Kristen Stewart Says Relationship with Robert Pattinson ‘Wasn’t Real Life’
Remember the days of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson? Of course you do—on and off screen, they were a media sensation not easy to forget, and though they refused to confirm their relationship for years, they were photographed together endlessly. Twihards (a.k.a. “Twilight” fans—how soon we forget) basically died when they finally ‘fessed up to dating, and then died a more tragic death when they split up.
But that relationship wound up becoming less of a real thing and more of a commodity, Stewart told T in a new interview. “People wanted me and Rob to be together so badly that our relationship was made into a product,” she said. “It wasn’t real life anymore. And that was gross to me.”
Stewart stressed that she’s fine with showing her true self to the world these days—she just doesn’t want anything spun into a product, especially when it comes to her life. “It’s not that I want to hide who I am or hide anything I’m doing in my life,” she told T. “It’s that I don’t want to become a part of a story for entertainment value.”
These days, Stewart is dating a visual-effects producer, Alicia Cargile, and is feeling much more open about her relationship—which is very real. As she told Elle UK last month, “Right now I’m just really in love with my girlfriend.” She added that she’s consciously trying to be more transparent about her relationship now, because she is dating a woman. “To hide this provides the implication that I’m not down with it or I’m ashamed of it, so I had to alter how I approached being in public,” she told Elle. “It opened my life up and I’m so much happier.”
Back in the day, when she was dating Pattinson, she spent many a sleepless night trying to figure out how to find balance in the midst of a media frenzy. “How do you feel like you’re not being stolen from, yet at the same time not guard yourself to the point of depriving yourself of so much goodness in life?” she asked herself, according to T. In the end, “Nothing killed me,” she said. “I was skinny as hell, I looked crazy, but I was fine. I now have faith in my body to carry on, and that has made me a better actor.”
Stewart seems committed to Cargile—and to talking about it publicly when appropriate. “I would never talk about any of my relationships before, but once I started dating girls it seemed like there was an opportunity to represent something really positive,” she told T. “I still want to protect my personal life, but I don’t want to seem like I’m protecting the idea, so that does sort of feel like I owe something to people.”
