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It’s strangely surreal, especially since at the media screening of Twilight: New Moon the night before, journalists were wanded every time they went in and out of the theater and all cell phones were banned. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Reed wonders.
No, not really. But then Twilight is a new kind of phenomenon, combining the devotion of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fans with teen heartthrobs that send fans into palpitations a la New Kids on The Block. Add in the ability of fans, thanks to the internet, to monitor their heroes 24 hours a day and you have a full-fledged mania. It’s an odd world in which to find Reed, an actress who is sincere when she says she cares more about the work than stardom. And though she admits to finding the attention difficult she has a very clear head about it, something probably helped by the fact that she has already found herself the lightning rod of attention once before, when the superb Thirteen, a movie she co-penned and co-starred in, won praise for its gritty realistic look at the lives of teenagers in the ’90s.
Reed spoke with Venice about fame, dealing for the first time with paparazzi, making the most of her brief time on screen in New Moon, role models, and her dreams outside of Hollywood.
Venice: Talk about some of the opportunities that have opened up for you in the past year. Or have you even had time to enjoy them, you’ve been so busy.
Nikki Reed: It might take a couple of years before I can properly reflect on this whole thing. It’s been really crazy and everything is moving so fast that it’s hard to see it from an outside perspective. In terms of my approach to people, everything has changed. Like I went to New York and I had enough time to see Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in their play and then I also saw Sienna Miller’s play. Hugh Jackman has kids and we all sort of met at the Teen Choice Awards, and I’m not a household name, I don’t think that I am, but if you mention the name Twilight now there’s an instant connection between you and whoever the person is in the world because they know what it is. And so it’s given me an opportunity to meet really cool actors that I idolize. You can say you’re in Twilight and they sort of get that maybe you get their insane world for half a second. And the cool thing is a lot of these actors have kids that love Twilight much more than they love their parents’ work because their parents are just their parents. But some really famous woman sent a letter to Rob saying, “Hey, will you sign something for my children? I’ve sent you some script covers to sign.” It’s just really incredible.
There’s a different level of warmth for Rosalie in this one I think.
Yeah, in the little second I’m there.
I like the second scene where you’re the one person to vote ‘no.’
Yeah, we saw a really rough cut up in Vancouver right before we shot this last one just to get a feel for what the second one looked like. But we were over-stimulated seeing this movie for the first time, so I don’t even remember what I did in that scene. When the beginning came it was too fast and then I was so into the middle that when my scene came at the end I wasn’t ready again. So I don’t know what I did or didn’t do in those scenes. But thank you.
[Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki’s Twilight co-star and good friend comments] That was a great moment, I agree.
And it’s also weird to be so focused on what you look like physically. I’ve never worked on a film where I’m as concerned with things that seem so superficial. But how we look is really important, especially when you’re playing these characters that people really feel a connection with. They feel like they know them and not just because they’ve seen them on the big screen, but before that. So you want to make sure you look right and it’s really frustrating because sometimes it feels like it’s out of your control. And it’s never gonna be perfect and the word perfect seems to me like a very common word that’s used when describing us and that throws you off as well. It’s like, “What is perfect?” I don’t know.
But when you’re a fan of both literature and film you have to have that separation.
I’m not trying to insult them, but I don’t know if you can call 12-year-olds big readers and fans of literature. I’m sure some of them are, but for some of them this is probably their first real book or series that they’ve ever connected to I think. It’s great that they’re 12 and they’re reading like 800-page books, and three or four of them, it’s wonderful. But I don’t know if they’re capable of separating yet. I read Memoirs of a Geisha and then I saw the film and then after that I sort of decided I wasn’t going to do that again. Although I’ve read the Twilight series and I have seen the movie. [laughs]
You also have the arc of changing.
You feel that too? Good. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to that’s actually talking to me, so that’s cool.
What does everybody keep asking you?
“Do you know Rob Pattinson? What’s it like working with him? Has he changed?” I love Rob, nothing to do with Rob. I’m just saying that’s what the public wants to know. It’s beyond that’s not what journalists are asking because they know that’s what will sell. That’s what they’re asking ’cause they want to know. That’s what they’re asking when their recorders are off. It’s a little weird.
After having dealt with all this for a year is it any easier?
No, it’s gotten worse because last year it was mostly just fans and I wasn’t used to it. And now there’s this weird element of paparazzi I don’t understand yet. So when we finished New Moon, I found a solution and it’s not the ideal solution because my team would like it if I did more of what some of the other cast members do, like go to Starbucks on a daily basis, get photographed, and make it into Us Weekly. But I just don’t know how to function like that, regardless of what the general public thinks, which is also weird. To read what the general public thinks and then put it together with your real life, it’s amazing how wrong people can be. It’s amazing to me the public has sort of put together this idea of me — it’s mostly because it’s young girls and I play a character that is loved by so many people and maybe I’m not the exact person they wanted to play it, and so there’s a lot of criticism involved and I’m very outspoken. Quite frankly, I’m not like in a cookie cutter, I can’t give the answers that they want to hear. I’m just incapable, I’m not the type of girl you point in a direction and say, “Walk,” and she goes, because those are the people that tend to be the most successful, at least in the short term. And I don’t fit that, so unfortunately an opinion has been made and that’s fine. But when I got back from shooting New Moon I lasted four days in L.A. and then I left and I moved to Europe, to Greece, for three months and I stayed until two days before I had to go shoot Eclipse ’cause it’s really not for me. It’s amazing how much it’s just not for me. I always sort of dip my toe in the water and then I run away like I’m afraid to swim. But I’m fascinated with it.
Are you fascinated with the work?
I love the work. What goes with it is just not for me. I’m too sensitive I’ve come to realize, and I like my life, actually living it, so much more than I enjoy sitting in a Four Seasons Hotel feeling really super glamorous and temporarily famous that I’d rather not lose my life and lose being 21 and backpacking and doing cool shit and making mistakes so that I can be famous for five minutes because of a really big movie that’s obviously, without putting it down, because I’m not, but like all things are, they’re popular for a certain period of time, even Titanic. It’s the work that comes after. So, to me, I always feel like by being in rooms like this, no offense to you please, but that I’m missing out on my life I should be living and other areas that I want to explore and things I want to do. And every time I try to go back to school — I did go back to school for a little bit, but it’s like I can’t complete anything — I can’t actually devote any real attention to what I want to do ’cause then I have something else.
So what do you want to do?
I want to be a kid, I want to be 21. I moved in with my dad in January, which was cool. I want to like live with my parents for a second and go to college and do what my brother did. You’re asking me my dream. I’m not saying this is ever going to happen, ’cause it’s just not right now. I’ve sort of missed that boat, but I wanna do what my brother did. I wanna take a semester abroad somewhere and live with a bunch of kids in community living wherever I am.
Is there anybody you look to for the long-term fame?
Yeah, Holly Hunter. She was the first person I worked with, so people expect it. It sounds really obvious, but she has the ideal career. She’s respected, she’s won an Oscar, people love her, but they don’t think about her. They don’t go to bed wondering what she’s eating for dinner like they do with Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. They just like her, and she works, and she makes a decent living; she has a beautiful family; she has a cool nanny, she’s got a great place in New York and a great place in L.A., and right now she’s on a show in L.A., and it’s normal. That’s it, that’s the career I want. And she’s really smart and people are willing to let her do what she wants to do.
Do you see a project this massive giving you more freedom to go back to more indie fare like K-11?
It sounds weird, you take from this what you want. Certainly our faces are more recognizable and our names sound familiar when people hear them, all of us. Will it put me in a movie starring opposite some big A-list celebrity? No, only I can do that. So I think my goal for right now is to get through [the Twilight movies], enjoy them because it’s fun; we have a lot of fun making them, and just not go the route that’s so easy to go right now. It’s really so easy to host parties here and there, get paid $10,000 to go to this event tomorrow night, and let T-Mobile and whatever other cell phone companies give me free phones if I just get photographed using them. It’s so easy to do that right now and it’s so tempting ’cause why wouldn’t I want a free cell phone and get paid to fly to, like, Madrid for this fashion show. But you don’t last, you just don’t. If you’re too closely associated with anything that’s so super-huge, your name will always go hand in hand with that, so it’s hard for me to watch… I’m not saying I’m missing out on opportunities, but you have to be careful when and where you choose to capitalize.
Do you feel like there’s a similarity to what you went through with Thirteen?
There is a similarity, there is a connection, there totally is. That was like a cult phenomenon, obviously on a much smaller scale, but that was still something that made people want to know the person, want to connect with the person, want to ask the person questions. There were no boundaries with that movie, just like I feel there are no boundaries with this.
Having gone through it once does this make it easier to handle?
No, it’s just different. It feels familiar. I feel like, “Oh yeah, I know this feeling.” But it’s not in your control, it’s totally out of your control. That’s the crazy thing about stuff like this is you do interviews, you don’t have any control of who says what, it can be printed however, the public can see you however they choose to see you. It can be as silly as because I have dark hair and maybe tan skin I am more exotic, therefore sexier, and therefore probably a home wrecker, and it spirals out of control. But you have to let go of control, you have to surrender and realize this is greater than you, and at the end of the day, it means nothing. None of this means anything. I’m healthy, I love my family, they love me, and I have enough money to eat, so that’s what matters. Or else you just go crazy. I went through a phase where I literally couldn’t stop going on the internet because it’s a bizarre thing, it’s not natural to have people you don’t know commenting about you, and this new technology has advanced so much in recent years that even my mom, who’s a generation above me, can’t relate, and I can’t relate to the generation below me. What is Twitter? What the fuck is going on there? No, I don’t Tweet. I’ve never had a Facebook, never had a My Space, like I don’t understand that at all. But maybe it’s because I’m an actor and it’s already weird for me.
What can you tell us about K-11?
I just don’t know what’s happening with it, but Jules Stewart, Kristen [Stewart]’s mom is directing. She wrote it as well, with a writing partner. Kristen and I both love the project; we hope it gets made, obviously. But other than that I don’t know what else to say ’cause we don’t have a start date and we’re kind of all wrapped up in this, she and I. So at least I know when my schedule is free, maybe hers will be free. We sort of know where the other one’s at. But we want to make it. It’s a great project and it’s an opportunity for me to play something that couldn’t be farther away from my situation, and people will no longer have the opportunity to say she’s playing herself. Even though I couldn’t have lived on my own, paid rent, tried to finish high school, without even having a driver’s license, I couldn’t have done all those things if I was this crazy insane lunatic, which is the character I keep playing. Except in Twilight, which is also another great reason I’m happy to be a part of this, because of the mass exposure and the difference in what I’m playing. K-11 I get to play a role so different than myself and I always play roles different than myself. In fact, Rosalie is the closest thing I’ve ever played to myself. It depends on how you look at her, but in terms of how protective she is over her family, and how loving she is, and not in a condescending way, in a mature, wise way, how she can look at the big picture and see what’s best for her and her family. And I feel like that’s the role I’ve sort of always played.
*The new photoshoot was done November 9th by Patrick Fraser*
Source via Bellas Diary
updated with scans from via Brandheroin
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