First-Time Nominee Spotlight: Kristen Stewart
After both the Screen Actors Guild Awards and BAFTAs passed on giving Kristen Stewart’s performance as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer a nomination, many considered her chances of receiving one from the Academy Awards to be slim. The naysayers were proven wrong, though, when the 31-year-old received her first-ever Oscar nod. Ahead of this year’s ceremony, we’re giving you a look at the journey that led to Stewart’s inaugural nomination from the prestigious awards body.
The actor was born and raised in Los Angeles to industry parents. Stewart divulged during a Vanity Fair interview that her mother was the script supervisor on the first-ever movie in which she appeared, the Disney Channel original The Thirteenth Year. And while she didn’t have any lines — Girl in Fountain Line is her official IMDb credit — the actor felt drawn to the set atmosphere. “I wanted to be around that energy before I even knew why that energy was appealing to me,” she recalled.
Her first speaking role came with Rose Troche’s 2001 drama The Safety of Objects, and Stewart shared with W Magazine that working on the film helped her realize acting was what she wanted to do. “I’ve been chasing that [feeling] ever since,” the actor added. “It’s that sense of creating something together with others. It was exciting to see how many versions of myself I could find.”
Just one year later, a young Stewart was seen playing opposite Jodie Foster in David Fincher’s home invasion thriller Panic Room. Her first starring role was in the 2004 family action comedy Catch That Kid, and then came her performance as Tracy Tatro in Sean Penn’s 2007 film adaptation of Into the Wild. According to an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, that was the performance that drew director Catherine Hardwicke to Stewart for the role of Bella Swan in Twilight. The 2008 adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s young adult vampire novels made the actor a household name at the age of 18, and various sequels followed.
In between them, Stewart appeared in a number of titles ranging from Greg Mottola’s Adventureland to Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways to Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman. Then came her performance opposite Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria, the 2014 drama from French auteur Olivier Assayas. Her work in the film earned Stewart a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar, making her the first American female actor to ever win the award.
Besides the occasional big picture, such as Elizabeth Banks’ Charlie’s Angels remake, a string of indies followed that — Tim Blake Nelson’s Anesthesia, Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, and Craig William Macneill’s Lizzie, to name a few. But we want to talk about the second collaboration between Assayas and Stewart, the 2016 art house film Personal Shopper. Larraín told The New Yorker that the actor’s performance in that feature displayed the qualities he wanted for Spencer’s Diana.
That brings us to the role for which Stewart received her first-ever Academy Awards nomination. Larraín’s film about “the people’s princess” takes place during the Royal Family’s Christmas festivities at Sandringham House in 1991, and Stewart portrays the character of Diana as she struggles with the cage of royal life and the tipping point of her marriage. The performance was met with much critical praise, and one Deadline review called it “a bracing, bitter, moving, and altogether stunning turn.”
Thanks to the international success of the Twilight film series, Stewart is no stranger to widespread acknowledgment of her work. But the critical acclaim of an Oscar nomination is a different type of recognition, and come March 27 when the Academy Awards take place, you can find out if the actor takes home her first-ever statuette. In the meantime, though, we think Stewart has certainly earned her place in the Oscar spotlight.
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