Kristen Stewart: tired of table-dancing dilettantes and fluff-shilling prima donnas? Here's the wolf-taming, heartbreaking, real-deal antidote

In an era when a vapid teen sex comedy seems to be the plat du jour for adolescent actors, 15-year-old Kristen Stewart is charting her own much more interesting path through the system. The toughness and maturity of her performance four years ago as the diabetic daughter of a recently divorced woman played by Jodie Foster in David Fincher's claustrophobic thriller Panic Room (2002) was enough to put the world on notice. Her work since, with directors ranging from Mike Figgis (Cold Creek Manor, 2003) to David Gordon Green (Undertow, 2004) and Jon Favreau (Zathura), has done nothing but enhance that impression. This year she will appear in three very different films: Griffin Dunne's Fierce People, a family drama in which she stars opposite Diane Lane, Donald Sutherland, and Anton Yelchin; Jonathan Kasdan's In the Land of Women, a romantic comedy with The O.C.'s Adam Brody and Meg Ryan; and The Messengers, from Hong Kong horror maestros Danny and Oxide Pang.

JON FAVREAU: Hello.

KRISTEN STEWART: Hi. Thanks for doing this, man. I'm totally stoked.

JF: Oh, I'm stoked to do it. Peter Berg interviewed me for one of these years ago [June 1998]. I wanted to be more prepared than he was.

KS: [laughs] Oh, so you know about my background now?

JF: I know everything about you. I would have never hired you had I known all this about you. [laughs] So, first of all, how are you doing? KS: I'm good. I've been sick for the last two weeks. I've had a cold that I cannot get rid of. It's kind of embarrassing. I was in a read-through yesterday and I just gurgled during the entire thing. It was so quiet in there. It was for Sean Penn.

JF: Was that the first time you met him?

KS: Yeah, it was. He called my agent a week ago and just asked if I'd come in and read cold, and then the first time I met him was yesterday. It was a table read. David Spade was there. Emile Hirsch was there. That was cool. He's so good.

JF: So was your throat gurgling or your stomach gurgling?

KS: Luckily, it was my throat. But I was also sniffing every five seconds. And the thing is, I was reading the narrator part, so I was constantly doing these really long blocks of dialogue.

JF: Well, hopefully they knew you were sick and not a drug user. I auditioned for Sean once. It was for I am Sam [2001], for the part of one of the mentally challenged people. I figured, Okay, I'll read this to read with Sean. And then it was him in his trailer on the set of the movie and me reading in front of him trying to play a mentally challenged person, which is not easy to do without making a complete ass of yourself. I actually got beat out for the part by someone who indeed did have Down syndrome, so that's sort of a consolation. Anyhow, you're working your ass off now, and all the movies you're doing seem like good projects. What was your first big role? Was it Panic Room?

KS: Yeah.

JF: I visited that set because I know Dwight Yoakam, who was in the movie.

KS: Oh, yeah? He's so funny. Did you get to go into the house?

JF: Yeah, I walked around the whole thing.

KS: Everything in the house in Panic Room worked. Every outlet, every sink, everything. There's a scene where Jodie Foster takes a minute to go pee, and you could hear it when she got up and flushed the toilet.

JF: She's really peeing in that scene?

KS: [laughs] No. I don't know. Maybe.

JF: Were you around in the beginning when Nicole Kidman was involved with the movie?

KS: Yeah. She hurt her knee. Then Jodie came in.

JF: It's funny because you look so much alike, you could be her daughter.

KS: Everyone always says, "Kristen got Panic Room because she looks like Jodie Foster." But it was actually Nicole Kidman who was supposed to play my mother.

JF: But the cool thing is, like Jodie Foster, you're being very smart about the types of roles you're taking on. You got into acting because your dad [TV director John Stewart] exposed you to the industry. And you take it seriously. You seem to have a lot of maturity in your decision-making. You seem like a pretty together young lady who's taking a very stressful set of circumstances, starring in all these movies, and taking it in stride.

KS: Well, this is never something that I sought out. For most actors, it's such a struggle to get work. Once they have it, they feel that there's an enormous amount of pressure on them to make it work, and have everyone love them. In my case, it was never like that. It was just about working with the people that I want to work with, and telling the stories that I want to tell, you know? And, you're right, it was also because my whole family is involved in the entertainment industry in some way. My brother's a grip. My mom's a scriptwriter. My dad's a director. So it's like, at heart I'm a below-the-line girl.

JF: You really bring your lunch pail to work, so to speak. You've got a really strong blue-collar ethic about acting that I like to think I have, too. We auditioned a lot of people your age for Zathura, and I have to tell you, you really stood out as having a presence, and a look, and chops, and poise. Most young girls or boys have sort of an unfocused, scattered energy. You have a very still energy to you. And the other thing that was very interesting about you is that a lot of girls your age dress up like Hilary Duff or Britney Spears. They have a sultry thing going on and wear a lot of makeup, and their skirts are short, which can be uncomfortable to see. Whereas, I think you're very attractive, but you remind me more of people like Kristy McNichol or Tatum O'Neal, the girls who were stars when I was growing up.