While discussing her feature directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water,” with The Times of London, Kristen Stewart said actresses get “treated like shit,” and it wasn’t until she was seen as a director that people started “talking to me like I’m somebody with a brain.”
“Actresses get treated like shit, I’ve got to tell you,” Stewart said. “People think anyone could be an actress, but the first time I sat down to talk about my movie as a director, I thought, wow, this is a different experience, they are talking to me like I’m somebody with a brain.”
She added, “There’s this idea that directors have otherworldly abilities, which is not true. It’s an idea perpetuated by men. Not to sound like I’m complaining all the time, but it’s worse for female actors than male ones — they get treated like puppets, but they are not. Imogen [Poots] put her whole body and soul into this movie.”
Stewart famously got her start headlining the “Twilight” franchise before becoming a force in the arthouse scene, starring in films like “Seberg,” “Underwater,” “Spencer” and “Love Lies Bleeding.” Stewart made the jump to film directing with the release of “The Chronology of Water,” which premiered at Cannes 2025 before going wide in theaters on Jan. 9. The film stars Poots as Lidia, a woman who reconciles with her traumatic past through competitive swimming and the written word.
This is not the first time Stewart has spoken out about the experiences of women in Hollywood. In a recent profile with the New York Times, she said male actors are “aggrandized for retaining self” in their craft, while women don’t get the same treatment.
“There’s a common act that happens before the acting happens on set: If [male actors] can protrude out of the vulnerability and feel like a gorilla pounding their chest before they cry on camera, it’s a little less embarrassing,” she said. “It also makes it seem like a magic trick, like it is so impossible to do what you’re doing that nobody else could do it.”
