Kristen Stewart covers the latest issue of Rolling Stone to promote her latest indie movie, Love Lies Bleeding. It’s a unique project – a queer actor playing a queer character in a lesbian romance/action/drama. Kristen is really proud of it and she’s been talking about it for months. Kristen has seemingly moved into a new phase of her life and career – still working with indie directors and still figuring out what she wants creatively and personally, but much more settled and comfortable in her own skin. She still comes across as a bit jumpy and even immature at times (like she’s on a permanent sugar high) but overall, she seems really happy and focused these days. You can read the full Rolling Stone piece here (it’s a lot). Some highlights:

She’s an early riser these days: There was a spell when she had “a very f–ked-up relationship with sleep,” but now she goes to bed early and rises early, waking up to work with fiancee Dylan Meyer on one of the many projects being spearheaded by Nevermind, the production company the two founded with producer Maggie McLean in 2023. “Me and Dylan are writing something, so the first three hours, we treasure them. Our brains are just working well at that time. When she moved into this house, I had no curtains, three forks, and I never drank coffee, and I was like, ‘I don’t sleep.’ She’s like, ‘In the morning, you drink coffee and you work, and you’re alive, and you’re awake, and then at night you close the curtains.’ In retrospect, it was so obvious.”

She won’t keep talking about Robert Pattinson: “Rob and I can’t just keep talking about that sh-t, because it’s f–king weird. It’s like if someone kept asking you — I mean for literally decades — ‘But senior year in high school?’ You’re like, ‘F–king A, man! I don’t know!’”

Love Lies Bleeding: As an openly gay movie star — “and there aren’t that many openly gay movie stars” — it felt personal in a way Stewart hadn’t quite expected: a queer film that didn’t revolve around the “coming out” narrative, and in which the queerness was less a plot point than a vibe. Playing Lou felt like a return to her “first setting. It is a really weird, kind of moving return to form in some way. Kind of like who you are when you’re 11 — physically, the clothes you choose to wear — before you’ve just been pummeled by male expectation.”

Performing femininity: “I never have felt like I have performed a femininity in order to reap its benefits in a way that felt like a lie. I’m very fluid, and I’ve never felt like, ‘Oh, wow, I was doing this lie for a long time in order to get jobs.’ That would be wrong. I have had a good time playing with all of the tonal qualities. But there’s so much room for success when you choose the girlie one. There’s no room for this other one.”

Her tortured youth: “I loved to be sad and sh-t. Oh, my God. I made a complete art project out of it: my whole life.”

The queer-celebrity continuum: She’s considered the arc of things. “And it goes: Jodie [Foster], me, boygenius. I’m in the middle. Do you know what I mean? Jodie had such a hard time [as a gay actor], and I’m not speaking for her — I am objectively analyzing the time and place in which she was being her, and that is not easy — I would say f–king near-impossible if you wanted to continue doing what you love. For me, it wasn’t a problem. But that’s probably because of the sort of space that I inhabit and the parts that I’m attracted to and the filmmakers that are attracted to me and the audience that exists for those movies. Had I really wanted to carve out more commercial space and maintain that, I don’t know if that would’ve worked.”

Whether she wants to be a mother. “I don’t know what my family’s going to look like, but there’s no f–king way that I don’t start acquiring kids. And also, ideally at some point soon I go, ‘I want to have a kid.’ I really want that to happen.” Having watched that desire solidify in so many of their friends, she and Meyer have started making preparations for how they might go about getting pregnant, and have discussed the possibility of carrying each other’s embryos. “I’m not scared of being pregnant. I’m not scared of having a kid,. But I’m so f–king scared of childbirth, it’s crazy. Have you ever been too on drugs where you’ve suddenly needed to be on your hands and knees? I hate that. I mean, I smoke a lot of weed — I obviously self-medicate — but I don’t like hard drugs. And I’ve tried — a lot. I just can’t deal.” Still, the thought of carrying a pregnancy is so “radical” that she’d like to think she could be up for facing that fear.

[From Rolling Stone]

I read that performing femininity quote a few times to try to understand her mindset, because before she said that, I would have absolutely argued that she performed a sort of “traditional femininity” in her teens and early 20s to get roles and “fit in” with the heteronormative culture. I don’t judge her for that, and I certainly think she and every person is entitled to experiment and figure out who they are and what they want to be, and try on different personas to see what feels natural and authentic. But her quote is interesting – she felt, at the time, that she was being authentic to herself, that she was, like, acting within a scale of femininity. It’s interesting.

I also find it interesting that she and Dylan Meyer still haven’t gotten married! They’ve been engaged since 2021. It feels like they’re so busy and maybe that’s why they haven’t had a ceremony. It also feels like Kristen can’t decide what she wants. As for K-Stew as a mom… I think she would be a great mom, honestly. Especially with Dylan, who seems to ground her.

Kristen Stewart, Rolling Stone’s March cover star, just wants to “do the gayest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”

After more than two decades in the spotlight, she knows who she is — and what she wants.

Cover story/Photos: https://t.co/c7jbLK5gpd pic.twitter.com/ljbryy9L6x

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) February 14, 2024

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.