CAPITALISM IS DESTROYING FILM WORLD, SAYS MILLIONAIRE KRISTEN STEWART
Working in a capitalist society destroys the ability to make good art, the multi-millionaire actress and film-maker Kristen Stewart has claimed.
The Spencer star, 36, suggested that the US economic and political system was not designed “for artists to express themselves”.
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, where Stewart is promoting her role in comedy-drama film Full Phil, she told Variety: “I’m just so sick of the rules, and I’m so sick of the system.
“It is not designed for artists to express themselves. We’re really under the thumb of different priorities that don’t align with real dream-making.”
The Oscar-nominated actress, who also attended the festival on the French Riviera last year to launch her directorial debut The Chronology of Water, went on: “And I don’t mean to wax poetically, because I mean this so very literally: I just don’t think that it’s possible to create sort of radical, vital work under capitalistic parameters”.
Stewart has an estimated net worth of $70m (£56m) after first rising to fame for her role as Bella Swan in the Twilight franchise, before venturing away from big-budget films to more independent drama productions.
She has earned critical acclaim for her role in Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and for her portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Pablo Larraín’s 2021 biographical drama Spencer.
Her first feature film as a director, The Chronology of Water, starring British actress Imogen Poots, debuted in Cannes last year to a six-and-a-half-minute ovation and was adapted from a memoir of the same name by Lidia Yuknavitch.
While promoting the film in December, Stewart said that she thought film-making was “in capitalist hell” and lamented that Hollywood has prioritised big-budget movies over indie films that come from diverse perspectives.
In an interview with The New York Times, she said: “It’s too hard to make movies right now that aren’t blockbuster-y, whatever, proven equations.”
The same sentiment has been echoed by fellow prominent film-makers, including James Cameron, the Titanic director, and Steven Soderbergh, the Ocean’s Eleven film-maker.
Speaking about debuting The Chronology of Water at Cannes last year and the process of selling it to distributors, she told Variety: “It’s completely changed my life realising that particular project, really just pushing it all the way.
“Speaking to how do you get stuff seen and share it with people who actually care, don’t hold me to anything, but my goal is to make something for nothing with my friends before the end of the year and put it on f---ing YouTube.”
“I want to make weird s--t, and I’m fully OK doing that in a kind of insulated, crazy way.”
2026-05-18T20:20:52Z
