Because it comes through you.

Like something happens and all of a sudden you got an idea.

And when those moments strike, it's like religious.

It feels like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I just got so lucky.

It's a really fortunate, really, really rare thing.

[Kirsten Stewart's career timeline]

So "The Thirteenth Year" was a movie that my mom was a script supervisor on.

I initially, as a little kid kind of going to set and hanging out with the crew, I would see other children on set and think like, well, what are they doing?

I wanna hang out with you guys all the time.

Why do I have to go back to school?

Why do I have to leave?

I wanted to be around that energy before I even knew why that energy was appealing to me.

I'm standing in line at a water fountain.

So, yeah, I think I like, lean.

That's some of my more challenging work actually.

I really loved being there.

I loved not having to go home and whatever.

Being a part of the circus of it all was really fun, but then when the movie came out and a couple of kids at school noticed that I was in it for a second, it was like, not welcome.

I was like, "no, I don't know."

"My mom, I don't know, whatever."

But it was trippy.

I didn't like the conversations that happened afterwards at school being like: "What? But, wait, who are you? What, are you like an actor now?"

I'm like, "no!"

"Panic Room"

What if they get in here?

No, they can't.

No, they can't, they can't get in here.

It's not a possibility, there's no way...

Mom, I heard you.

"Panic Room"

Jodie Foster threw me a birthday party when I turned 11 with like a mariachi band.

I never wanted to leave.

Every time I had to go home because it had been nine hours, I was like, "Why? I'm fine, I can kick it. I can hang, I'm not tired."

And everyone was like, "no, it's really for your welfare."

And I was like, "I'm well, thank you."

"May I stay?"

In terms of preparation, you kind of acquire as much information as you possibly can, and then you kind of hope that it becomes something physical.

But I can never get anything up on its feet until it's the word go, until it feels like there's like an honor to the moment and there's a reason why you're doing something as absurd as pretending to be someone else.

I had to learn how to have a seizure.

I remember it scared everyone else so much.

Just thinking like, oh, this is very intense for a little kid to do, and watching the videos might be traumatizing for someone that age.

I like broke blood vessels in my eyes and just like really.

I remember it being like, "What? It's cool."

Now things affect me.

I'm like sensitive.

But when I was little, I was like...

"I can do it. No big deal, whatever."

Yeah, it was a good first taste.

It was like not an easy job.

I mean, we had to really like, delve into some heavy stuff, and I turned 11 at that movie.

Like that was some formative time.

My room.

Definitely, my room.

"Catch That Kid"

It was a movie about a little kid who robs a bank to save her dad.

And I was like, gut-wrenchingly obsessed with this. I am!

Who has the codes to all these?

Oh, they're different from room to room.

It was my first starring role, but even with a tiny little part on a movie everyone is holding this really precarious bowl of water hoping that not one drop slips, and I felt like I would've done anything for the film.

"Into the Wild"

Sean Penn attracted me to "Into the Wild".

Actually, initially I went and did a table read for him, and I was really little.

And scared of that.

I remember thinking like, I told him, you know I'll do anything in the movie.

I don't even need to play one of the parts.

It's awesome that I got to meet you.

It's awesome that like I was part of the read-through because that in itself felt like it's own animal, like it really stood up and was an experience that I remember.

So he was like, well, which one would you want to play?

I was like, probably the girl who plays guitar.

And I played for him, I like, auditioned for it after this read-through and like, couldn't even face him.

I was like facing a wall, very badly playing "Blackbird."

Couldn't sing it.

Just speaking of shooting that movie, it was the first time working with anyone that felt so unstructured and so instinctive in terms of capturing the footage.

We had like a splinter crew almost everywhere we went.

He threw a camera on his shoulder.

Eric Gautier, who's like one of my all-time favorite DPs, also like, was just running, gunning, like.

Like, we didn't know what we were gonna do until we found it.

I've heard a lot about that.

People talk about that all the time, but it doesn't mean they actually have the balls to like, commit to not knowing before they know.

Sean is like, a master at that.

Those few days with Emile, and him, and Eric made me want to direct movies. Straight up.

Seeing him in the way that he sort of led this charged that was unbridled.

I was like, yep, absolutely, I would love to do that.

"Twilight"

When we did "Twilight", I knew that the fan base was big for the book.

There was no way of preparing for the response that it had.

We went to Comicon, and there were so many people there that knew more about the series than I did.

-That was kind of the first indication that it was gonna be what it was and. -[The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2]]

The idea of doing a sequel at that point for me was absurd.

It was weird for me to all of a sudden be asked the question like: "Okay, well, now that we're here, how do we do this right?"

"How do we capitalize on this basically?"

Suddenly the chance of kind of like, kick back and go, well, the best experiences I've had on any project of any kind have been when you are naturally and instinctively drawn to a person,

And there's something that you're both thinking about or meditating on that becomes obsessive and compulsive, you make a movie.

'Cause that's all I know.

And so I was at that point like allowed to pick weird things that nobody believed in because I made a big movie once.

So, yeah, it definitely kind of blew my head off.

Wow, you are really trying to kill me.

I thought Em in "Adventureland" was like just the coolest person, and I was so intimidated by her.

I mean, her name is Em.

It's not even Emily.

It's like, okay, you don't even go by your whole name?

Okay, I'm gonna go for a swim.

Anybody care to join me?

Even if I can't fully relate to a person that I'm playing, we can all understand each other.

Maybe I wouldn't do, say, or act in a certain way or whatever, but I can always find it somewhere embedded.

I've never played something where I've not understood the person.

"The Runaways"

Hello?

Pick up the phone!

Joan, please!

I grew up in Los Angeles.

So I think like we're a huge radio culture.

I've listen to Joan Jett a lot when I was younger.

She's so quintessential.

When I met her to make the movie, it was really crazy 'cause she's like an animal.

She's got barbs and stuff because she's protecting something really precious.

Like she's, you know, leather clad, really driven, like chaotically obsessed with music and cannot stop touring.

Even her body, her body is a muscle.

It's so reflective of who she is as a person.

She a real live-wire.

At our first band rehearsal, we were playing "Cherry Bomb," and I like just wasn't committing to it at all because we weren't shooting.

Why would I fully, fully, fully lean into this when we're not actually here to capture it, you know what I mean?

It's just felt like almost like I was traipsing on something or doing a lame impression just for the sake of it.

I saw her face kind of go like, you know, what the fuck.

We'd spent all this time together, and all of a sudden I was like dropping the ball or something.

And, she doesn't make movies.

I don't make music.

We do different things.

I had to literally, imploringly like, run over and tackle her and be like, yo, trust me.

I just don't work like that.

I just can't do it right now.

And she was like, okay.

And then we shot it a couple days later.

And she was fine, she was happy with what I did, whatever.

And it was really cathartic and gnarly to see her watch really formative parts of her life come back to life.

But, yeah, very intimidated.

I was like, crying.

I was like, trust me.

I swear to you I can do this.

I think she's happy with it, who knows.

She still talks to me, so.

"Clouds of Sils Maria"

He's here just to see you.

The project doesn't interest me, okay?

He's a great director, just hear him out.

You don't have to do it.

He's probably the best of his generation.

I've always felt super allowed to be in environments with the Frenchies.

It's funny like even in doing press and having meetings with French filmmakers and working with Olivier now a couple of times, subverting material is their game.

I mean like making something feel alive and in the moment and unplanned and existential and weird, but not holier than thou.

There was just this thing where I felt like I could bash my head into a wall trying to figure something out, and that would be the moment, rather than going like: "Why haven't you completed a perfect sentence?"

I was like, no, of course this is beautiful.

You let her do what she's gonna do.

Its like, yes, that's what we're all trying to do.

I'm a huge fan of Olivier.

I'm gonna be honest and say I don't think I would've said no really to anything.

It meant most for me to win that award for Olivier because he is one of... like, just one of the most brilliant artists working, and I love him.

You have your interpretation of the play.

I think mine's just confusing you.

"Personal Shopper"

What are you waiting for?

So we made this oath.

Whoever died first would send the other a sign.

A sign?

From the afterlife?

You could call it that.

You could call it a million things.

In "Personal Shopper" I played somebody who's lost her other half, basically.

A girl who has a twin loses her brother, and loses herself so completely that, you know, black and white and hot and cold and the words that you use to communicate to others just become shape and color, and like, literally nothing makes sense to you at all.

Going into the movie, I wasn't super obsessed with that part of it.

I kind of only realized in retrospect having watched the movie what a thing that was.

And my entire goal as an actor is to be as prepared or sort of knowledgeable as you can possibly be in order to be so subject something that you feel like the lack of control is really exhilarating.

I've had some experiences that have rocked me to the point where I felt like I didn't know my name, so I could bring that to it.

But at the same time, I don't really know what's going on all the time.

Whenever I watch a film that I've acted in, as much as I try and like, control stuff or ask a million questions or like live in the director's front pocket, if I've done my job correctly, I shouldn't really even know like, what the movie's about.

You don't need to feel guilty.

Laura deserves to be happy.

And you do too.

”"Come Swim"

I knew that I wanted to direct movies before I had anything to direct.

And that was really frustrating for a long time 'cause like I had this awareness of the desire, but like nowhere to put it.

I was just fixated on this image of like a chair on the bottom of the ocean.

Like a chair from a classroom, and it was so.

Like, that chair didn't belong there, and it was really scary for that chair to be there.

I started thinking about capturing that image and why I was so fixated on it.

God, like with writing, directing, anything, I think like, I did grow up to realize that you don't need to be smarter than other people, that you don't need to know things that people don't know.

You're not like providing a syllabus to life.

It's really more of just a personal experience to try and like bridge this gap between us, where you go: "Gosh, I've had this idea, and I wanna say it really loudly to see how many people feel that way so we can be less alone."

That's why you make movies, you know.

The directors that I've worked with that I couldn't even touch, like just people that are scholars, people that have just spent their whole lives obsessing over film and watching every single one of them and went to school and did, you know what I mean.

Like I could never, I mean, look.

I'm so not there.

But then when they have a moment that's regular and ordinary with you, the thing that they're absolutely best at is just making someone feel comfortable enough to like be themselves.