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Kristen Stewart is playing JOAN JETT in The RUNAWAYS
from: news.com.au
by Lawrie Masterson
JUST when you thought another Twilight movie would leave her typecast as the unlucky-in-vampire-love teen Bella Swan, Kristen Stewart is preparing to smash that mould and start kicking some serious butt as pioneer female rock star JOAN JETT.
The RUNAWAYS, the story of the so-called "jailbait rock" band that launched Jett as a teenager in 1975, is due for release next year.
"It's the coolest opportunity I've ever been given," says 19-year-old Stewart, who also is starring in the drama K-11, directed by her Australian-born mother Jules Mann-Stewart.
"The reason rock 'n' roll is the way it is now and the reason girls are allowed to be not just outspoken but sexually aggressive is because The RUNAWAYS did it first.
"I hadn't heard of the band before I started production on The RUNAWAYS."
"Everybody knows JOAN JETT but nobody really remembers how she got her start."
"Now I feel she's become my friend."
"This was the most important time of her life and I really hope I did it right, but it's, like, pretty daunting. It's scary."
Jett, born Joan Marie Larkin and now aged 51, was a member of The RUNAWAYS for about two years.
She achieved her biggest success in 1982 out front of her band The BLACKHEARTS with a cover of Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker's I Love Rock 'n' Roll and was the first woman to set up her own recording label.
The RUNAWAYS, written for the screen and directed by Italian-born Floria Sigismondi, is based on the cautionary tale Neon Angels, written by the band's singer Cherie Currie.
It traces the fast rise and even faster burnout that can epitomise the rock 'n' roll life.
Currie is played in the movie by 15-year-old star Dakota Fanning.
Stewart, who has been working since she was eight and had her first major role in David Fincher's Panic Room (2002) opposite dual Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster, became fast friends with Fanning, who got her big break opposite another two-time Oscar winner, Sean Penn, in Jessie Nelson's I Am Sam (2001).
"She's incredible," Stewart says during an interview in Beverly Hills.
"I look up to her, and I'm more than three years older than her.
"I have a relationship with her that I couldn't possibly have with most other people because she understands completely where I'm coming from.
She's just really cool and I like her a lot."
Before Stewart and Fanning get to strut their stuff in The RUNAWAYS, Stewart is back as Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the second film based on the wildly successful books by Stephenie Meyer.
Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, About a Boy) replaces Catherine Hardwicke, the director who originally cast Stewart as Bella and English actor Robert Pattinson as her 104-year-old vampire lover Edward Cullen.
Hardwicke's Twilight, released last year, grossed almost $300 million and made superstars of Stewart and Pattinson, whose previous biggest claim to fame was playing Cedric Diggory in two Harry Potter movies.
A third film, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, directed by David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), will be released next year and Meyer has completed a fourth book, Midnight Sun.
Stewart and 23-year-old Pattinson, who are in a relationship off-screen, are in for the long haul.
"I think Stephenie is finished (with the franchise)," says Stewart, who names New Moon as her favourite book so far.
"We have every intention of making all four of them. I couldn't imagine not completing the saga.
"This is a character I committed to once and I'm lucky to be able to follow her this long, because usually I have such a tiny period of time to play a character."
In New Moon, following Bella's ill-fated 18th birthday party, Edward and his family have moved away from Forks, Washington, in an effort to protect her from the dangers inherent in their world. But heartbroken Bella discovers Edward's image comes to her whenever she puts herself in jeopardy and, in her desire to be with him at any cost, she starts to take greater and greater risks.
With her childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), Bella refurbishes an old motorcycle to carry on her adventures. Her frozen heart gradually is thawed by Jacob, a member of the mysterious Quileute tribe of Native Americans, who has a supernatural secret of his own.
Stewart says the fact that Pattinson is her boyfriend does not have an effect on them as actors playing characters who are in a relationship, albeit one removed from real life.
"I'm lucky to have the very established dynamics that we have because we have a different director every time and, as much as the movies stand alone, I think they have to have a flow," she says.
She has become more comfortable with the constant attention they receive, or "this world" as she calls the publicity and marketing machine that has built them into one of the world's most popular young couples.
Bella and Edward Barbie dolls are in the stores just in time for the release of the new movie and, of course, the Christmas rush.
As recently as the release of Twilight last year, Stewart says she lacked the confidence to say her piece, believing she put too much stock in her own words.
"I was concerned at coming across as insincere," she says. "I refrained from saying what I actually felt because I thought it would be read as cliched and it would be like I was lying, like it was fake if I said, 'I love this movie. I put my heart and soul into this movie. I'd do anything for it'.
"It's not that I wasn't honest; I was just concerned. But as soon as I stopped trying to control how everyone was going to think of me, it's gotten easier. It was a natural progression."
She laughs and adds: "And I love this movie."
The Twilight Saga: New Moon opens in cinemas on Thursday, November 19
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