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Kristen Stewart recently weighed in on the ongoing method acting debate with pointed commentary about gender, performance, and Hollywood’s double standards. In an interview published by The New York Times on December 6, the actor reflected on the nature of her craft, arguing that acting was “quite embarrassing and unmasculine.”
“Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine. There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?” Kristen Stewart said.
Kristen Stewart’s comments came during a discussion about Marlon Brando’s infamous mispronunciation of “Krypton” in the 1978 film Superman.
The interviewer noted that Sean Penn once framed Brando’s deliberate mispronunciation as an act of artistic resistance in a “sellout movie.” Stewart argued that men were often “aggrandized for retaining self,” while women received no comparable cinematic mythology.
“Brando sounds like a hero, doesn’t he? If a woman did that, it would be different… If you have to do 50 push-ups before your close-up or refuse to say a word a certain way — I mean, Brando, [expletive], I’m not coming for him,” Kristen Stewart said.
Stewart expanded on how some actors rely on physical or emotional posturing before a scene to shield themselves from feeling exposed.
She described this as the behavior that takes place “before the acting happens on set,” noting that some performers feel the need to “protrude out of the vulnerability” or behave like a “gorilla pounding their chest” ahead of an emotional moment.
According to her, these rituals not only make the actor feel “a little less embarrassing” but also turn the process into a kind of “magic trick,” creating the illusion that what they’re doing is “so impossible” no one else could replicate it.
Later in the interview, Kristen Stewart recalled a conversation with a fellow actor that highlighted what she viewed as a persistent double standard.
“I asked a fellow actor: ‘Have you ever met a female actor that was method and needed to scream and do a whole thing?’ As soon as I said, ‘male actor, female actor,’ the reaction was like, ‘Do not mention the elephant in the room.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, actresses are crazy,’” she said.
Kristen Stewart condemns Hollywood’s silence around women directors during the Academy Women’s Luncheon speech
Kristen Stewart has long been outspoken about the intersection of gender, artistic expression, and Hollywood’s double standards.
Her remarks at the Academy Women’s Luncheon on November 4 further underscored her frustrations, particularly around what she described as the industry’s ongoing “silencing” of women directors.
Speaking to a room full of female filmmakers, executives, and industry leaders, Stewart addressed the cultural discomfort surrounding conversations about inequality.
She explained that people often preferred to frame gender disparity in neat, measurable terms, like wage gaps or tax inequities, rather than confront the emotional and structural harm of being muted or dismissed.
“It’s awkward to talk about inequality for some people...We can discuss wage gaps and taxes on tampons and measure it in lots of quantifiable ways, but the violence of silencing … It’s like we’re not even supposed to be angry. But I could eat this podium with a fork and f*cking knife, I’m so angry,” she said (As per The Guardian)
Stewart also spoke about the power of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water, a project she had spent eight years trying to adapt. She explained that Yuknavitch’s raw, unfiltered writing articulated truths that she felt intuitively but had never heard expressed aloud.
For her, speaking those truths was liberating, a necessary act that exposed constraints women were taught to internalize.
“Hard truths, when spoken out loud, become springboards to freedom,” Stewart said.
She went on to describe how Yuknavitch’s insistence on being “unpalatable” and “unsanitary” helped her recognize what she called “the invisible cage” many women lived within. According to Stewart, this willingness to create “from the inside out” reminded her that women can “story our way out” of limiting narratives.
Stewart further acknowledged that women’s voices had gained more visibility since the #MeToo movement, but argued that Hollywood still resisted stories that were too raw, too dark, or too honest.
She said she had personally experienced the “bare-knuckle brawling” required to shepherd unconventional projects, especially those dealing with taboo themes, through an industry she described as being “in a state of emergency.”
The actress then urged the room to reject tokenism and embrace creative self-determination, saying women must “be proud” and "start printing" their own "currency" rather than waiting for approval or validation from existing structures.
“We are allowed to be proud of ourselves. But let’s try not to be tokenised. Let’s start printing our own currency…I am so for you. I hope you are too. Let’s make art in the face of it,” she added
Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025, followed by a limited U.S. theatrical release on December 5, 2025. It is set to reach a broader audience nationwide on January 9, 2026.
