Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke has said that she doesn’t remember most of the actresses who auditioned for the part of Bella Swan in the film series.
On an episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the filmmaker was asked if she remembers when famous actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Brie Larson tried out for the role. The director said she’s not sure if they tried out in front of her, as she had wanted Kristen Stewart to play Bella from early on in production.
“See, I don’t know if they actually came in to see me,” Hardwicke stated. “I’m not sure. I couldn’t guarantee that. I, very early on, had my eyes set on Kristen [Stewart]. As soon as I saw Into the Wild, I’m like, ‘I think she’s it.’ So they might have been seeing all of these other people, but then I was just laser-focused like, ‘I want her.’ Soon as I met her and went out there and spent that time that weekend, I thought, ‘She’s got it. No bullshit, she’s never going to overact, she’s got that angst … of course, her face is luminous.’ The camera, you can shoot anything and she looks amazing.”
You can see a clip from the discussion in the tweet below:
What was Twilight about?
“High-school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), always a bit of a misfit, doesn’t expect life to change much when she moves from sunny Arizona to rainy Washington state,” reads the first movie’s synopsis. “Then she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a handsome but mysterious teen whose eyes seem to peer directly into her soul. Edward is a vampire whose family does not drink blood, and Bella, far from being frightened, enters into a dangerous romance with her immortal soulmate.”
