Some roles stay with an actor long after the cameras stop rolling, a factKristen Stewartknows intimately.
TheChronology of Waterfilmmaker recently opened up about how she hasn't been able to let go of Princess Diana after playing her in the 2021 biopicSpencer. Directed byPablo Larraín, the film earned Stewart her first Academy Award nomination, for her performance as the late royal in asublimely surreal portraitof Diana navigating Christmas 1991 with the royal family as her marriage to the future King Charles dissolved.
In aninterview withThe Telegraphpublished Thursday, Stewart said she felt "haunted" by the late Princess of Wales. "I still am. I can't drive 'round this city, and Paris for that matter, without thinking about her," she added during the interview in London.
"All the love that poured out of this woman… I can cry about her at any moment," Stewart said of Diana, who died in 1997, at 36, after a car accident in the City of Light.
Stewart noted that Diana's experience of being hounded by the media resonated with her as someone who has had a famously tumultuous relationship with the press and the public's scrutiny of celebrity lives. It was that very "overlap in terms of our experience" that Stewart said attracted Larraín to her portraying Diana.
"She was plucked, plucked to death [by paparazzi]," Stewart said. "And her rebellious qualities felt so desperate, and so young and so vulnerable." She added that that level of attention "does kind of soul suck" and revealed that when filming wrapped, "I did feel a bit like a shell, and I think she did too. That was the point."
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The role was an understandably daunting one for Stewart, who confessed that she initially thought Larraín was crazy to cast her as Diana. "I told Pablo he was insane and he should probably hire someone else, but he refused to accept that," she toldThe Telegraph. "There were some massive distinctions between her and me. It was the statuesque thing. It was the eye color — I have green eyes; she has very famously blue eyes that match her ring. So I was like, 'Should we make the engagement ring green, then?'"
But as Stewart remembered, Larraín was adamant that it was more about "spirit."
Her performance would become one of Stewart's most acclaimed turns and signaled the beginning of her expanding her horizons as a Hollywood creative. Now, having recently made her feature directorial debut withThe Chronology of Water, Stewart is calling her own shots and making the big decisions.
Amy Sussman/Getty
In aninterview with the U.K.'sTimeslate last month, Stewart admitted thatshe doesn't see herself working in the U.S. in the long termanymore. "I can't work freely there," she said. "But I don't want to give up completely. I'd like to make movies in Europe and then shove them down the throat of the American people."
The comments were preceded by theTwilightalum discussing the tariffs PresidentDonald Trumphas said he plans to impose on the film industry, and how "terrifying" they are. "Reality is breaking completely under Trump," Stewart said. "But we should take a page out of his book and create the reality we want to live in."
For Stewart, that means continuing to make movies. "It's how I relate to the world," she said. "I'm always going, 'How are we going to make that into a movie?'"
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