Performance-Enhancing Drama

Kristen Stewart is too famous to be a chameleon, and too distinctive to be a shape-shifter—no matter how hard she tries to disappear into roles, she remains visible and vivid. She knows it, too, and she’s learned how to lean into all the flinty, self-conscious mannerisms that once made her such a polarizing on-screen persona. Stewart has effectively turned her own well-documented anxieties about being the center of attention into her best weapon—and the results have been brilliant. Her specialties are nervous tension and spiritual claustrophobia: She excels at inhabiting outcasts, loners, and runaways. Playing Princess Diana in Spencer, she went past impersonation into empathetic communion; her acting evinced such a sense of discombobulated glamour that she was nominated for an Oscar.