Kristen Stewart gains perspective on fame playing Diana
VENICE, Italy (AP) â" Kristen Stewart has long chafed at how her teenage âTwilightâ fame robbed her of her privacy and a normal life, but donât get the wrong idea: Itâs nothing compared to what Princess Diana endured.
âShe was the most famous woman in the world,â Stewart said Friday. âI have tasted a high level of that, but really nowhere near that monumental, symbolic representation of an entire people or nation.â
Stewart gained that perspective filming Pablo Larrainâs âSpencer,â the latest cinematic look at the late Princess of Wales, which premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival. Coming out in between seasons of Netflixâs âThe Crownâ and with the Broadway musical âDianaâ about to open, Larrianâs upside-down fairy tale focuses on the three-day Christmas holiday in the early 1990s that preceded Dianaâs formal separation from Prince Charles.
Much has already been said, seen and written about the collapse of the royal marriage, Dianaâs deep unhappiness and the cruel confines of the British monarchy. âSpencerâ doesnât add new information or novel insights to the Diana pantheon, allowing itself instead to imagine what transpired in those three days at the queenâs Sandringham estate in Norfolk, as the âpeopleâs princessâ unraveled.
âI think the really sad thing about her is that she - as normal and casual and disarming as her air is immediately - she also felt so isolated and so lonely,â Stewart told a Venice press conference. âShe made everyone else feel accompanied and bolstered by this beautiful light, and all she wanted was to have it back.â
This is the second 20th Century icon-in-crisis that Larrain has brought to Venice, after he premiered âJackie,â a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis starring Natalie Portman, in 2016. Larrain said he decided to profile Diana because he âwanted to make a movie that my mother would like.â
The Chilean director said his mother adored Diana, dressed like her and even had her hair done like her - the famous Lady Di feathered shag. But he said the more he researched Diana, âI realized that she carried an enormous amount of mystery, and that mystery combined with the magnetism she had creates the perfect elements for a movie.â
Indeed. Diana has been the subject of at least a dozen movies and TV series, from two U.S. made-for-TV movies about the 1981 royal wedding, released a year later, to a 1993 film based on the book âDiana: Her True Storyâ to the 2013 movie âDianaâ starring Naomi Watts as the princess.
None have been particularly flattering to the monarchy. Queen Elizabeth IIâs motto is often summarized as ânever complain, never explain.â On that principle, Buckingham Palace has refrained from commenting on the many fictionalized accounts of the royal familyâs life, from âThe Queenâ - Stephen Frearsâ 2006 film about the aftermath of Dianaâs death - to Netflixâ âThe Crown.â
Stewart, who rose to international fame as a teenage Bella Swan in the âTwilightâ franchise, was asked how it felt to be portraying someone subject to a similar level of voyeuristic obsession that she has experienced. Stewart tackled similar subject matter in âSeberg,â about the âBreathlessâ star Jean Seberg, which also made its out-of-competition debut at Venice in 2019.
Stewart drew the line between mere movie star and global icon. âIâm allowed to make mistakes,â she noted.
She also defended the decision to again explore Dianaâs story, saying itâs an imaginary piece of art, not an invasion of her privacy or that of her familyâs.
âThere is a difference between intruding and the multiplicity that art brings to this world,â Stewart said.
âI think if anyone made a movie about me, I wouldnât feel stolen from or taken from,â she added. âThereâs nothing salacious about our intention. That would probably be more embedded in interpretation.â
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