Sundance 2024: “Love Lies Bleeding” Is a Queer and Carnal Neo-Noir Western
Autostraddle is back at Sundance, reporting daily with queer movie reviews from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Follow along for our coverage of the best in LGBTQ+ cinema and beyond.
“Careful where you sleep here, it’s dangerous.”
It’s rural New Mexico in the late 80s and everyone is glistening with sweat and desire. An ugliness permeates the landscape coupled with the threat of violence. This is the world of Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’s darkly funny and queer neo-noir western about love, family and revenge. In the vein of films like Thelma & Louise and the Wachowski Sisters’ Bound, we are taken on an unforgettable, brutal journey.
The quiet Lou (Kristen Stewart) works at a grimy gym cleaning toilets and being bored out of her mind when Jackie (Katy O’Brian) and her impressive muscles saunter into her life. Jackie is a young bodybuilder from Oklahoma, training for an upcoming competition in Las Vegas and looking for a job. Lou is instantly smitten and a late-night hookup quickly becomes a blooming romance filled with passionate sex, eggs, and steroids. Lou — turned on by Jackie’s growing muscles — gets her lover started on the juice. Jackie moves and starts a waitressing job at a nearby gun range. But Lou was a loner for a reason and once this new woman enters her life, her troubles start to catch up with her.
Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone) is married to the abusive JJ (Dave Franco) but refuses to leave. So Lou stays, bringing her new girlfriend into the complicated family dynamic. And as if that isn’t enough, Jackie’s boss is Lou’s estranged father (Ed Harris) — also named Lou — and he uses their relationship to try and reconnect with his daughter. No one knows for sure where his wife is and two nosy FBI agents are curious about that mystery. Glass crafts a caustic web of familial and professional entanglements that threaten to derail Jackie and Lou’s love story. But it’s not just fate that’s interfering — there’s also the steroids.
Not much is known about Jackie’s past aside from the implication that she can’t go home again. She’s young, impulsive, and dedicated to getting as big and strong as possible. But as her steroid use spirals out of control, she starts to lose her grip on reality. Lou can see it, but she doesn’t want to let her go. And when Beth ends up in the hospital badly beaten, it sets off a bloody chain of events as Lou fights to protect herself and Jackie as they try to avoid the police and get out of town. Complicating matters is Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), Lou’s jealous and suspicious ex-lover who will do anything to get her away from Jackie.
Full of twists and turns, Love Lies Bleeding blends its noir elements with pure body horror as Jackie transforms into something beyond human. Her strength both scares and excites Lou and their attraction to each other is brash and carnal. Stewart and O’Brian have explosive chemistry, gazing at each other with an intensity that feels both too soon and eternal. It’s almost as if fate has brought them together to look after each other. Though lacking in physical strength, Lou gets her power from love, devoting herself to looking after Jackie no matter what. Just as Jackie is addicted to steroids, Lou is addicted to her.
There aren’t many lesbian films like Love Lies Bleeding. Glass’s sophomore feature is a truly unique vision of two misfit women who blow up their lives and the world around them. Expanding on the themes of her debut Saint Maud, Glass once again explores the poetry of brutality and the transformation of the body for worship as well as pleasure. There’s no one way to describe the nature of love or what it takes to hold on to it. Even with only two films under her belt, it’s clear that Glass is fascinated with desperate women. Not simply to gawk at them, but to push us as an audience to descend into madness alongside them, if only for a short while.
Love Lies Bleeding is an exciting, instant classic that will hopefully usher in a new era of unapologetically weird lesbian cinema.
Love Lies Bleeding will be released in theatres on March 8.
Kristen Stewart Says “Twilight Was Such a Gay Movie,” Talks Queer Sex Scenes, Does a Kristen Stewart Impression
Our favorite So Gay Dude, Kristen Stewart, is on the cover of this month’s Variety Magazine in all her gay glory: alternative lifestyle haircut, black nail polish, sequined-tank-dress-paired-with-gym-socks, noted jawline, casually discarded white blazer, suggestively parted lips, myriad tattoos. In the body of said story, entitled “How Kristen Stewart Became a Queer Trailblazer,” Stewart speaks more openly than ever on several topics relevant to our collective interests. For example: Twilight being gay, coming out to herself and then coming out on Saturday Night Live, sex scenes in the hotly anticipated lesbian bodybuilder movie Love Lies Bleeding and her struggle to get her adaptation of The Chronology of Water off the ground in an industry that clearly has no regard for what I personally would like to see on The Big Screen.
Photo credit: Emily Soto for Variety
Kristen Stewart Came Out On Her Own Terms
When Kristen Stewart came out on Saturday Night Live, it was a crescendo of what had been a multi-year build-up, including her relatively public relationship with Alicia Cargile, which began in approximately 2014. Prior to that time, Stewart recalls that she’d gotten “good at the heteronormative quality.” Stewart tells Variety that her choice to incorporate her first definitive public statement about her sexuality into a Saturday Night Live opening monologue was intentional.
“It wasn’t even like I was hiding,” Stewart told Variety. “I was so openly out with my girlfriend for years at that point. I’m like, ‘I’m a pretty knowable person….It was cool to frame it in a funny context because it could say everything without having to sit down and do an interview. ‘So what platform is that going to be on? And who’s going to make money on that? And who’s going to be the person that broke it?’ I broke it, alone.”
There are some tidbits in the story from Clea DuVall, who recalls her own reluctance to come out at the start of her career. Variety also got a quote from Jodie Foster, who called the SNL monologue “a wonderful, funny, wry, modern way to be honest to the world.”
Kristen Stewart Can See the Gay Subtext of Her Life More Clearly Now
Once upon a time in the early 2010s, we here at Autostraddle had a breakthrough about Kristen Stewart that changed how we thought about queer celebrities in general — that it was possible that she, just like so many of us at her age, hadn’t come out yet to the world because she hadn’t come out yet to herself. We tend to assume that somehow Hollywood stars, by virtue of being aware that gayness exists and being surrounded by gay people (because Hollywood is gay), will somehow figure things out about themselves more quickly than we did. The pressure on young stars to self-identify before they’re ready reached a fever pitch last year with the forced outing of Heartstopper actor Kit Connor.
Stewart confirms this theory is correct in the Variety interview — she didn’t yet see in herself what others saw in her, and she felt like she didn’t feel like he relationships with men lacked authenticity (Relatable!): “For so long, I was like, ‘Why are you trying to skewer me? Why are you trying to ruin my life? I’m a kid, and I don’t really know myself well enough yet.’ The idea of people going, ‘I knew that you were a little queer kid forever.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, you should honestly have seen me fuck my first boyfriend.’”
She now can look back at the cannon of Kristen Stewart movies and see the queer glimmers in her eyes. On a recent Panic Room watch, in which young tomboy Stewart shares the screen almost exclusively with Jodie Foster, Stewart realized; “I was already going like, ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ I was gay.”
Also “Twilight” is Gay
Terrifyingly pale body horror cinematic experience Twilight was widely beloved, even by people who knew it was bad — but like most vampire lore, managed to find its home in queer hearts despite its Mormon author and the alleged heterosexuality of its cast.
“I can only see it now…I don’t think it necessarily started off that way, but I also think that the fact that I was there at all, it was percolating. It’s such a gay movie,” she told Variety. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Taylor [Lautner] and Rob and me, and it’s so hidden and not OK. I mean, a Mormon woman wrote this book. It’s all about oppression, about wanting what’s going to destroy you. That’s a very Gothic, gay inclination that I love.”
“Love Lies Bleeding” Is Full of Lesbian Sex Scenes
Stewart loved Rose Glass’s 2020 debut film Saint Maud, and sought out Glass after seeing it, eager to learn what she was doing next. They met up in London and the conversation about lesbian bodybuilder movie Love Lies Bleeding, — about the relationship between aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) and Lou, “a meek, boyish lesbian who looks after the gym where Jackie works out” — began there. After reading the script, Stewart was confident she was destined to play Lou. Glass agreed.
“I always wanted Lou to have this moody boyish charm, to be butch and androgynous in a way which not many actors of Kristen’s profile are,” Glass told Variety. “Weirdly, I can’t think of that many roles like this she’s done, and yet to be honest, it feels like it’s maybe a bit closer to who she is.”
Stewart’s especially stoked about sexuality in Love Lies Bleeding and its multiple sex scenes and having “the things that [Stewart] found attractive be really glorified.”
Kristen Stewart Does a Kristen Stewart Impression
In what feels like a treat for me specifically, Kristen plays a game guessing lines from her most famous movies which becomes a vehicle for her to speak about her experience making those films! She apparently hated making Charlie’s Angels, which’s fascinating. Also she does a Kristen Stewart impression to summon her memory for one of the lines and it’s perfect
Read the whole-ass Kristen Stewart cover story at Variety Magazine.
GET PUMPED! The Gay Kristen Stewart Bodybuilder Film Trailer Is Here
The first full trailer for Love Lies Bleeding has dropped, and oh my god it looks GOOD. For those who haven’t been obsessively following the news of this upcoming film, Stewart stars as Lou, an employee at a local gym in small town Nevada and the daughter of a Crime Man™ (Ed Harris). She’s also the love interest of queer bodybuilder Jackie, played by fellow queer actor Katy M. O’Brian.
Love Lies Bleeding was co-written by Weronika Tofilska and Rose Glass, who also directed. The trailer shows Jackie and Lou falling for each other and then falling down a spiral of violence, guns, drugs, and crime, with Lou eventually vowing to take down her own father. Daddy issues have entered the chat!
It’s a perfect romantic thriller trailer, teasing Lou and Jackie as not just lovers but co-conspirators in a dangerous game against Lou’s father. The tagline — revenge gets ripped — is in and of itself so thrilling!
I’m love lies SCREAMING!
Not to be obvious, but the trailer really is the definition of Be Gay, Do Crimes. In addition to various nefarious shots of guns, cash, and bodies rolled up in carpets, we also see lots of flashes of sex scenes between Jackie and Lou, and they look VERY HOT! Here, I have taken some important screenshots for you:
I’m also a big fan of the official poster, which correctly is a beautiful tribute to KATY M. O’BRIAN’S ARMS.
The trailer pulses with blood, bodies, and heat, and it ends on a twisty, unsettling image. But my favorite part might be the very quiet and understated moment when Stewart as Lou simply replies “yep” when her father asks if she’s threatening him. Pansexual actor Jena Malone is also in the cast, but I couldn’t find her in the trailer…despite watching several times. I can’t find a character description either, but I’m going to put my guess of an ex-girlfriend of Lou’s out into the world.
The film is set to make its global premiere at Sundance and will premiere sometime in the spring of 2024.
Pop Culture Fix: Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian Look Hot In Bodybuilding Movie Described As “Pain & Gain For Indie Lesbians”
Kristen Stewart’s Lesbian Bodybuilder Movie “Love Lies Bleeding” Releases First Look, Will Debut at Sundance
Kristen Stewart’s hotly anticipated (by us) A24 movie Love Lies Bleeding has released a first look image. Kristen Stewart plays the love interest of a lesbian bodybuilder (played by queer actor Katy M. O’Brian, an actor who also does stunt work and is swole year-round). Co-written by Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska, and directed by Glass, Love Lies Bleeding was shot last summer and screened this past spring in New York City. According to World of Reel, the audience had intense reactions to the movie at the spring screening:
Test screened in NYC tonight. Audience was having visceral reactions to the gore, blood and puking throughout. Has a strange ending that will make this a love it or hate it type movie. “Pain & Gain” for indie lesbians. Ed Harris is great and Katy O’Brian as well.
World of Reel also wrote that the film is “said to be about an aspiring bisexual bodybuilder in the late 1980s who moves to a small rural Nevada town from Oklahoma and falls madly in love with Kristen Stewart’s character who works at the local gym.” Kristen Stewart’s character is the daughter of the bodybuilder’s new boss, and she introduces the bodybuilder to the world of steroids! According to IMDB, Jenna Malone is also involved in this film somehow and it is about “A romance fueled by ego, desire and the American Dream.”
Katy O’Brian’s wife, Kylie, posted the first look images on her own instagram feed and described the grueling process Katy went through filming the movies, which included 12-16 hour days followed by three hours of lifting/cardio every night, and getting surgery for a Chrons scar just before reshoots. She gushed:
She absolutely devours this role, it is breathtaking. It is the performance of her life. The first day I arrived in New Mexico, she showed me something she was working on for a scene and I broke down crying it was so beautiful.
There’s no set date for release, but it will make its world premiere at Sundance 2024.
Other Queer Pop Culture Stories For Your Day:
+ Netflix released a bunch of its viewing data from January – June 2023, but honestly it’s difficult to draw any real conclusions about cancelled gay content from it without seeing monthly or comparative data — like we’d have to see the numbers for First Kill’s first six months of life to have a genuine grip on its performance. Glamorous, which was very gay and pretty bad, logged 36.6 million hours of viewing, thus earning it the 490th spot on this list of 17k shows, but it was released eight days before the report’s data is cut off, so hard to know how it fared going forward. Regardless, it was cancelled.
Hours of watching, as a metric, obviously favors television over films. That said, I am truly sorry that so many people watched the Jonah Hill / Lauren London comedy You People (I am one of those people) (it has a small lesbian character) — You People comes in at #35, with 181.8 million logged hours. Another Netflix original with a minor lesbian character, Your Place or Mine, is at #43 with 163 million hours.
Most of the queer-inclusive shows released during this time period have great numbers: XO Kitty (released mid-May), Ginny & Georgia, BEEF, Shadow & Bone,The Diplomat, Never Have I Ever, Welcome to Eden, Perfect Match, etc. However, Welcome to Eden has been cancelled, so!
+ TOMMY DORFMAN IS DIRECTING THE ADAPTATION OF MARIKO TAMAKI’S GRAPHIC NOVEL LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME
+ Romy’s “She’s On My Mind” music video is queer as fuck and stars Maisie Williams.
+ The Critic’s Choice Awards Nominees were announced today — Bottoms was nominated for Best Comedy, and Nimona for Best Animated Film! As in the Golden Globes, Anatomy of a Fall is up for Best Foreign Film and Jodie Foster for Nyad.
+ Sophia Bush discussed her divorce from Grant Hughes on a podcast, and also was at Art Basel with Ashlyn Harris last week.
+ Bella Ramsey creating ‘scary’ film they’ve been writing since the age of 14: Ramsay has been working on a feature film centered on mental health, specifically a girl with an eating disorder. They say the story is done in “an interesting, slightly spooky way.”
Pop Culture Fix: Kristen Stewart Will Not Be Planning a Wedding Thank You Very Much
Guy Fieri Will Most Likely Not Be Officiating Kristen Stewart’s Wedding
Kristen Stewart appeared on “Watch What Happens Live” last week, wherein she clarified that Guy Fieri will not be officiating her wedding but possibly will be there in spirit. (Like her new show about spirits!)
Apparently she’d thought he might be a good candidate for the job because they have similar hair, he seems like a nice guy, and he officiates a lot of queer weddings. (Apparently he once paid tribute to his late gay sister by marrying more than 100 couples at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.) Stewart says she’s bad at planning so it’s unlikely they’ll actually get an officiant but maybe they’ll call Guy after the wedding and tell him he was there in spirit. As for when exactly she will officially tie the knot with Dylan Meyer, she doesn’t know and expects they will simply “surprise themselves.” I think this means that they will be getting married impulsively at a date and time of their choosing or else it will all be a big secret.
It was Stewart’s first appearance on Watch What Happens Live, and other interesting tidbits shared were that she got high for the first time when she was 14 or 15, her first celebrity crush was Harrison Ford, her first kiss was onscreen with Jamie Bell in Jumper and she’s currently watching My So-Called Life, which makes me very happy.
+ Bella Ramsey is getting praised for her performance in BBC Prison Drama “Prime,” and also took to Instagram to clarify something about their pronouns:
“I don’t mind which pronouns you use for me. I never wanted it to be a big deal… they/them feels the most truthful…. But comfort wise, I’m good with any. I have no dysphoria surrounding pronouns. Call me she, call me they, call me he, call be however you see me. You cannot go wrong! It’s impossible to misgender me. :)”
+ 5 stars you might not realise are proudly aromantic or asexual
+ JoJo Siwa Launches New Podcast on iHeartMedia (Exclusive): “I am so excited for my fans to get to know me like never before. I’ve authentically shared my life online for over a decade and this podcast will dive even deeper into who I am and what makes me, me.”
Kristen Stewart’s “Living for the Dead” Has Hot Paranormal Investigators and Big Gay Feelings
If you thought the Kristen Stewart paranormal investigator show Living for the Dead was going to be fun, this new series is better left ghosted. If you’re an emotional queer who believes in ghosts and wishes Queer Eye was spookier, then wow is this the show for you!
First, a clarification: Kristen Stewart is not on this show. She executive produced it and provides the narration at the beginning and end of each episode. Her narration has a lot of very reality competition show intro dad jokes (daddy jokes?) but delivered in her famous deadpan cadence. The jokes aren’t good, but, personally, I think the combination of the jokes and Stewart’s voice is dyke camp.
But let’s move on to the queer paranormal investigators we’re actually watching on-screen! Juju Bae (Cancer) is the witch, a conjurer who pulls from Hoodoo practices. Ken Boggle (Aquarius) is the tarot reader, who reads cards and also is a psychic. Logan Taylor (sun sign unknown!), the official psychic, is a professional medium who conveys direct messages from the dead. Alex LeMay (Aries), the tech expert, uses the latest tools to observe and hear from the undead. And then there’s Roz (Libra), the paranormal researcher, who supplies real history, the only good jokes, and makes Living for the Dead work.
Except for Roz, who has primarily worked as a drag queen and comedian, these labels are not for show. While this is my own personal bias, it doesn’t bother me when Juju is practicing Hoodoo or Ken is reading tarot. But when Ken is in psychic mode and talking to the dead alongside Logan and Alex, the skeptic in me jumped out. It’s not that I expected realism from my paranormal investigator show. I just thought it would be ghost-curious queers jumping at sounds that may or may not have been planted by the producers. I didn’t think those queers would be telling a woman with confidence messages from her dead husband.
I might be a hater! If mediums bring comfort to someone, maybe it doesn’t matter if they’re real. And, look, I believe in the possibility of ghosts! I just don’t believe any of these gays are hearing verbatim messages from them. But Alex and Logan compare their status as ghost communicators to their queer identities. “I remember in high school I didn’t know which one I was more afraid of: telling people I was gay or telling them I saw ghosts,” Logan says like a John Early character come to life.
The Queer Eye reference isn’t a joke — it’s the structure of each episode. The group meets the homeowner or business owner of a haunted space and helps them heal the ghosts and improve their lives. Each episode of Living for the Dead ends with a forced happy ending; a narrative arc in a nice little bow. Our queers spend as much time talking to these people about their emotional problems as they do their ghosts.
Bless the reality TV Gods for Roz. She’s great at the compassionate stuff, even providing comfort to her teammates, but she keeps things light! She’s funny, hot, and has great fashion. It also helps that her official contributions to the show are interesting bits of history rather than messages from that history.
The issue here isn’t just my skepticism. The forced narratives keep Living for the Dead dour and prevent it from being meaningful in a way that’s less forced. The episode that takes place at a former mental hospital is great when Roz is showing documentation of the gender-nonconforming patients. It’s less great when the arc of that episode focuses on the random straight hauntees getting straight engaged.
The more episodes I watched of Living for the Dead, the more I wished I was watching a fictionalized account of the show’s production instead. Imagine: five spooky queers — ranging from total fraud to total believer — clash while making a ghost hunting show. Then, an undeniable paranormal event occurs. Now that would be a TV show worth a binge.
Living for the Dead is now streaming on Hulu.
“Living For the Dead” Trailer: Kristen Stewart Ghost Hunting Show Looks Like So Gay Dude
Kristen Stewart’s stardom may have begun as a hetero lover of vampires and werewolves. But her producing career is starting as a hunter of ghosts. The trailer for Living For the Dead is here and it confirms that “Kristen Stewart ghost hunting show” is not something we made up in a peak pandemic fever dream.
While narrated by Stewart and produced by her new production company, it’s not totally accurate to call this reality series from the creators of Queer Eye, the Kristen Stewart ghost hunting show. The movie star will not be the one actually venturing into these haunted houses so lets credit the ghost hunters doing the work! With a cast of queers ranging in identities and specialties — tarot, witch, tech, you know the expected stuff — Living For the Dead looks to add a spooky edge to the inspirational reality TV genre.
From a clown motel to a Vegas strip club, these paranormal investigators are looking to heal undead trauma all over the country. And who better to heal trauma than a bunch of queers?? Straight people who don’t discuss their deepest wounds on a first date never had any business trying to speak to ghosts. Leave that to us. How can you address spectral pain if you don’t even know the sun sign of who — or what — you’re dealing with? Seances and mediums and generally anything and everything occult is queer culture and now we have proof. Reality television proof.
And, hey, if you’re disappointed the Kristen Stewart ghost hunting show doesn’t have Stewart interacting with any actual ghosts, you can always check out her performance in Personal Shopper. From arthouse cinema to reality TV, Kristen Stewart is giving us the gay ghost representation we deserve.
Living For the Dead premieres on Hulu on Wednesday, October 18.
Kristen Stewart and Fiancée Dylan Meyer Are Going to Gay Third Base (Writing a Movie Together)
feature image photo by Jeff Kravitz / Contributor via Getty Images
As someone who is in a Writer4Writer lesbian relationship, I know all too well that there comes a day when you must take things to the next level with your partner…….by writing a screenplay together. Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer, who got engaged in fall 2021, are doing exactly that! The lovebirds are collaborating on a film project! I’ve decided this is gay third base! First base, according to Autostraddle’s Nico Hall, is obviously coming over to “watch a movie” and staying Friday through Monday morning. I am now accepting suggestions for what second base should be.
KStew casually revealed the news in a rollercoaster of a conversation with Rachel Sennott — of Bottoms and Shiva Baby — for Interview, and Variety was quick to zoom in on the juicy tidbit. Stewart reveals to Rachel early in the interview that she “split a small edible with my girlfriend” right beforehand, so it feels very right when she eventually shares that she’s working on a screenplay for a “stoner girl comedy” with Meyer. “Me and Dylan are writing a movie,” she says. “It’s a stoner girl comedy, and it’s really fucking stupid. I think you’ll like it.”
Stewart and Meyer are working with a producer who is one of their best friends for the movie, which is why she brings it up in the first place. Stewart talks to Sennott about how cool it is that Sennott is best friends with her Bottoms and Shiva Baby collaborator, the bisexual filmmaker Emma Seligman.
The two also chat extensively about Bottoms, which apparently Stewart didn’t get a chance to see ahead of time because she couldn’t get two different apps to work (something tells me Stewart is extremely qualified to write a “stoner girls comedy” from the cadence and tenor of this interview alone). Sennott describes the upcoming queerleader film thusly:
“Because it’s basically about these two girls, me and my friend Ayo [Edebiri], and a rumor starts that we went to juvie over the summer, so we lean into it. We start this female fight club so that we can fuck the cheerleaders in the group. It’s sort of starting this fake female empowerment thing and our characters are benefiting from it, which is something that people do in real life.”
Stewart promptly responds: “Baby Tár.”
As a reminder, Kristen Stewart is set to make her feature directorial debut with her film adaptation of The Chronology of Water, based on the memoir by bisexual author Lidia Yuknavitch. Imogen Poots has been cast as the lead. Stewart also recently directed the Boygenius short film “The Film.” I can’t wait to hear more about this stoner girl comedy she’s cooking up with her love! More zany gay comedies, please!
No Filter: Happy Belated Birthday to Our Resident Aries, Kristen Stewart!
Feature image photo of Kristen Stewart via Dylan Meyer’s Instagram
Hello and welcome back to No Filter, the place where I tell you what is simply poppin on celesbian IG. I will also use phrases for the elderly, like “simply poppin.” Let’s go!
Happy belated birthday to our resident Aries and Instagramless queen, Kristen Stewart!
This is actually a pretty tight flex, but I must remind you all that the moment a Twitter meme hits IG it is dead and can no longer be engaged with. Trust me! I am a professional!
…see what I mean? And no, I am not just being salty because I still don’t know what escrow means!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqp3MoHrRgy/
I mean this with love, but how long has this Star Wars filming been happening??? Years? Decades? Amandla, I want only the best for you, but come on now!
This is getting my full throated and vocal support, it’s cool and hot and has shades of Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, 20/10.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq0n5wROhzc/
Resident Photo Dump Expert Renee Rapp is at it again!
I love babies on Easter despite not particularly believing in Easter or, frankly, babies! We contain multitudes, you know?
This is a children’s book cover, and I love it???
Stingers UP hair OUT I am thrilled!
Do you live in New YorK? Would you like to see Meg live? Well here is your chance!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq3_sTEPaaN/
Easter vibes means family pics, it is just the law! And if you can sneak off and have your own looking truly stunning, then truly bless on up!
I am SO happy for Brat and also so worried that babies move around inside your own personal body what in the hell!!!!!!!!!
I spent Sunday with my own personal Aunties and this….is simply a historical recording, I gotta say! Very accurate!
No Filter:Yes, Dylan Meyer’s Valentine’s Day Post for Kristen Stewart Is Very Sweet
Welcome back to No Filter! This is the place where I make fun witty comments about celesbian IG for your amusement and pleasure! Let’s get into it!
Baby slideshowwww I love a baby slideshow!
This? This is a LEWK, mon dieu!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CodUMzaSAUW/
Oh, were you interested in Quinn and King Princess Ralph Lauren fragrance spon con?
Well you are in luck cause the two of them are absolutely going off!
As we creep ever close to Yellowjackets S2, I ask you one thing… are your stingers up??
The thing about this look is… nearly all of it is back??
QUICK SOMEONE NAME THIS ROM COM!!!!!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cok8iOWP3-D/
As a person who attended a screening of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring with a live orchestra just last week… I approve!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cop5MNFBFrJ/
TWO DAYS!!! Are you ready???
Yes this is a sweet post but also… are they morphing into one person??
https://www.instagram.com/p/CoivHkAPUDq/
This Kim Possible reference? Hell yes.
Amen Renee. Amen.
Iconic: Queer Icon Kristen Stewart Playing Queer Icon Susan Sontag in Upcoming Biopic
After two successful forays into playing legendary women with two-syllable last names that start with “S,” Spencer and Seberg, Kristen Stewart — also a legendary woman with a two syllable last-name that starts with “S” — will be playing Susan Sontag in an upcoming biopic based on the biography “Sontag: Her Life” by Ben Moser. Director Kristen Johnson will be co-writing the script with legendary lesbian playwright Lisa Kron (2.5 Minute Ride, Well, Fun Home).
According to Variety, filming will begin this very month in the Berlin Film Festival, for which Kristen Stewart is serving as jury president. Kirsten Johnson, best-known for her critically acclaimed documentaries “Cameraperson” and “Dick Johnson is Dead,” said of the intent to begin in Berlin:
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag. It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it. Kirsten has a wonderful approach to storytelling, and this is reflective of that, so she will use documentary in it.”
To be honest I have no idea what that means, but despite the fact that Stewart is not Jewish and also does not remotely resemble Susan Sontag, I am absolutely thrilled by this casting choice!
Susan Sontag is a writer, philosopher and activist best known for her essays, including many that I am almost but not quite smart enough to fully understand. Sontag’s work is foundational to theory across multiple disciplines, such as her 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp” and her 1977 book On Photography. Sontag also published plays and fiction and is well-known for her political activism beginning with her opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
“Notes On Camp” was later used as a theme for the 2019 Met Gala, which Kristen Stewart attended:
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 06: US actress Kristen Stewart arrives for the 2019 Met Gala. The Gala’s 2019 theme is Camp: Notes on Fashion” inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp.” (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
An accomplished bisexual, Sontag was married to writer Phillip Rieff for eight years (they married when she was 17, they had a son) before dating the legendary avant-garde playwright/director María Irene Fornés and then Italian aristocrat Carlotta Del Pezzo and then German academic Eva Kollisch.
Sontag’s romantic relationship with photographer Annie Leibowitz — which began in the late 80s and continued Sontag’s death in 2004 — aspirationally involved the two women living in separate residences in the same Manhattan apartment building. In 2000, Sontag told The Guardian that over the entire span of her life she had been in love with five (5) women and four (4) men.
Susan Sontag (1933-2004), American writer, France, on November 3, 1972. (Photo by Jean-Regis Rouston/Roger Viollet via Getty Images)
Kristen Stewart has played queer parts before: in The Runaways (in which she starred as Joan Jett), Lizzie, J.T. Leroy and Happiest Season. Also in my opinion, she played queer roles in Charlie’s Angels, The Clouds of Sils Maria and Certain Women.
Many questions remain as this project begins its journey into the world, mostly “who will be playing María Irene Fornés”? Furthermore, will Kristen be summoning Susan Sontag’s gay ghost as research for the role? Hopefully these questions will be answered in due time.
feature image shows Kristen Stewart attending the Chanel Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on October 04, 2022 in Paris, France. (Photo by Kristy Sparow/Getty Images)
No Filter: A Rare Kristen Stewart Sighting on Instagram! What Does This Portend?
Feature image of Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer via Dylan’s Instagram
Hello and welcome back to No Filter, the place where I bring you all the hot happenings from celesbian Instagram and make banging, witty comments about them!
A rare KStew sighting on IG! What does this portend for the future? Does this have anything to do with the moon being in Virgo right now? Either way, it is very cute! They aren’t married yet, right? I feel like they are just gonna pop up one day like “Oh we got married three months ago!”
What song do we think Chef Melissa is singing? The only times I lose myself with this much passion into a whisk usually involve Broadway standards or Whitney Houston. This is giving “I Have Nothing” imo!
https://www.instagram.com/p/ChwISREgC9u/
Confession: I did think, for a brief moment, that St. Vincent was a graduate of the greatest high school on earth, Albuquerque’s own East High. Go Wildcats!!! But no, turns out Wildcats are just a fairly common high school mascot and St.Vincent was not in fact in High School Musical.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Chu5eH_PDN_/
Do yourself a favor, stop and look at MJ in the flowers. Don’t you feel better???
https://www.instagram.com/p/ChseJBcpVJQ/
Brb I have to try to recreate this eye makeup for the rest of the day!!
Hugely pro a good dramatic transition video!
A PRACTICAL MAGIC TATTOO???? I am obsessed, I am thrilled!
Yes, Niecy got Jessica a PUPPY named MICHAEL for their anniversary!!
and OF COURSE he has his own IG, why are you even asking???
AND they went to Ava DuVernay’s 50th birthday party, what a week these two are having!
Kristen Stewart Is Seeking Gay Ghost Hunters and I’m Thrilled To Announce My New Career as a Gay Ghost Hunter
Stylist CJ Romero sent shockwaves through the aspiring gay ghost hunter community today when he posted a video of our very own gay icon Kristen Stewart announcing a formal casting call for her hotly anticipated paranormal queer reality TV show. It appears as though Kristen Stewart teaming up with the very esteemed Scout Productions (of Queer Eye and Legendary fame) and aforementioned CJ Romero to produce the currently untitled Gay Ghost Show.
“Hello, so I am scarily excited to announce that I’m teaming up with Scout, the producers of Queer Eye, Legendary, The Hype, on the most gayest most funnest most titillating queer ghost hunting show ever,” Kristen says in the video, adding an exciting physical gesture while she says the word “titillating.” She continues: “Casting begins! We need to find the most incredible LGBTQ+ ghost hunters, paranormal specialists, mediums, psychics, investigators who will lead the pack on this super gay ghost hunting adventure.”
She invites all those interested to apply at Ghost.CastingCrane.com. The graphic declares “a MAJOR STREAMER is now seeking the queerest and most fabulous experts in the paranormal space for a brand new outrageous ghost hunting extravaganza!”
At the casting website for Kristen Stewart’s Gay Ghost Show, you are invited to share your social media handles, some personal history, and indicate your area of expertise: Ghost Hunting, Historian, Paranormal Investigation, Medium, Psychic, Paranormal Tour Guide, Supernatural Psychometry and the ever-elusive “Other (Please explain below).”
Other questions include “What is the SCARIEST place you have ever investigated” and “What would you offer to a team of paranormal experts?” So sharpen your pencils, LGBTQIA+ paranormal community, your big chance to summon the ghost of Mercedes De Acosta or your childhood dog is here!!!!!!
Kristen Stewart Will Star in Bodybuilding Romance “Love Lies Bleeding” — Who Should Play Her Swole Love Interest?
Feature image of Cynthia Erivo via Cynthia’s Instagram / of Stephanie Beatriz by Stefanie Keenan via Getty Images for Land Rover / of Javicia Leslie via Javicia’s Instagram
Kristen Stewart is set to co-star in Love Lies Bleeding, a bodybuilding romantic thriller (!!!) from Saint Maud director Rose Glass, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Specifically KStew will play “the protective lover of a female bodybuilder” in the movie, which is being described as the production companies as “a romance fueled by ego, desire and the American dream.” Yes, we’re getting a Kristen Stewart gay bodybuilder movie…
Sounds hot!!!!!!!!! Honestly, they had me at “romantic thriller.” Hollywood needs to bring back the erotic/romantic thriller imo. And they should all, like this one, be queer.
The bodybuilder Kristen Stewart’s character will be protective of (🥺) has not been cast yet, with THR reporting: “The filmmakers are hoping to cast the lead as authentically as possible, with the search currently underway.” Hopefully by authentic casting, they mean someone who is authentically swole and authentically queer.
And so, some of the Autostraddle TV Team spent the first part of our work day brainstorming potential Bicep Bisexuals, Tough Gays, and Fit Queers who could play opposite Kristen Stewart in this bodybuilding romance.
Cynthia Erivo
(In case you missed it, Cynthia Erivo quietly came out in this interview.)
Young M.A
Photo by Joseph Okpako/Redferns via Getty Images
For the purposes of this article, we are counting Young M.A as an actor due to her contributions on one television show (Mr. Robot) and one film (The Forty-Year-Old Version).
Janelle Monáe
“Let me see you do that yoga,” you know?
Jonica T. Gibbs
I am basing this suggestion on the one scene of Jojo boxing in the movie Fresh, which was tbh a standout scene. Would love to see more.
Chef Melissa King
Right, right so she’s technically a professional chef and not an actor, but Heather pointed out she was on Sesame Street sooooooooo. Anyway, don’t ask questions, just watch the video above. 👀
Javicia Leslie
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb-dJflj6T6/
As Carmen correctly indicated, working out with knifeplay = just lil bisexual activities.
Cameron Esposito
Wolverine remake WHEN!
Stephanie Beatriz
Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Land Rover
Bisexual axe-throwing!!!!!!!!!
Ruby Rose
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGiYZjiJEor/
Ashley Vox
Okay, I couldn’t make this list without including a few pro wrestlers. I am a firm believer that all pro wrestlers can also be actors.
Charlie Morgan
Charlie’s fiancé Jetta is also a pro wrestler, and that’s what I call romance, baby!
Which other strong queers do you think should be thrown into the ring of the Kristen Stewart gay bodybuilder movie?
The True Accurate History of Queer Women and Acting Oscars
The history of LGBTQ representation in the acting categories at the Oscars is a wild one: we’ve got heaps of possibly-queer actors who are now dead, a handful of actors who weren’t out when they won but are out now, and a small, tiny little teacup of out actors nominated after coming out — including 2022’s historic win from Ariana DeBose, the first queer woman of color to win an Oscar for Acting.
Ultimately we are left with a key question: why have so few LGBTQ+ actors been nominated for acting Oscars? The problem here likely doesn’t start with the Academy, as so many problems do, but with whomst even sees mainstream movie stardom as a possibility and who is able to “get ahead” in Hollywood, an industry still run by cis men who are usually also straight and white.
Although young people have been coming out in droves over the past five years and audiences are less likely than ever to insist gay people can’t play straight, the average age of Oscar nominees is late 30s – early 40s, and the marquee names that comprise typical nominee cadre remain heterosexual. Many gay or closeted actors still fear or know that coming out can hurt their career. In 2015, Variety wrote that “no A-list film actor has yet to come out publicly while at the pinnacle of his or her career” which is still mostly true, although Kristen Stewart has since become a notable exception. Top-grossing LGBTQ+ films tend to star straight actors in gay roles. While I absolutely don’t think only gay people should play gay roles, it remains a troubling trend.
So, let’s look back at the history of LGBTQ+ people in the Lead Actress and Supporting Actress categories!
The Unconfirmed But Possibly Gay Oscar Nominees of Early-to-Midcentury Hollywood
Los Angeles, CA: Actress Hattie Mc Daniel is shown with the statuette she received for her portrayal in “Gone With The Wind.”
Early Hollywood was a hotbed of lesbian activity, as Silver Screen stardom was one of a very small number of ways for queer women to generate enough wealth to live independently, build thriving lesbian social lives in a liberal environment and eschew traditional expectations to marry young and procreate. Many bisexual stars of the era had relationships with both men and women, some had lavender marriages sold to tabloids as juicy romances, and most had a very good time. Called “The Sewing Circle,” this group of possibly-gay-or-bisexual women encompasses a major swath of the era’s top talent, and documentation of their activities comes from a variety of sources. Thus, the first three decades of Oscar nominations are dripping with “maybe” to “definitely but unconfirmed” lesbian and bisexual women, none of whom ever personally confirmed their own gayness.
The first-ever actress to win a Lead Actress trophy was Janet Gaynor in 1927/28 for 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Gaynor has been linked romantically to Broadway’s Peter Pan, confirmed bisexual Mary Martin, and it has been said of Gaynor that “Janet Gaynor’s husband was Adrian, but her wife was Mary Martin.” Janet Gaynor was also nominated in 1938 for A Star is Born.
In 1930, bisexual actress Marlene Dietrich was nominated for Lead Actress for Morocco — a film that marked the first time in film history that two women shared a kiss onscreen.
In 1939, Hattie McDaniel, who was rumored to have had relationships with women, became the first-ever person of color to win an Oscar for acting for Gone With The Wind. If Hattie McDaniel was gay for real, she’s the first queer person of color to win an Oscar for acting and Ariana DeBose is the second. But we’ll never know for sure, so!
Almost definitely bisexual Katharine Hepburn was nominated for 12 Academy Awards for Lead Actress between 1934 and 1982, and won four.
Other probably-queer actors who earned acting nominations or wins in the 1930s-1950s include Greta Garbo, Jeanne Eagels, Billie Burke, Edna May Oliver, Claudette Colbert (who won for It Happened One Night in 1934), Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur (another former Peter Pan), Spring Byington, Joan Crawford (who won for Mildred Pierce in 1945), Elsa Lanchester and Ethel Waters. (Waters, who was 100% queer for sure, was also the second Black actress nominated for an Academy Award.)
In 1966, actress Sandy Dennis, who allegedly had “many lesbian relationships,” won Best Supporting Actress for playing Honey in the film adaptation of gay playwright Ed Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Eva Le Gallienne, another member of the Hollywood “Sewing Circle,” got her first nomination for Resurrection in 1980, making her the then-oldest nominee. She was definitely a lesbian but refused to confirm it.
The Out or Eventually-Out Nominees of the 1970s – present
Tatum O’Neal
Tatum O’Neal was a literal child when she won a Supporting Actress Oscar for “Paper Moon” in 1974 — the youngest winner in Oscars history. O’Neal came out in 2012, making Tatum O’Neal the first eventually-out queer actress to win an Oscar.
Tatum O’Neal holds the Oscar she won for working alongside her father in the movie Paper Moon. Photo By: Bettmann / Contributor
Lily Tomlin
In 1975, Lily Tomlin was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Nashville. Although she began dating Jane Wagner in 1971 and it was widely known within show business and the LGBTQ+ community that she was gay, she didn’t officially come out to the world until the 2000s.
Lily Tomlin singing a gospel song in a scene from the film ‘Nashville’, 1975. (Photo by Paramount/Getty Images)
Jodie Foster
In 1976, 14-year-old Jodie Foster earned her first nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role inTaxi Driver. Foster, who was always a tomboy and veered from the typical Hollywood startlet mode, was dogged by lesbian rumors and pressure to come out from the jump.
49th Annual Academy Awards (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
In 1988, Jodie Foster won her first Lead Actress Oscar for playing Sarah Tobias in The Accused. She brought British actor Julian Sands, who she met on the set of the 1987 film Siesta, as her date. This makes her the second eventually-out queer woman to win an Oscar for acting.
Julian Sands and Jodie Foster (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
In 1991, Jodie Foster won her second Lead Actress Oscar for playing Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, a film many saw as extremely homophobic. (“The Silence of the Lambs was protested upon its release by cis gay men because Buffalo Bill was read as gay and male,” Drew recently wrote of the film. “But Buffalo Bill is undoubtedly a trans woman.”) Much of that outcry against the film from LGBTQ+ activists held Jodie Foster personally accountable for being both in the closet and in the movie.
Best Actor recipient Anthony Hopkins stands with Best Actress recipient Jodie Foster at the 64th annual Academy Awards March 30, 1992 in Los Angeles, CA. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded five Oscars to the film “Silence of the Lambs.” (Photo by John Barr/Liaison)
In 1993, Foster began dating Cydney Bernard, and they eventually would have two children together. They broke up in 2008. (Foster is now married to Alexandra Heddison.)
In 1995, Jodie Foster was nominated for Lead Actress for Nell, and brought her gay friend Randy Stone as her date. Stone’s film Trevor, about the suicide of a gay teen, won an Oscar that year, and inspired the founding of The Trevor Project.
Jodie Foster and Randy Stone (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
In 2007, Foster publicly acknowledged her relationship with Cydney in a speech at a “Women in Entertainment” luncheon, but her “official coming out” is generally cited as her 2013 Golden Globes speech.
Linda Hunt:
Linda Hunt won Best Supporting Actress for “The Year of Living Dangerously” in1983, in which Hunt, who is white, played a Chinese-Australian man. Both Hunt and the character she played have dwarfism. Her physical transformation into the role married drag with “yellowface,” which included prosthetics to alter the appearance of her eyes. She’s among the nine white actors who’ve been nominated for playing East, Southeast or South Asian characters.
Linda Hunt at the Oscars. Photo Paul Harris/Online USA, Inc.
Hunt began dating her now-wife, psychotherapist Karen Kline, in 1978, but it appears she was not officially out until the 2000s.
Anna Paquin:
Anna Paquin was 11 when she became the second-youngest ever Oscar winner, winning Best Supporting Actress for The Piano in 1994. Paquin came out as bisexual in 2010.
(Photo by Timothy A. CLARY / AFP) (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
Angelina Jolie:
Angelina Jolie was the first openly queer woman to win or be nominated for an Oscar for acting when she won Best Supporting Actress for Girl Interrupted in 1999. Depending on how you read her character, she is also the first and only openly queer woman nominated for playing a queer or trans role. Only three out LGBTQ+ actors have been nominated for playing LGBTQ+ roles, the other two are Ian McKellan (Gods and Monsters, 1998) and Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game, 1992).
(Scott Nelson/AFP via Getty Images)
But that’s not all! The first openly-queer person to be nominated for acting was Nigel Hawthorne in 1995, though the specifics are contestable, as he was outed in the run-up to the ceremony so he technically wasn’t out at the time of the nomination. I’ve also mentioned McKellan (also nominated in 2002) and Davidson.
But none of these guys won, which I think makes Angelia Jolie the first openly queer person to win an Academy Award for acting.
Jolie dated Jenny Shimizu while they worked together on Foxfire in 1996, and never shied away from identifying as bisexual, telling Girlfriends in 1997 that “I probably would have married Jenny Shimizu if I hadn’t married my husband. I fell in love with her the first second I saw her.”
Jolie was nominated for Best Lead Actress for Changeling in 2008.
Queen Latifah:
In 2003, Queen Latifah was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Chicago. The degree to which Queen Latifah is out or not has been a consistent topic of heated debate in our community, but we can safely say she was not out at this time and that she is out now. This makes her the first eventually-out actress of color nominated for an Oscar.
HOLLYWOOD – MARCH 23: Actress Queen Latifah, wearing Harry Winston jewelry, attends the 75th Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater on March 23, 2003 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Elliot Page:
In 2007, Elliot was nominated for Best Lead Actress for Juno. Page came out as gay in 2014, and then as a queer non-binary trans man in 2020. This makes him the first and only transgender Oscar nominee for acting, although nobody knew he was trans when he was nominated. Meanwhile, eight cisgender people have been nominated for playing transgender characters, two of whom won.
Lady Gaga:
In 2018, openly bisexual actress/musician Lady Gaga was nominated for Lead Actress for A Star is Born. This makes her the second openly queer actor nominated for an Academy Award for acting. She didn’t win for acting, but she did win for Best Original Song.
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA: Lady Gaga, winner of Best Original Song for ‘Shallow’ from ‘A Star is Born’ poses in the press room during the 91st Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on February 24, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
The first openly queer woman to win Original Song was Melissa Etheridge in 2006.
Cynthia Erivo:
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 09: Cynthia Erivo arrives at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on February 09, 2020 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)
In 2019, actress/singer/songwriter Cynthia Erivo was nominated for Best Lead Actress for Harriet. She came out in August 2021, telling The Standard, “I am queer… I have never felt like I necessarily needed to come out just because no-one really asked.” This makes Erivo is the first and only eventually-out queer woman of color nominated for Lead Actress.
Ariana DeBose:
US actress Ariana DeBose accepts the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in “West Side Story” onstage during the 94th Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on March 27, 2022. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2022, Ariana DeBose won Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story. This made her the first openly queer woman of color, and the second Afro-Latina, nominated for an acting Oscar, and the first openly queer woman of color to win an Oscar for Acting.
She is also the first Afro-Latina and the second Latina woman to win an Oscar for Acting, and she won it for the same role Rita Moreno won it for in 1962. (Some count Mercedes Ruehl amongst Latina winners because her Grandmother is Cuban, which would make Ariana the third winner.)
Kristen Stewart:
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 27: (L-R) Dylan Meyer and Kristen Stewart attend the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
In 2022, openly queer actress Kristen Stewart was Nominated for a Lead Actress Oscar for Spencer, which I enjoyed quite a bit.
Stewart is the first female Lead Actress nominee to bring a woman she is openly in a relationship with as her date to the Academy Awards.
In total, this list of LGBTQ+- related acting nominees now contains:
- Four people who were openly queer at the time of their nomination for Lead or Supporting Actress (Ariana DeBose, Kristen Stewart, Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga), of whom two won (Ariana DeBose and Angelina Jolie)
- Eight people who were not openly LGBTQ+ at the time of their nomination for Lead or Supporting Actress, but are now, one of whom was nominated four times (Jodie Foster).
- 20 straight cisgender women who were nominated for playing lesbian, queer, or bisexual roles, two of whom were nominated twice for doing so.
- Five cis men and one cis woman nominated for playing trans women and two cis women nominated for playing trans men
- 17 now-dead women who may have been LGBTQ+ according to historians but never personally identified that way themselves on the official record.
Also.Also.Also: Kristen Stewart Is So Excited To Get Married She’s Worried She’ll Make The Wedding Weird
Feature photo of Kristen Stewart by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
HELLO!! Today is brought to you by this never-ending writer’s block and the cheddar goldfish and peanut M&Ms that I ate today and called lunch. Don’t panic, I’m having chicken noodle soup and a sandwich for dinner.
I’m also going to watch Abbott Elementary, have you seen Abbott Elementary?? IT IS SO GOOD.
Queer as in F*ck You
“The thing is, I always kind of blow presentation,” Stewart says. “I have all these big ideas, like I will get a friend a beautiful present that I’m so proud of. And I just think they’re going to love it. But instead of wrapping it up and like putting a bow on it and giving it to them at the right time, I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have this thing and I know it’s like a week before your birthday, but just f— have it because I love it and I love you.’ And if I had just wrapped it and put this in their hands on the right day, the impact would have been greater.
“And so I’m probably going to do that with my wedding too.” She cracks up at the thought. “I’m probably going to look back and have to do it again … which would surprise absolutely no one who knows me.””
Kristen Stewart on Her Perfect L.A. Day, Her Oscar Nom and, Yes, Wedding Plans. Oof my fellow overly anxious queers, get ready for relatable content!
A Record Number of U.S. Adults Identify as LGBTQ. Gen Z Is Driving the Increase. (there’s a chart in here! I know y’all love charts!)
And keep those stats about Gen Z in mind when you read this very depressing thing, Politicians Target LGBTQ Kids in National Erasure Campaign From Classrooms to Sports Fields. “Facing limiting legislation, book bans, harassment and more, gay and transgender youth say they are being ‘erased’ from the U.S. education system.”
At Trans- And Asian-Owned Han Training Gym, Members Find Inclusive Space. ‘Where It’s Safe To Be Your Whole, Radical Self.’ “Owner and personal trainer Minky Kim founded the Northalsted gym to create strength training programs that align with their values of radically dismantling white supremacy, queer- and transphobia, fatphobia, ableism and classism.” 😍
Supreme Court to Decide Whether Some Businesses Can Refuse to Serve Gay Customers. This thing we’re doing where the Supreme Court is just retrying cases that we’ve already decided (like abortion, Affirmative Action, and the rights of businesses to discriminate) is just really stressful to me, okay???
Saw This, Thought of You
Whew! FIN-A-FUCKING-LY!! LFG!!!! USWNT, USSF Settle Equal Pay Suit for $24M. It also includes a promise from the USSF to equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national teams for all competitions, including the World Cup.
Saying Goodbye to My Childhood Friend Arthur, and did you see our coverage of the Arthur finale? Did The “Arthur” Finale Just Confirm The Lesbian Is A Lesbian?!?
“Call Me Maybe” Is Still A Cultural Moment, 10 Years Later
Was I Wrong To Quit My Job, Or Is It Just Nerves? “Even when you have good reasons to quit, it’s nerve-wracking to leave a situation where you’re comfortable.”
Political Snacks
From the author (and as I’ve said many times before, one of my favorite political thinkers) Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: “I wrote about the ways Black feminists in the 60s and 70s tried to broaden the scope of abortion rights & how their insights are even more important today w abortion under attack.” How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights.
We have a week left in Black History Month, so let’s just go ahead and make that one ^^^ your MUST READ of the night.
And One More Thing!
Beanie Feldstein in this dress! That’s all! Just Beanie in this dress!
Kristen Stewart and Ariana DeBose Are Making 2022 Oscars So Gay, Dude
When Kristen Stewart arrives on the red carpet this March to celebrate her first-ever Oscar nomination, for playing Princess Diana in Spencer, she will be the first-ever Lead Actress nominee to bring her girlfriend/fiancée as her date. (Unless she leaves Dylan Meyer at home which feels unlikely and would wound me personally.)
She’s not the first-ever gay woman nominated for Best Actress, but she is amongst a very small cohort of out queer women to earn a nod: only bisexual performers Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga share that honor. Three other queer actors received Best Lead Actress nominations prior to coming out: Jodie Foster, who earned three nominations in the ’90s; Elliot Page, who was nominated in 2007 for Juno and has since come out as a trans man; and Cynthia Erivo, who was nominated for her role in 2019’s Harriet and came out in 2021.
Then we have the legendarily queer and highly decorated cohort of early Hollywood actors whose sexualities ranged from “open secrets” to “actual secrets” to “maybe not”: Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford.
Meanwhile, 19 straight actors have been nominated for Best Lead Actress for playing queer characters.
In the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role category, Ariana DeBose will be the tenth LGBTQ+ actress celebrated by the Academy in that category, for her role as Anita in West Side Story. Debose dated props master Jill Johnson for several years beginning in 2014, having met her while both were working on the Motown: The Musical tour in 2013, and she is openly queer.
Previous queer nominees for Best Actress in a Supporting Role include Tatum O’Neal (1973), Lily Tomlin (1975), Jodie Foster (1976), Eva La Gallienne (1980), Linda Hunt (1983), Anna Paquin (1993), Angelina Jolie (1999), Queen Latifah (2002), Tilda Swinton (2007), and Cynthia Erivo (2021). Again, Jolie is the only actor “officially” out at the time of her nomination, although Tomlin and Hunt were both already in relationships with the women they’d eventually marry. In the “unconfirmed but definitely not straight according to me personally” bucket we have Spring Dell Byington (1938) and Sandy Denis (1966), who won for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Ariana DeBose is, then, the second Afro-Latina actress nominated for an Oscar for acting, the first queer Latina nominated for an Oscar for acting, the first queer woman of color who is out at the time of her nomination for an acting Oscar and the third queer woman of color nominated for an acting Oscar, along with Queen Latifah and Cynthia Erivo.
Kristen Stewart Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic and Ariana DeBose photo by Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for Bauer Media
This is the first time two out queer women have been nominated in acting categories in the same year.
There’s a few other LGBTQ+ items to celebrate:
The year’s most-nominated film, The Power of the Dog, is gay, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit Mcphee are nominated for playing gay roles.
Jessica Chastain was nominated for Best Actress for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, in which she played the titular Tammy Faye, an icon in the gay community. The film gets into her early displays of allyship, including bringing an HIV-positive gay pastor onto her show.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, which Drew called “a masterpiece of Mommy issues,” earned an acting nomination for Penelope Cruz’s queer role and another for musical score.
The very queer and very fun The Mitchells vs. The Machines, centered on a queer teen, was nominated for Animated Feature Film. So was Flee, which tells the story of a gay man named Amin Nawabi, fleeing Afghanistan for Denmark as a refugee. Encanto, which stars queer actresses Stephanie Beatriz and Jessica Darrow, was also nominated for Best Animated Feature.
In conclusion, if you are curious about whether or not you have what it takes to be nominated for an Oscar for playing Princess Diana in Spencer, take our “Which Kristen Stewart Movie Are You?” Quiz.
Also.Also.Also: Kristen Stewart Has a Crush on Neve Campbell, Proving She’s Gay and Grew up in the 90s
Have you ever made your own sesame noodles instead of ordering take out? Because it’s worth it. (I subbing the cucumber for roasted broccoli though, because that’s what’s in my fridge)
Queer as in F*ck You
If you’re gay and in your 30s, this will be highly relatable content. It turns out Kristen Stewart also grew up with a crush on Neve Campbell:
That video package is a part of her W Magazine profile as one of the “best performers of the year,” Kristen Stewart Rises to the Royal Challenge
This has brought me such joy!! Queer Youth Are Reviving Nigeria’s Once-Thriving Ballroom Culture
Andrea Jenkins Makes History as 1st Openly Transgender City Council President. I used to live in the Twin Cities and am a huge Andrea Jenkins fan, congratulations!
This is… more than a little scary tbh. First Roe, Next Obergefell? As High Court Signals Roe v. Wade Reversal, States Eye Same-Sex Marriage Protections “Some state lawmakers have taken steps in recent weeks to protect same-sex marriage in the event the high court reverses its landmark 2015 decision.”
Saw This, Thought of You
61 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2022
To quote Ro, “Clearly the language used here is incredibly binary but wowwww this is wild.” Women 32% More Likely to Die After Operation by Male Surgeon, Study Reveals (From the article: “Female patients found to have 15% more chance of a bad outcome than if procedure was performed by a woman).
As WNBA Players Call for Expansion, League Says Not Now
Speaking of sports! From Sally: “This is a story about sportsmanship and friendship, that’s actually about sportsmanship and friendship.” Brittany Bowe Wins Gold for Sportsmanship, Gives up Olympic Spot to Teammate Erin Jackson
The rock inclined on our team are very excited about this, Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, and Julien Baker Announce U.S. Tour
Mercury Retrograde Doesn’t Deserve All The Hate
Political Snacks
I am so serious about getting the Voting Rights Act passed, and to even have a glimmer of hope at it — we first have to eliminate the filibuster. That’s finally maybe going to come to a vote and even though it’s a tough, uphill battle, you can help by calling your Senator. Himani wrote you a guide on how to do just that: It’s Time to Make the Call, Because We Cannot Filibuster Another Year
Insurers Will Have to Cover 8 At-Home Virus Tests Per Month
You know what we should just do instead? This:
https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1480697819694522369
QUIZ: Which Kristen Stewart Movie Character Are You?
If you recently perused the instant classic “Every Kristen Stewart Movie, Ranked,” it may have left you wondering — but wait, what about me? Which Kristen Stewart Movie am I?
Which Kristen Stewart Movie Character Are You?
Every Kristen Stewart Movie, Ranked
In August, I set out to watch every Kristen Stewart movie ever made, and I am here today to share the results of that highly uneven experience.
Kristen Stewart’s film career began with a haphazard assortment of films wherein children did schemes and had adventures. Regardless of each film’s quality, she was snagging lead roles from the jump — Panic Room was her second movie. She played tomboys or awkward outcasts and then, eventually, graduated to what would become her most enduring legacy: playing Bella Swan in the Twilight franchise. During and after that financially beneficial but artistically damning contract, Stewart seemed hellbent on proving herself serious by seeking out independent films that were sometimes bad but always Not Twilight.
Thematically, she has often found herself functioning as a transformational figure for the psyche of a white boy or man at a crossroads, delivering harsh truths with messy hair and her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Often, this man is played by Jesse Eisenberg. She’s the opposite of a manic pixie dream girl, but ultimately her effect on the men in her radius is the same. She is quirky and a little rough around the edges. She pushes people to see themselves clearly while rarely taking time to do the same for herself. Her characters often find themselves involved with older men or caught in love triangles. In more recent years, homoeroticism and outright homosexuality have become a more constant presence in her work, and as she’s grown up, the world has finally begun to take seriously the girl we knew was an incredible actress all along. She has starred in a string of biopics including this year’s big one, Spencer, which marks the first time Stewart has generated Oscar buzz.
Stewart recently told The Sunday Times: “I’ve probably made five really good films, out of 45 or 50 films? Ones that I go, ‘Wow, that person made a top-to-bottom beautiful piece of work!” Having now viewed every single film she has ever been in, I can attest that this is in fact true. I wouldn’t give a 10/10 to any of the films on this list, but at least ten would easily get a 1/10. It was incredibly difficult to decide which film was worse than another film and exactly how much worse. But it was still a great journey to take.
There are 42 films on this list. Stewart has cited 45 – 50. The discrepancy is as follows: I did not include documentaries (Bad Reputation, Shooting Panic Room, Aware Anywhere, Love Antosha), shorts (Come Swim, Once and Forever, Cutlass, Crickets) or movies in which she did not have any lines (The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, The Thirteenth Year) or actually appear (the horrific K-11, in which she did a ten-second voiceover).
Which leaves us with 42! Let us begin then, shall we?
42. The Messengers (2007)
Directed by: Danny Pang & Oxide Pang Chun
Written by: Todd Farmer & Mark Wheaton
A big-city family moves to a little farm in North Dakota and the children are haunted by ghosts and plagued by jump scares. There are a lot of crows. Ghosts flock to Kristen Stewart like bees to honey but in a world where her parents are honey truthers.
41. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One (2011)
Directed by: Bill Condon
Written By: Melissa Rosenberg and Stephanie Meyer
This Kristen Stewart movie is a 2+ hour anti-abortion PSA with vampires! The sheer volume of young people exposed to this film make its emaciated body horror more terrifying on a political and cultural level than it is in the world of the film itself.
40. Cold Creek Manor (2003)
Directed By: Mike Figgis
Written By: Richard Jefferies
Kristen Stewart, aspiring horse lesbian! Once again our young heroine finds herself moving out of the city and into a creepy house in a small town that is figuratively haunted by its previous inhabitants. Sad day for Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid when they said yes to this project.
39. Jumper (2008)
Directed by: Doug Liman
Written by: Simon Kinberg, Jim Uhls, David S. Goyer and Steven Gould
How did it take four entire men to write one bad movie? Kristen Stewart is in this for ten seconds, so it’s hardly a Kristen Stewart movie, but here we are. Despite this film being objectively terrible, it was one of my favorite watches of the K-Stew Ranking Experience, because it features my beloved Ann Arbor Public Library as a platform for advanced international travel.
38. Anesthesia (2015)
Written & Directed By: Tim Blake Nelson
Imagine a self-absorbed white teenage boy who wants to be a filmmaker is playing with paper dolls of his favorite actors, forcing them to tell “intersecting stories” that are not actually stories so much as containers for him to share a series of pretentious, earth-shattering “revelations” he had while stoned at the 10th grade lock-in, all of which are thoughts literally everybody else has already thought a million times. Then you have this movie!! Kristen Stewart is a graduate student who cuts herself because “the world has just become so inhuman” and also because capitalism and um, iPhone addiction? Her story is based on probably a Seventeen magazine article? Kristen Stewart yells about her disillusioned peers while I scream into a pillow. If I were ranking her performances, this would be dead last, but I don’t even think it’s her fault?
37. What Just Happened (2008)
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Written by: Art Linson
A pointless satire of movie producers, envisioned for the screen by movie producers. Kristen Stewart is one of many actors (Robin Wright, Stanley Tucci, John Turturo, Lily Rabe, Catherine Keener, Bruce Willis) who wasted their time being in this movie. Fortunately for her but unfortunately for me, she was only in it for maybe ten minutes, as one of Robert DeNiro’s estranged children.
36. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part Two (2012)
Directed by: Bill Condon
Written By: Stephanie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg
Texts I sent while watching this film:
what the fuck is up with this baby
breaking dawn part one was horrifying i thought this couldn’t be worse
why is wolfboy having sex thoughts ABOUT A BABY
the extended cullen family always look like an SNL parody
maybe kristen started dating robert patticakes bc she hated her job and needed excitement
like why i dated marc at the olive garden
….
it really takes a village to raise a baby
how did two hot vamps make one ugly baby
who did the makeup on peter fancinelli and are they still in prison
mormons have too much power in this culture
….
[shared a picture of the CGI baby]
???!!!!?!
35. Cafe Society (2016)
Written & Directed by: Woody Allen
This film and Into the Wild occupy a similar sphere in this list wherein yes I am aware that according to “the critics,” this is a “good film” and most would prefer it to Zathura: A Space Adventure.
Unfortunately, I was unable to bear it because, much like Into the Wild (we’ll get there in a minute), we have a beautiful package and an extraordinary cast circling a deeply rotten core, and that core is A STRAIGHT CIS WHITE MAN WHO IS OBSESSED WITH HIMSELF. However, when that man is Woody Allen, the results are particularly unsettling.
Set in the golden era of Old Hollywood or whatever, Kristen Stewart plays Vonnie, a hottie assistant torn between cute new-in-town awkward curly-haired white boy Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) and studio mogul Phil (Steve Carell). (Also although Kristen Stewart (26) and Steve Carell (54) are both adults, I feel compelled to point out this age difference because this is a Woody Allen movie and this is his creepy agenda!)
My primary feeling about this film is “Woody Allen: what if you just did not?” What if you just did not contribute a completely unnecessary voiceover to this film just to hear yourself speak? What if you did not exorcise your bitterness that you are no longer Jesse Eisenberg’s age by directing Jesse Eisenberg to basically act like you do in your other films, which in his body just comes off as overly stylized, selfish, paternalistic, pushy and really basically just INSUFFERABLE? What if you just did not rely on the beauty and inherent charm and mythology of Old Hollywood to carry a film that otherwise is empty? What if you just stopped making movies????
34. Into the Wild (2007)
Written & Directed By: Sean Penn
Next up on our Kristen Stewart movie tour is Into the Wild. Before I proceed, I want to say I bear no ill will towards the real Christopher McCandless, his life was his own to live (it does seem like he was suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness! But that’s never addressed, instead he is framed as a “free spirit.”), but I’m opposed to his post-death lionization, including this film, which has an actual body count.
A wealthy white man LITERALLY BURNS CASH MONEY and goes on a VERY poorly planned trip into the Alaskan wilderness to “live off the land” and I am expected to care for 2.5 straight hours! He abandons a life of opportunity and privilege without concern for his family or friends, who understandably panic and subsequently extend resources and anguish searching for him. He relies entirely on the kindness of strangers — who have far less to give than his own family — to survive after willfully destroying his own assets and even the ID that’d enable him to work for money. He romanticizes poverty, disenfranchisement and unemployment like only a privileged white man can! His primary life trauma is that at some point he found out that his Dad was married to another woman when his Mom got pregnant, and his Dad left his ex for his Mom. Yup, that’s HIS trauma, not the trauma of IDK, that other family?
Kristen Stewart plays Tracy, a quirky 16-year-old who finds herself so enchanted by this selfish man that she wants to bone him in her parents’ trailer while they’re not home!
However, there are three minutes of this film in which Kristen Stewart plays guitar and sings “Angel From Montgomery” with Chris, and it’s honestly transcendent. I could watch that three minutes out of context for the rest of my life.
33. Fierce People (2005)
Directed by: Griffin Dunne
Written by: Dirk Wittenborn
An angsty awkward curly-haired white boy named Finn wants to spend the summer studying “tribal people” in South America with his father, but due to reasons must settle for staying in the castle owned by his Mom’s billionaire massage client, Ogden (Donald Sutherland). He quickly falls for Ogden’s granddaughter, horny horse lesbian Maya (Kristen Stewart). They rub each other in “tribal paint” and hook up. There is sexual violence. The problem with this film is that it is racist!
32. Undertow (2004)
Directed by: David Gordon Green
Written by: David Gordon Green & Joe Conway
Men and boys in the woods of rural Georgia, family secrets, something something, Uncle Deel comes home, steals a coin collection, there is murder, the boys are on the run? I forgot to take notes to this movie. I was bored but it got good reviews so maybe I missed something? At some point we meet Lila (Kristen Stewart, 14), a tomboy who kisses Chris (Jamie Bell, 18) in an old rowboat that’s like, on land?
31. Catch That Kid (2004)
Directed by: Bart Freundlich
Written by: Michael Brandt and Derek Haas
12-year-old tomboy Maddy (Kristen Stewart) wants to earn money for her Dad’s surgery by robbing a high-security bank. It’s like Ocean’s Twelve, Junior! I was rooting for these kids! Jennifer Beals is Maddy’s Mom? Hopefully this inspired at least one future lesbian to join a climbing gym.
30. Underwater (2020)
Directed by: William Eubank
Written By: Adam Cozad and Brian Duffield
Kristen Stewart’s head is shaved and she’s trapped underwater in a drilling facility at the bottom of the ocean and then there is an earthquake and there are monsters? This film was unnecessary.
29. The Yellow Handkerchief (2008)
Directed by: Udayan Prasad
Written by: Pete Hamill and Erin Dignam
Based on a 1977 Japanese film that was much better than this, Stewart plays Martine, a 15-year-old troubled teen on the run with her awkward messy-haired white boy outcast pal Gordy (Eddie Redmayne). They pick up a just-released-from-prison Brett (William Hurt) and take a road trip through post-Katrina New Orleans to get Brett to his ex-girlfriend. It was fine.
28. The Cake-Eaters (2007)
Directed by: Mary Stuart Masterson
Written by: Jayce Bartok
Fifteen-year-old Georgia (played by Kristen Stewart, 16) has Friedrich’s ataxia and also wants to bone 20-year-old Beagle (played by Aaron Stanford, 30), a cafeteria worker at her high school. Those are her only personality traits, really: she has a chronic illness and wants to bone. Stewart gives the character all she’s got to give, and it’s very well directed. Georgia’s Mom takes naked pics of her to raise disability awareness? Bruce Dern is there. At one point, Georgia gets the worst, most alarming lesbian haircut in history and her and Beagle escape their small town to hook up in a motel.
27. Equals (2015)
Directed by: Drake Doremus
Written By: Nathan Parker & Drake Doremus
In a sanitized dystopia that never bothers to make a case for its existence, Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult — who really nails the robot bit — rebel against the system’s forbiddance of feeling feelings by falling in love with each other. It’s like someone had 10% of a good idea, bleached everything, made some minimalist furniture, said “speculative non-fiction” ten times fast and then sent the reel straight to the cinema!
26. In the Land of Women (2007)
Directed by: Jonathan Kasdan
Written by: Jonathan Kasdan
Carter Webb (Adam Brody), a mopey awkward curly-haired white boy, moves to Michigan to take care of his ailing grandmother and somehow develops weird sexual relationships with Sarah (Meg Ryan) and her daughter, Lucy (blonde Kristen Stewart)! It’s kinda charming in pieces and then Carter starts mansplaining something to Lucy and I die.
25. Welcome to the Rileys (2010)
Directed by: Jake Scott
Written by: Ken Hixon
I think the movie itself was pretty good but “man saves sex worker from herself” storylines are like nails on a chalkboard for me, sorry
24. Lizzie (2018)
Directed by: Craig Macneill
Written by: Bryce Kass
A list of this nature composed by a heterosexual would likely place this Kristen Stewart movie further into the weeds of the bad movies but alas, I am not a heterosexual and therefore the abject badness of this film was indeed overcome by furtive lesbian barn sex.
23. J.T. LeRoy (2018)
Directed by: Justin Kelly
Written & Produced by: Savannah Knoop and Justin Kelly
I’m fascinated by scammer stories and the truths revealed by the lies we’re desperate to believe, but this story starring Stewart as Savnnah Koop, a teenager manipulated by her older brother’s girlfriend Laura Albert (Laura Dern) into adopting the false literary persona of J.T. LeRoy — a character Laura invented to sell her gritty fiction about abuse, drugs and poverty as semi-autobiographical — somehow tackles none of those themes. It tells its story clearly, but the result is just a blockbuster cast performing a TV movie script.
22. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
Directed by: Chris Weitz
Written by: Stephanie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg
Jake’s big try! An inspirational Kristen Stewart movie about how threatening to kill yourself is the best way to get your boyfriend back. The world of the Volturi added some roundness to Twilight’s strange world, and I appreciated that Edward’s brief absence gifted us more time with Jake and the Quileutes. I love CGI wolves I guess.
21. On the Road (2012)
Directed by: Walter Salles
Written by: Jose Rivera
Sometimes a book is really amazing and I think, that’s okay, not every book needs to be a movie! Kristen Stewart is a convincing Mary Ann, the White Men of Literature’s prototypical manic-pixie-dream-girl. But as a superfan of the book and the Beats, I was mostly unmoved by this film that I had anticipated for well over a decade.
20. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
Directed by: David Slade
Written by Stephanie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg
The only Kristen Stewart movie on this list I’ve had the pleasure of previously reviewing for this website, back in 2010 when Crystal made us all go. I think we were high? From that review: “Ok lots of fields of poppies and flying people… Eclipse was cool and entertaining, once you got over the whole ‘how the hell did this totally masochistic love affair become a worldwide phenomenon’ thing. Bella’s like Helen of Troy in a hoodie. High school! Girl you are in high school. Good luck picking the right college, let alone joining the undead.”
19. Charlie’s Angels (2019)
Directed by: Elizabeth Banks
Written by: Elizabeth Banks, David Auburn and Evan Spilotopoulos
This film could’ve been a photoshoot. Unfortunately, once more my lesbian bias seeps through the cracks of this project. The “case” at the center of this otherwise aesthetically delightful romp of tight pants and fight sequences is so utterly empty, so boring, so irrelevant, that I felt actively insulted by the entire film. And yet! Kristen Stewart looked great and did a great job didn’t she??? She was so gay! I had a good time!!
18. Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written By: David Koepp and John Kamps
Kristen Stewart was literally frozen solid for half of this film but I think as a child I may have been entertained by little Josh Hutcherson’s journey into space! Good for him!
17. Seberg (2019)
Directed By: Benedict Andrews
Written by: Anna Waterhouse & Joe Shrapnel
American actress Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart), best known for Breathless, was eventually an FBI target for her involvement with the Black Panthers, and this film traces that chapter of her life. I really enjoyed the film and its style, but it’s difficult to get past the FBI agent being portrayed as a martyr!!! I mostly lamented that now Kristen Stewart won’t have the chance to be in a good movie about Jean Seberg.
16. Snow White & The Huntsman (2012)
Directed by: Rupert Sanders
Written by: John Lee Hancock, Hossein Amini and Evan Daugherty
Stunning visuals, a reliably well-tread story with just the faintest whisper of new life barely breathed into it from a few towns over. Kristen Stewart looks great in armor, nice special effects, battle scenes I could endure because they were not too bloody, ultimately this had no point but the plot carried us on a horse from scene to scene and let us off at the end for snacks, so?
15. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016)
Directed by: Ang Lee
Written by: Jean-Christophe Castelli
For a movie trading in literally zero of my interests, I was drawn in quickly to this slice-of-life drama centered on young private Billy Lynn and his erroneously labeled “Bravo Squad,” fresh out of a harrowing Iraq battle, sent home for Thanksgiving to do a publicity tour touting their heroism. But the squad, heavy with PTSD and secrets and despair, are courted like symbols instead of people. Kristen Stewart is Billy’s older sister, Kathryn, who is essentially the audience’s surrogate — not the heartless publicity hounds or the entrenched soldiers, but someone who sees the war clearly and wants desperately for Billy to take a discharge and refuse his next tour.
14. Speak (2004)
Directed by: Jessica Sharzer
Written by: Annie Young Frisbie
Eric Lively of L Word defame plays a popular teen who rapes Kristen Stewart’s character, Melinda, at a party. Snubbed by her friends and ignored by her parents, she retreats into a stony silence and slow psychological deconstruction. Speak can’t really decide if it’s an indie drama or a made-for-TV movie, but if anyone doubted Stewart’s acting chops, they could’ve started here for evidence of her unique talent for embodying the anxiety of trauma.
13. American Ultra (2015)
Directed by: Nima Nourizadeh
Written by: Max Landis
Up next in the Jesse Eisenberg/Kristen Stewart trifecta is this charming little action movie about Mike, an awkward curly-haired white boy stoner with a way-too-good-for-him girlfriend. But Mike turns out to be a secret agent who’s been de-activated! But then he’s re-activated by Tami Taylor when the government decides it’s time to kill him! It’s sort of dumb but also really fun!! Tony Hale is always a good time.
12. Camp X-Ray (2014)
Directed & Written by: Peter Sattler
Kristen Stewart is Private Cole, a guard at Guantanamo Bay who connects with Ali, a detainee her comrades have routinely dismissed (Peyman Moaadi). I often felt like I was just watching a black-box play starring Stewart and Moaadi, who had incredible dramatic chemistry. It’s dizzying to consider Cole’s backstory — enlisting to get out of her small town, only to be flown directly to a small prison — and I wish there’d been more to chew on from Ali’s. Mostly it kept nagging at me; this sense we were supposed to see Cole’s eventual kindness towards Ali as angelic rather than what it really was — human.
11. Twilight (2008)
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Written by: Stephanie Meyer and Melissa Rosenberg
This film has everything: a plot, characters, special effects, vampires, high schools, apples, baseball, a Mormon agenda, a place on a list of Kristen Stewart movies. What’s not to love?!
10. Personal Shopper (2016)
Written & Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Stewart considers this and her other film with Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria) to be on a very small list of work she’s proud of, and it is indeed critically acclaimed and beloved by smart film people. Alas I am not a smart film person. I know this movie is better than the other movies on this list, I was just um, a wee bit bored??!
9. Adventureland (2009)
Written & Directed by: Greg Mottola
James is forced to spend his summer after graduating high school — class of 87! — working at a local carnival that serves as the small bond for a number of big fish to execute small pockets of power in this cold world. Adventureland is a fun watch teeming with comedic talent and once again we find Kristen Stewart, she of effervescent complicated summer sexuality, falling incomprehensibly for a misunderstood weirdo.
8. Still Alice (2014)
Directed By: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Written by: Lisa Genova and Wash Westmoreland
Julianne Moore is Alice, a linguistics professor with three grown children, including an aspiring actress and passionate diarist played marvelously by Kristen Stewart. After losing track of her words while teaching, Alice is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers and her family must learn to navigate this new reality.
7. The Runaways (2010)
Written & Directed by: Floria Sigismondi
Kristen Stewart as badass, gritty, determined, iconic punk rocker Joan Jett was a blessing in a year short on female-focused stories. The Runaways has the energy of its music and of its era, shifting from eroticized full-volume aggression to grainy, SoCal, sun-bleached, drug-addled dreams. Afterwards you wanna straddle a girl with smoky eye makeup and start a band. Never before or since has Stewart played a role with such intense lesbian top energy and the film crackles with nonstop sexual tension. Knowing now what wasn’t quite as known back then, however, it’s difficult not to lament its relatively gentle treatment of Kim Fowley, a serial rapist and child predator who passed off abuse as artistic genius.
6. Happiest Season (2020)
Directed by: Clea Duvall
Written by: Mary Holland & Clea Duvall
So much went wrong here — an implausible and sociopathic premise passed off like a wink/smile, the tap water level chemistry between the romantic leads — but it packed in so much delight, too! Some very winning jokes, a cast you’d love to play Scattegories with, Christmas cheer and Jane’s novels and Harper’s suit at the party and Aubrey Plaza’s sulky-smart ex-girlfriend and the Mom with her iPad. I loved it!
5. Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Written & Directed by: Olivier Assaysas
A bounty of talent and European accents descend upon the Swiss Alps and so does Kristen Stewart wearing glasses and tugging on her shirtsleeves. Like Personal Shopper, my occasional boredom during this objectively excellent film made me doubt the power of my own artistic intellect. I liked it much better on a rewatch, because when I viewed it in the cinema I was suffering from crushing guilt over having chosen it for Date Night without realizing it was 2+ hours long and that there was no actual lesbianism in the film, only a play about lesbianism that everybody is rehearsing all the time.
Anyhow. Stewart is Valentine, the assistant to Juliette Binoche’s Maria, who’s unveiled resentment of The Youths and Their Superhero Movies comes squealing out of her eyeballs when she’s asked to join the cast of the play that made her famous, but in a new role. Scandal-ridden actress Jo-Ann (Chloë Grace Moretz) will play Maria’s original role, Sigrid, a beautiful younger woman who dupes and ditches Helena, an older lesbian who Maria will be playing in the revival.
There’s a lot of intense and delightful verbal sparring between Valentine and Maria, who spend nearly all their time together. Also the clouds and mountains are beautiful.
4. Panic Room (2002)
Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: David Koepp
A highly competent thriller that brings two lesbian icons together, trapped inside a tiny room, bombarded by men looking for wealth under a capitalist heteropatriarchy. I was on the edge of my seat for this must-watch Kristen Stewart movie!
3. The Safety of Objects (2001)
Written & Directed by: Rose Troche
This was my first ever Kristen Stewart movie. The first time I saw her do anything at all, she was playing Sam, an 11-year-old girl who passed as a boy in The Safety of Objects. The film, directed and written by lesbian icon Rose Troche, was based on bisexual author A.M. Homes’s short story collection by the same name. I was drawn to Sam, relating intensely to what I ultimately perceived as an ambivalence towards how others perceived her gender but also a deep aversion to wearing a dress. I didn’t realize Sam was “the girl from Twilight” until much later. But I love all the weird people in this film, all the outsider stories lurking behind a neat suburban veneer.
2. Certain Women (2016)
Directed by: Kelly Reichardt
Written by: Kelly Reichardt and Maile Meloy
This film is so quiet and empty and full, and about Montana as much as it is about any of the people who live there. Stewart plays a law student who forms an (in my opinion homosexual) bond with a rancher in the town where she’s teaching “School Law” and she doesn’t say much, but she accomplishes so much here with her small patches of time. Everybody is so lonely even around other people, all these women giving more to life than it’ll ever give back.
1. Spencer (2021)
Directed by: Pablo Larrain
Written by: Steven Knight
Undoubtedly her best performance and her first to inspire Oscar buzz, Stewart’s Diana is gorgeously nervous, manic, unsettled, haunted. The script isn’t perfect — managing to dull down a wildly intriguing truth and lack narrative momentum — but it is so lovely and tragic to witness! The fashions and her face and the castles and her children racing to keep up with their beloved mother and the scarecrow and the lesbian in the meadow! I loved it. However I’m confident that the best Kristen Stewart movie has yet to be made!