent.
08:00 And yeah, it was early.
08:03 It's Snow White.
08:05 Yeah.
08:06 Do you drink to drown your sorrows or your conscience?
08:09 It's a tough one.
08:10 It deals with some real present female issues.
08:15 Charlize is one of the most stunning
08:18 and truly powerful people to stand in a room with
08:21 that you can encounter in life.
08:23 And I was kind of in a time in my life
08:24 where I really was like vulnerable and small
08:27 and like insecure,
08:28 but then also like kind of raging quietly.
08:31 You know, Charlize is like a really,
08:33 really fun scene partner.
08:35 And so the whole time I was just like,
08:38 I feel so bad for the queen, actually.
08:40 She's not bad.
08:41 She's been dealt a rough set of cards.
08:43 Anytime there are castles involved,
08:45 like women are being locked somewhere.
08:47 It just felt like kind of a really cool way
08:49 to tell that story that was fun
08:51 and like take a fairy tale and turn it on its head a bit.
08:54 That's nice.
08:56 Well, that's nice of you.
08:57 This is my movie.
08:58 You're getting water in my mouth.
09:01 Oh, it's called Come Swim.
09:03 Yeah.
09:03 You're getting water in my mouth.
09:06 This was really cool because I put the two actors
09:09 that I worked with,
09:09 which were two of my really great friends,
09:11 into a pool and I just told them to kind of play around.
09:15 Really, even if you took all the pictures out of that movie,
09:17 it was a soundscape that I thought
09:18 was still pretty experiential.
09:20 Even though the movie does sort of relate
09:21 to a heartbreak element, it kind of does supersede that.
09:24 So I put this like couple in a pool
09:26 and was like, just try and make them float.
09:27 And they were like playing around
09:28 and he kept pushing her off and she kept going like,
09:30 oh, stop, you're getting water in my mouth.
09:31 And I was like, oh wow,
09:33 if we just like pull that through the rest of the movie,
09:36 you can take a memory that was really happy,
09:39 but then it's sort of transmuted by time
09:42 and your memory starts to sort of morph it
09:44 into something else.
09:45 And if you're sad about someone,
09:47 something that was fun once is now really painful.
09:49 So it sort of started out as like,
09:51 LOL, you're getting water in my mouth.
09:52 And it was like, you're getting water in my mouth.
09:54 You're getting water in my mouth.
09:56 And then it was just sort of about this kid
09:57 like drowning in his memories.
09:59 I haven't been to Sundance in a minute.
10:00 The last time I was there, I was with my short film.
10:03 I feel so at home there.
10:05 I feel obviously like, you know,
10:08 that festival was designed for people like me.
10:10 I love that place.
10:11 The two movies that I'm there with this year
10:14 are called "Love Lies Bleeding" by an English director,
10:17 actually about a really particular slice of the US of A,
10:22 kind of an odd imagining of an 80s fever dream
10:25 in which I think Rose was kind of encouraged
10:28 to tell a strong female story.
10:31 And then the other one is called "Love Me."
10:32 It is a very touching story about all of us.
10:36 It takes place in a time where we have become extinct
10:39 and the internet is still kind of our last footprint.
10:42 I wanna go watch more movies.
10:45 I know everyone says that about festivals
10:47 when they're there with a film,
10:48 but I would love to stay and watch the shorts program.
10:51 It's not the same as it was
10:52 when everyone was wearing UGG boots
10:53 when I was there in the early 2000s.
10:55 What am I saying?
10:56 Yeah, I bet that's exactly what it's gonna be.
10:58 And then I'm gonna be like,
10:59 "You know, when I first came to Sundance,
11:01 "I got my first parka."
11:02 (upbeat music)
11:05 (upbeat music)
11:07 (upbeat music)
11:10 (upbeat music)
11:12 (upbeat music)