Princess Diana was born with the power to help people but felt so bad inside, says Kristen Stewart
SHE transformed herself into Princess Diana for new movie Spencer – recreating the iconic hairstyle, gowns and the accent.
Now Kristen Stewart has revealed that as well as bearing a likeness to the Princess of Wales, she also shares similarities to her personality which helped to create a convincing performance.
Kristen, 31, said: “I’m not a very good actor. I can’t fake it.
“I reveal part of myself. I don’t know how people fabricate a performance. It’s scary and weird and it’s also a bummer.
“I don’t think I’m good at doing anything that isn’t coming from some real place. I’ve always had to sort of vouch for the characters that I’ve played in order to love them enough to play them.”
It was during her research for the film that she fell in love with Diana and discovered the vulnerabilities that they share.
The actress spent hours obsessing over Diana’s accent, even going to sleep while listening to tapes of her speaking.
And the process of preparing for the role left her with a deep admiration for the troubled princess.
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Kristen said: “She means a lot to me, but it’s all relatively new because I’m from LA and didn’t grow up in England. Before this, she was not something that was at the forefront of my mind, because I lived so far away from it all. Now I can’t stop thinking about her.
“I often wonder what she’d think about what’s going on in the world right now. To be honest, I’ve now consumed pretty much all there is to consume in terms of videos and interviews.
“I’ve watched everything that you could hear or see. I even go to sleep with it on.”
Twilight star Kristen, once the highest-paid actress on the planet, said of Diana: “She was the most famous woman in the world.
“I have tasted a high level of that, but really kind of nowhere near that monumental, symbolic representation of an entire group of people, like an entire country — and then the world.
“Diana wanted to control what people thought of her but couldn’t. That’s life, that’s normal, everyone experiences that. You can’t control everyone’s opinions of you.
“There have been so many times I thought I had connected with someone and they’ve got this bad impression of you. I’ve wanted to run back a million times every day because I didn’t say the right thing.
“Imagine what that was like for her. Imagine feeling backed into a corner to that extent.
“She was desperate for a connection with people and made people feel so good while she was feeling so bad on the inside herself. She was one of the biggest energies ever in history. She wore her heart on her sleeve and that, to me, was the coolest thing she did.”
Hollywood beauty Kristen has endured her fair share of public scrutiny during her career.
She became famous from the age of 12 after starring in 2002’s Panic Room with Jodie Foster.
She began playing Bella Swan in the Twilight teen vampire franchise in 2008. It went on to gross more than £2.4billion.
She dated co-star Robert Pattinson for four years but they split after she was pictured kissing Rupert Sanders, the married Snow White And The Huntsman director, in 2012.
Kristen offered a public apology for her “momentary indiscretion” that “jeopardised the most important thing in my life, the person I love and respect the most, Rob”.
Since then she has gone on to star in Charlie’s Angels, sci-fi action movie Underwater and political thriller Seberg.
Kristen’s accolades include a Bafta, a Cesar award and a Screen Actors Guild nomination. Now she is tipped to win her first Academy Award nod for Spencer.
Described as an “upside-down fairytale”, the film charts Prince Charles and Diana’s crumbling marriage over a Christmas weekend in the early 1990s.
The movie re-imagines the real-life drama — meaning it is not based on actual events, even if the characters are telling the familiar story of the doomed royal marriage.
It recently wowed critics after premiering at the 78th annual Venice International Film Festival — and it is already creating Oscar buzz before its release on November 5.
Spencer’s director Pablo Larrain previously made the biopic Jackie, about JFK’s wife, which earned lead star Natalie Portman an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
He has praised Kristen’s performance in Spencer as a “force of nature” and said she “carried the movie”.
Kristen, now in a relationship with female screenwriter Dylan Meyer, certainly put a lot of preparation into the role, even going to royal experts to learn how to curtsy.
She said: “We had people to tell us all the sort of things you couldn’t know as an outsider. But my curtsy just went out the window as soon as I walked off set.”
Kristen, who features alongside Poldark star Jack Farthing, Bafta-winner Timothy Spall and Paddington actress Sally Hawkins in the film, says it depicts a “true unravelling” of Diana’s life.
The actress contrasts the way the royal, who died in a car crash in 1997 aged 36, made others feel “bolstered by this beautiful light” while feeling “isolated and lonely”.
It is a contrast that is accentuated in the movie.
Kristen said: “She was born with the power to help other people. There are some people that are endowed with an undeniable, penetrating energy. And all she wanted was to just have it back.
“Ironically, she was the most unknowable person and somebody who really never wanted to be alone. Some people are good at it, some people hate it. She wanted connection, she wanted people in her life and she was the most isolated human, at least over the imagining of these three days. We wanted that to come to a head.”
But how will the royals — and in particular, Diana’s sons William and Harry — react to the new blockbuster showing the “unravelling” of their mother?
Director Larrain says he will happily show them the film, but hints that it will not be an easy watch for the princes.
He said: “If they want to see it, we are eventually going to connect with someone that could get it to them.
“I have enormous respect for them and I have a lot of admiration for what Harry has done. But this could be a situation that is not easy for them.
“I wouldn’t want to do anything that would just create any kind of problems. They’ve had enough.”