The public perception of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson has been a chaotic rollercoaster, going from teen girls and media sweethearts to objects of ridicule and vicious parodies, and then to the status of this generation’s most interesting movie stars. In 2008, they first appeared on-screen together as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, an ordinary schoolgirl and a vampire in love, setting the new standard of Hollywood romance. Five installments of the ‘vampire saga’ based on the novels of Stephenie Meyer have earned around three and a half billion dollars worldwide. What was at first scornfully referred to as a ‘movie for little girls’ turned out to be the beginning of one of the most successful franchises in cinema history, in fact, opening up a new promising market segment for the industry.

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In 2009, Pattinson was named ‘The Sexiest Men Alive’ and ‘The Most Handsome Man in the World’ by media outlets. Stewart has been considered The Dream Girl. Together they were a phenomenon that swept a generation of teenage girls off their feet. After the end of Twilight, though, both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson continuously and wonderfully destroyed that glossy image, going their separate paths to becoming the ‘James Dean for millennials’ and ‘dark unhinged DiCaprio’.

Recently, the phenomenon resurfaced, as fans have been exhilarated to see how the palpable chemistry would work now that the two honed their skills through unconventional projects and performances far away from Hollywood and became acting powerhouses worthy of an Oscar. Let’s recall their career histories and their journey from mere celebrity heartthrobs to brilliant actors.

Before Twilight

     Warner Bros. Pictures

It must be noted that while Twilight has made Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson megastars, they showed great talent and had major acting chops under their belts way before the saga. In some ways, it is precisely their appearance there that stopped audiences from taking them seriously and recognizing their talent for so long, overshadowing their other numerous compelling projects.

Stewart’s first truly notable role was the daughter of Jodie Foster’s character in David Fincher’s Panic Room. Her entire set of controversial acting techniques burgeons already, equally praised as naturalistic and restrained and mocked for being inscrutable.

Fincher’s film was followed by Mike Figgis’ Cold Creek Manor and Jon Favreau’s fantasy Zathura, which in retrospect deserves far more recognition. Stewart’s most serious and most valuable work in the pre-Twilight period was the small independent film Speak, in which her character is speechless after being raped at a school party. She (and the audience) are left with internal monologues full of scathing sarcasm.

Robert Pattinson first appeared on-screen as a blue-eyed, willful-chinned king in the Ring of the Nibelungs. Then there was another scene in the film adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, which ended up cut. Pattinson gets into the Harry Potter franchise as Cedric Diggory, a talented, romantic, beautiful young man who tragically died at the hands of the Dark Lord. Whether he wanted it or not, in his debut, the brooding romantic hero role has stuck to him.

How a Girl Who Never Smiles Became Cannes’ Darling

     Les Films du Losange

The collapse of the Twilight myth was perhaps the beginning of Stewart’s artistic and personal liberation. Accessed critically, Kristen Stewart’s filmography includes many films that are great but as many dull ones. By her own words, sometimes she would join a project even if she only liked one scene in the script. Such a ‘pridefully reckless’ approach showed that Stewart was actually having some fun with her acting and that she no longer cared about what anyone thought of her.

When Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria was shown at the Cannes in May 2014, critics seemed to rediscover the young actress who appeared on-screen as an assistant to a European theater and film star played by Juliette Binoche. Modest, restrained, and witty, the assistant Val seemed the epitome of adequacy against the background of her quarrelsome employer. Thanks to Clouds Sils Maria, Kristen Stewart became the first American actress to receive a César Award (for best supporting role) and turned into the absolute favorite of the Cannes Film Festival. Ever since, they try to get her there under various pretexts: sometimes with a big premiere, then with her own directorial work, a short film, or as part of the jury.

Two years later, Assayas’ Personal Shopper showcased Stewart as the main (and almost the only) character. A girl with psychic abilities lives in Paris, shopping for fashionable clothes for an even more absurd client, and waiting for a signal from the other world from her recently deceased brother through iMessage. Assayas has managed to create an ephemeral ghost-chasing film on the border of pure genre and auteur cinema, a thriller about the elusive definition of modernity, putting in the limelight all that Stewart is so good at: focus, simultaneous uncertainty and determination, inner pain, self-absorption on the verge of being on the spectrum.

Assayas saw and caught Stewart at the moment of radical transformation, the final liberation from the role imposed from outside. He used this energy of transition in two of his films, which for both him and her became the most interesting works in their careers.

Stewart never gave an official coming-out statement, however, her declarations are in something else. In recent years, Stewart has increasingly chosen feminist film projects that touch on complex and ambiguous aspects of female sexuality and female destiny and is more willing to work with female directors.

That Weird Indie Actor Who Sometimes Appears in Major Hollywood Movies

     A24

Robert Pattinson sees his blockbuster money as an opportunity to partake in the strangest indie movie projects. For example, a chaotic film about Salvador Dali’s romance with Garcia Lorca, Little Ashes. Pattinson brilliantly portrayed the artist’s evolution from a shy Pierrot to a hedonist playing madness. How To Be showed Pattinson in a completely new character, an awkward goof with a guitar.

In general, it becomes clear that Pattinson is more interested in the role, not how big or successful the film can be. That ideal role turned up, that of Georges Duroy in the new adaptation of Maupassant’s Bel Ami. The character played by Pattinson here is an overgrown void, an upstart who has succeeded at the expense of the feelings and fates of other people. The shy and mischievous smile of the young dreamer at the beginning of the film and the unfocused empty gaze of the young rogue strangely belong to the same person and the same actor.

Then Twilight finally ends and David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis comes out. Pattinson is again the incarnation of the void in human form. The vampire Cullen was forever alive, the human capitalist in Cosmopolis forever dead, but Pattinson’s impassive face, like a theatrical mask, applies perfectly to both.

The Rover is yet again a completely different Pattinson: instead of a playful or seductive smile, there is a mouth trembling from mute resentment; instead of a confident light gait, there is the waddle of a broken doll. He continues to develop his ample acting range, from a petty criminal or a brave romantic in Good Time to a shaved, thoughtful, Rodin-like thinker (or, really, just highly sedated) Byronic outcast of High Life, from the paranoid and utterly insane lighthouse keeper of The Lighthouse to the famed caped crusader in The Batman.

Long-Deserved Recognition of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson

     MiramaxMK2/Mile End

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson similarly used their Twilight jump start to choose only those projects that spoke to their soul. Stewart turned critiques on their head. As her Vanity Fair portfolio says: “For years, Stewart’s appeal lay in her coolness, in the mumbling, angsty thing she projected in Twilight and refined over time. There have always been those who argue she’s among the best female actors of the millennial generation, and that sentiment is spreading”.

As for Pattinson, he plans to return to indie films after The Batman, to continue “his masterfully planned, decade-long prison break out of that one particular career,” which means smaller movies where he can be as batsh*t crazy as he wants. It may be similar to his iconic performance in The King, an otherwise middling film from Netflix, or a new project called Mickey7 from the genius of Bong Jon Ho.

Perhaps, Stewart and Pattinson can reunite in a coming Cronenberg’s film? They’ve each acted for him before. Now, that will be a sight to behold.