When I stopped going to school, I got the strongest dose of perspective. When you're a kid, your friends, your school, your teachers, your family - that's your whole world, your whole existence. And then when I stopped going, I lost all my friends but the few that were really close to me.
— Kristen Stewart
Everyone always says, 'Kristen got 'Panic Room' because she looks like Jodie Foster.' But it was actually Nicole Kidman who was supposed to play my mother.
I'm not sure if I'm most happy when I'm comfortable and content or when I'm pushing myself to the limits. There are such different versions of happy, and I really appreciate both.
I don't want to be Angelina Jolie. Not that Angelina Jolie is not the most talented, beautiful, successful, amazing, admirable person who does good things for the world, but I don't want to be a movie star like that.
Once you have done with school, you realise that it is just a smaller version of life, and really I have felt that I should have been an adult since I was aged about five.
But I'm glad I'm not one of those actresses who is just so ready to open up for everyone.
I guarantee whenever I get married or have a baby, everyone is going to want to know my kid's name and I'm not going to say it for ages. That's just the way I want to do it. It'll come out but it won't have come from me.
I have brothers, and that so-called boyish quality was something that I was deathly self-conscious about when I was younger.
I have a great family by the way, but you need to find people who can pull something out from you that might be otherwise unseen.
It took me a long time to realise that I was a girl as a teenager. At that point I never really believed it. I looked like a boy for a long time. Now, finally, I feel like a woman.
But, I'm kind of a control freak. I get really freaked out if I don't know what's going on and what's going to happen.
I just can't go to the mall. It bothers me that I can't be outside very often.
I don't talk to anybody about my personal life, and maybe that perpetuates it, too. But it's really important to own what you want to own and keep it to yourself.
The strangest part about being famous is you don't get to give first impressions anymore. Everyone already has an impression of you before you meet them.
You don't always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you're controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.
My best friend just had a baby, and she's my age. So I'm a godmom now, which is crazy.
I'm like, bursting. I should be working. I don't want to take a break. It's funny, on set, I don't have to go to the bathroom, I don't have anything wrong, I'm perfectly fine, so through-and-through. I'm not hungry. I'm literally not even in my own body.
My brother's a grip. My mom's a scriptwriter. My dad's a director. So it's like, at heart, I'm a below-the-line girl.
I don't want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie. Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable. I'm an actor. It's bizarre to me that everybody's so obsessive.
You should never step outside of your life and look at it like it's this malleable thing you can shape so that people view it a certain way.
I want to make books. I want to take pictures and then write all over the pictures. And then I don't have to say a complete story, because I have the picture, and I have just a word.
I want to be an actor, I am just not very comfortable talking about myself.
I also have that desire to blurt stuff out, but I've learned I can't do that. Not when you realise the whole world is listening. That's why perhaps I look so uncomfortable in interviews at times.
It's not like I sit around watching my movies again and again, but I've never quite believed actors when they say they don't watch themselves.
I did two commercials, one for Porsche, but I was definitely not the type of child one would cast in a commercial or any TV that you'd typically go out for as a young kid. I wasn't the type of kid who would be in stuff that kids watch. I wasn't cutesy.
Females want other females to be really strong, so there are a whole lot of scripts that are basically just male parts renamed as a girl.
I grew up in a happy household.
It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job. I really don't think about my career, in terms of planning it out and what this does for me.
I don't think I would ever have been able to be an actress had I not started at nine years old.
There's an idea about who I am that's eternally projected onto me, and then I almost feel like I have to fulfill that role. Even when things come out of my mouth, I want to be sure I'm saying exactly what I mean.
This weird thing happens when you're in a movie that has some level of success. People start offering you all kinds of things, and they just expect you to do them because they'll be good for your career. It's not about the project's integrity or anything like that.
I don't exercise. I'm skinny-fat. I worry about being too skinny.
I want a cheeseburger so badly, but I have to be a vampire in a few weeks.
Actors walk around wearing these little tool-belts of acting skills. And I just don't find that interesting to watch. I never want to see someone who clearly can cry at the drop of a hat. That's so uninteresting.
For most actors, it's such a struggle to get work. Once they have it, they feel that there's an enormous amount of pressure on them to make it work, and have everyone love them. In my case, it was never like that. It was just about working with the people that I want to work with, and telling the stories that I want to tell, you know?
I have been criticized a lot for not looking perfect in every photograph. I'm not embarrassed about it. I'm proud of it. If I took perfect pictures all the time, the people standing in the room with me, or on the carpet, would think, 'What an actress! What a faker!'
You have to be OK with your own fears. If you're an honest person, you'll make mistakes, but that's when the most interesting things happen.
I do want to work on writing, because writing's a skill. Writing is something that you can train yourself to know better. To know yourself better. And it's intimidating as hell.
I am quite shy and people think I'm aloof.
And I like to keep whatever is mine remaining that way. It's a funny little game to play and it's a slippery slope. I always say to myself I'm never going to give anything away because there's never any point or benefit for me.
It's a funny thing: You want so badly for people to see what you do - you're proud of it - and I like the effect that movies have on people. But the attention can also make me uncomfortable.
I think I'm a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It's not about being shameful, I'm just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear.
I've worked with women who I've never wanted to tell anything about myself to, and I've worked with guys who have been pouring wells of emotion. So emotional availability is not a gender-specific thing.
Despite what people think, I was such a rule follower at school.
Success is always something completely different to people. I feel like I've succeeded, if I'm doing something that makes me happy and I'm not lying to anybody.
I went to public school up until junior high.
I've actually always been interested in following a character more long term, but the only place to really do that as an actor is on a TV series.
I have really bad luck with my thumbs. It plagues me, actually. It drives me crazy! Both of them are very oddly shaped.
I'm about to play an emaciated pregnant vampire, so I've stopped using as much butter as Paula Deen - just until 'Breaking Dawn' is over.
I'm 19, and, being a public figure, I'm supposed to present myself in a certain way, but it's hard and you're never going to be able to tell people who you are through the media.
