Kristen Jaymes Stewart (born April 9, 1990) is an American actress. She is best known for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga. She has also starred in films including Panic Room (2002), Zathura (2005), In the Land of Women (2007), The Messengers (2007), Adventureland (2009) and The Runaways (2010).
Stewart was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her father, John Stewart, is a stage manager and television producer who has worked for Fox. Her mother, Jules Mann-Stewart, is a script supervisor originally from Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia. She has an older brother, Cameron Stewart, and an adoptive brother, Taylor. Stewart attended school until the seventh grade, and then continued her education by correspondence. She has since completed high school.
Her whole family all worked behind the camera, and Stewart thought she would become a writer/director, but never considered being an actor. "I never wanted to be the center of attention – I wasn't that 'I want to be famous, I want to be an actor' kid. I never sought out acting, but I always practiced my autograph because I love pens. I'd write my name on everything." Stewart's acting career began at the age of eight, after an agent saw her perform in her elementary school's Christmas play. After a year of auditioning, Stewart's first role was a nonspeaking part in the film The Thirteenth Year. Then, she had another part in the film The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas as the "ring toss girl". She subsequently appeared in the independent film The Safety of Objects, in which she played the tomboy daughter of a troubled single mother (Patricia Clarkson). Stewart had a major role in the Hollywood film Panic Room, playing the diabetic daughter of a divorced mother (Jodie Foster). The film received generally positive reviews, and Stewart garnered positive notices for her performance. She was nominated for a Young Artist Award for her performance.
After Panic Room's success, Stewart was cast in another thriller, Cold Creek Manor, playing the daughter of Dennis Quaid's and Sharon Stone's characters. She was again nominated for a Young Artist Award for her performance. It was revealed that at about this time in her career, she had to be homeschooled due to her irregular schedule, which was affecting her grades. She said, "I started homeschooling because my teachers were failing me. I think it was just resentment – I made more work for them. But homeschooling is great; you can study what you want, which allows you to get more excited about what you're doing".
Her first starring role followed, in the children's action-comedy Catch That Kid, opposite Max Thieriot and Corbin Bleu. Stewart also played the role of Lila in the thriller Undertow. To date, Stewart's most critically acclaimed role may be in the Showtime television film Speak (2004), based on the novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. Stewart, 13 at the time of filming, played high school freshman Melinda Sordino, who stops almost all verbal contact after being raped. Stewart received great praise for playing the character, who had only a few speaking lines, but kept up a darkly humorous commentary inside her head throughout the film.
In 2005, Stewart appeared in the fantasy-adventure film Zathura, playing the role of Lisa, the irresponsible older sister of two little boys, who turn their house into a spacecraft hurtling uncontrollably in outer space by playing a board game. The film received praise by critics, but Stewart's performance did not garner much media attention, as it was noted that her character is immobilized during most of the film. The following year, she played the character Maya in Fierce People, directed by Griffin Dunne. After that film, she received the lead role of Jess Solomon in the supernatural thriller film The Messengers.
In 2007, Stewart appeared as teenager Lucy Hardwicke in In the Land of Women, a romantic drama starring Meg Ryan and Adam Brody. The film, as well as Stewart's performance, received mixed reviews. That same year, Stewart appeared in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed adaptation film Into the Wild. For her portrayal of Tracy – a teenage singer who has a crush on young adventurer Christopher McCandless – Stewart received generally positive reviews. Salon.com considered her work a "sturdy, sensitive performance", and the Chicago Tribune noted that she did "vividly well with a sketch of a role." Her performance was not without detractors, however; Variety's critic Dennis Harvey wrote, "It's unclear whether Stewart means to be playing hippie-chick Tracy as vapid, or whether it just comes off that way." After Into the Wild, Stewart had a cameo appearance in Jumper and also appeared in What Just Happened, which was released in October 2008. She also co-stars in The Cake Eaters an independent film that has only been screened at film festivals.
On November 16, 2007, Summit Entertainment announced that Stewart would play Isabella "Bella" Swan in the film Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire romance novel of the same name. Stewart was on the set of Adventureland when director Catherine Hardwicke visited her for an informal screen test which "captivated" the director. She stars alongside Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen, her character's vampire boyfriend. The film began production in February 2008 and finished filming in May 2008. Twilight was released domestically on November 21, 2008. Her performance garnered mixed reviews with some critcs calling her "the ideal casting choice" and praising her for conveying "Bella's detachment, as well as her need to bust through it" while others criticized her acting for being "wooden" and lacking variety in her facial expressions which they described as "blank". After the release of Twilight, Kristen Stewart was awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance for her portrayal as Bella Swan.
Stewart reappeared as Bella in the sequel, The Twilight Saga: New Moon to critical acclaim, receiving much more positive reviews than her portrayal of the same character in Twilight. Jordan Mintzer from Variety called Stewart "the heart and soul of the film" and praised her for giving "both weight and depth to dialogue...that would sound like typical chick-lit blather in the mouth of a less engaging actress, and she makes Bella's psychological wounds seem like the real deal" while critics who gave the film its worst reviews still found her performance "bringing plenty of soul" to the character. She reprised this role in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
Stewart has been nominated and presented with the BAFTA Rising Star award. At the 2010 82nd Annual Academy Awards, Stewart and Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner presented a tribute in honour of the horror movie genre.
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