Kristen Stewart doesn’t make films ‘to please others’

CEBU, Philippines - In case you hadn’t noticed, Kristen Stewart takes pride in being her own person and remaining unfazed by Hollywood expectations. Not that she would ever refer to it as “taking pride.” It’s just...normalcy.

“I don’t do what I do to...control perception or make people think a certain way about me,” Stewart said in a recent interview when asked whether it’s difficult to remain true to herself both as an actress and a person who’s always under the media’s microscope.

“That would be traipsing all over the experience of making any film. It’s just so ass-backwards to me,” the star of “Clouds of Sils Maria,” which screened at the Cannes Film Festival last week, said.

“I don’t know how people do that,” Stewart continued. “I don’t know how people tactfully traverse their careers. I don’t know how they choose, ‘Well, this is a different side of me people have not seen and so I will present that to them now.’ It’s like, ‘Why are you doing this for other people? You should be doing it for yourself.’ And so I’ve functioned from that position since I started, and therefore I really don’t care about all that.”

Her choice of roles since becoming a global superstar via the “Twilight Saga” shows that she’s interested in trying on all sorts of proverbial shoes, from her role as a vibrant but put-upon young wife in “On the Road” to her yet-to-be-seen parts as an aging actress’ loyal, thong-wearing assistant in “Clouds” and a Guantanamo Bay guard in “Camp X-Ray.”

“Clouds” was directed by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas and was shot in Europe, an experience Stewart apparently appreciated as a welcome change of pace.

Asked if she felt a certain freedom working in a European film, the 24-year-old L.A. native agreed. “It’s not absent in the States, but it’s not prevalent to feel free within the film industry, to feel like you can say what you want to say, not with any concern about how people are going to react to it, whether you’re going to piss them off,” Stewart said.

“So here [in Europe], it seems like people are less afraid because again they’re doing it for themselves. It’s for the art of it. It’s not to market things. It’s just a good feeling. You know, to make a movie is so ridiculous. We’re going to go film each other pretending to be other people so other people can watch us pretending to be other people? It’s insane. But if it’s worth it and it’s saying something, it can be transcendentally important.”