Kristen Stewart

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

- ALEX MORRIS

Uncensored

Kristen Stewart is strong as fuck, and I do not mean this metaphorically. I am not, for instance, talking about any experience from her past that she has quote-unquote risen above, like that time she was in those vampire-werewolf movies and dubbed the World's Most Hated Actress because she did not appear sufficiently stoked to sit in a room full of journalists and discuss making out with her co-stars. Or the time she was photographed kissing her much older (and married) Snow White and the Huntsman director, and, due to the horror this engendered, was banished from the sequel. I am not talking about the bravery it took to play Joan Jett in front of Joan Jett. Or the bravery it took to play Princess Diana in front of the entire moviegoing world. Or the bravery it took to come out on SNL in the form of a snappy retort to the mean tweets of a demented reality-show host turned president. In other words, I am not talking about "strength" as the gold-star descriptor given to famous women who don't crumble beneath the other labels society lobs at them. No. I am talking, quite literally, about Kristen Stewart's biceps.

OK, let me back up. It's an early afternoon in January. We're on a large deck perched neatly on a hillside of Los Feliz, with a commanding view of tropical foliage. The weather has reverted to that bland meteorological perfection endemic to Los Angeles, despite a morning that was topsyturvy, bringing down a small tree in Stewart's yard. "Wtf kinda crazy witch energy you bring to LA?!!" read an email waiting in my inbox when I awoke. "It's crazy out there!" It was the latest message in a chain we'd started to try to figure out what to do on our second day together, though the back and-forth had quickly devolved (evolved?) into a series of book and article recommendations and Stewart's confession that, when it comes to these types of interviews, "the disco anxiety is real."