‘Twilight’ trio, one more time
NO GLIB sound bites for Kristen Stewart. She carefully weighs everything she says. Photo by Ruben Nepales
LOS ANGELES – In the course of interviewing Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner over the past years, we’ve come to expect a few things.
Robert has the Brit sense of humor – easy to laugh, blessed with a self-deprecating wit. He’s light and casual. He doesn’t care much for styling himself. In our most recent talk, for “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1,” Robert could be going for the grunge look or, we think, he just did not care or notice that his white T-shirt had a hole.
Taylor tends to be serious. He’ll crack a joke or make a quip occasionally but overall, there’s a reflective air about him. He’s grown into a sharp dresser, favoring dark ensembles.
Kristen was painfully shy and awkward in our first few interviews, giving very short answers, but she has remarkably grown into a very articulate woman. She’s one of a few actors who really weighs her answers. Kristen carefully considers the words she says because she means them. No glib sound bites for this actress. Sometimes, she appears somewhat nervous, but that’s just who she is.
We talked to the three separately. Below are excerpts from our interviews:
Kristen Stewart
KRISTEN Stewart: “It was weird at first; it got comfortable. When we did the love scene, I wasn’t nervous.” Photo by Ruben Nepales
“Rob and I have made out in this movie more than I can possibly imagine,” declared Kristen, wearing a very short skirt that showed off her legs. “It was weird at first. It got comfortable. When we did the love scene, to be honest with you, I wasn’t nervous about it. It was easy to make fun of it because it wasn’t shot from beginning to end. It was very memory-oriented. Everything in this movie is very much through Bella’s perspective so it was ‘piece-y.’ We shot in fragments. There were lots of close-ups.”
Unlike some actors, Kristen doesn’t need a drink to get in the mood. “My job doesn’t drive me to drink,” she simply said.
Kristen cited the three’s recent big event, imprinting their hand and feet in cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, when asked to talk about their friendship.
“To be in the middle of everything that we are in, to have them on either side of me is amazing,” she remarked. “A perfect example is when we put our hands in cement. I felt fairly ridiculous looking down on my hands. They were so tiny. I was just thinking, God, I can’t believe this is happening. Then you look to the right and left and it makes sense. I couldn’t have done it without them. It would have been a very different experience.”
She added, “Every time I realize that I haven’t talked to Taylor in a while, it worries me. It shocks me. I go, whoa, where is he? I have to talk to him.”
Looking into the future, Kristen said she does not make long-range plans. “I’m not the type of person who can sit down and map out a career,” she said. “As soon as you start doing that, there’s no way for you to know what you’re going to love. I don’t understand that mentality. I’ve gotten exceptionally lucky. The things that have spoken to me, like ‘Twilight’ and ‘Snow White,’ could have been made for 100 bucks. I would have done it, both of them. I’m led by other things rather than how high the profile of a film is. That means nothing to me. Wha
tever happens, happens. Hopefully, I stay in a position where I can do things that provoke me.”
Robert Pattinson
ROBERT PATTINSON: “Kristen is so much more comfortable with her body than I am.” Photo by Ruben Nepales
Breaking into his impish grin, Robert said about an actor in a much-anticipated scene in “Breaking Dawn – Part 1,” “I thought he was a real priest in the scene when we were getting married. He kept forgetting what our characters’ names were. He called us Robert and Kristen. She told me that he wasn’t a real priest.”
Asked how many beds were used in his bed-shaking sex scene with Kristen, Robert laughed and replied, “It was just one bed but it was a trick bed. It was unusual to do a sex scene when there’s a whole stunt set-up. There were three guys behind the bed who controlled the bed. I’m trying to do a sex scene and a guy is cueing me for when the bed breaks. I’m also looking at the big guy lying underneath, on the floor.”
He explained, “When you’re doing a sex scene, people don’t really give you that much pressure on the set because for one thing, a director doesn’t want to step in and suggest how he would do it (laughing). Because it’s probably uncomfortable for him, too.”
“I was protective of Kristen,” he admitted about filming the scene. “She is so much more comfortable with her body than I am. I was thinking, we must keep the sheet up in between takes. But that was really more for her. That was probably the scariest part – having to be judged by your physicality. I was trying to avoid that in the entire series.”
Robert did workouts to be in shape for the shirtless scenes. “Yeah, for a while,” he said. With a chuckle, he quipped, “But as soon as I didn’t have to take my shirt off, I stopped.”
Taylor Lautner
TAYLOR Lautner: “The love triangle is not over.” Photo by Ruben Nepales
“Wait for the next movie,” Taylor hinted about exposing more skin. “That’s all I have to say.”
Of their hand and foot print ceremony, he said, “If I had to choose one moment in the past few years that has been the most surreal, it would probably be that. I first moved here from Michigan when I was 11 years old. I went to the Walk of Fame and looked at the stars, the hand and foot prints. It was the coolest thing. I never thought when I was looking at those that one day, I would actually be there. It was so surreal and such an incredible honor.”
“For some reason, I didn’t think it was going to be such an event,” he added. “I thought the three of us were just going to show up and put our hands on wet cement. But no, there were thousands of fans and there were even helicopters. I was nervous doing it because I didn’t want to mess up my handprint. I thought, what if I mess up? It’s going to be there forever. And all the attention on top of that. My hands were shaking a little bit. We had a lot of fun.”
Of his popular character, Taylor said, “Jacob starts out in this movie as the same Jacob we’ve seen before. He’s immature, selfish. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he pouts or handles it wrong. Throughout the movie, we see him grow and make difficult decisions. He is forced to mature and become a man. By the end, something happens. He realizes why everything has been happening this way. He’s not meant to be with Bella.
“We’ll be able to explore the outcome of all that in the next movie. My character will be more mature. In this movie, the love triangle is not over. Even though Bella and Edward are married, the triangle is still there, just in a different way. In the next one, Jacob realizes his reason for existence.”
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