Mini-Biography
Kristen Stewart was born on the 9th of April 1990, in Los Angeles, California but her family relocated briefly to Colorado before returning to L.A. Her performance in a grade school Christmas play caught the eye of an agent in the audience, who contacted her parents to gauge Stewart’s interest in becoming an actress. Her first screen appearance came a year later in the Disney Channel TV production, The Thirteenth Year, in which she played a bit role. A more substantial part came two years later with Rose Troche’s challenging independent drama, The Safety of Objects, in which she played the boyish daughter of troubled single mom Patricia Clarkson.
Stewart found herself at the center of a major Hollywood production in 2002 when she replaced Hayden Panetierre as the juvenile lead in David Fincher’s Panic Room. Following Panic Room, Stewart signed on to play the daughter of Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone in another suspenseful project, Mike Figgis’ Cold Creek Manor (2003). However, it fared poorly with audiences. Her next role was her first as a leading actress – Catch That Kid (2004). A minor hit with younger audiences, it allowed Stewart a chance to show a lighter side of her acting talents than her previous efforts. Stewart’s other film from 2004 was the psychological drama Undertow, which despite an acclaimed director, David Gordon Green, it received almost no theatrical screentime.Her next film was Speak (2005) which was based on the best-selling novel by Laurie Halse Anderson.
Stewart then segued into Jon Favreau’s underrated space fantasy Zathura (2005). In 2006, Stewart starred in the Canadian feature Fierce People, the picture received a limited release in the United States. She followed this with another starring role in The Messengers, a supernatural film from noted Thai genre filmmakers and brothers Danny and Oxide Pang. Despite the directors’ reputation with horror audiences, it was critically panned and largely ignored by moviegoers.
After The Messengers, Stewart worked on no less than six pictures including In the Land of Women, with Meg Ryan and Adam Brody, Into The Wild and Cutlas. For 2008 watch for her in What Just Happened?, The Yellow Handkerchief, Adventureland and Twilight. Stewart also found time for smaller projects like Mary Stuart Masterson’s directorial debut The Cake Eaters, in which she plays a young woman with a debilitating disease.
