At least one news story refers to her as a “Self-proclaimed introvert.”

By the way, I am not presuming Kristen Stewart is shy, introverted or highly sensitive, and I don’t know her personally.

But just from my gut reaction to seeing her in movies and interviews, she may – like many other very talented actors – have any or all of those traits.

Not that they are the same thing.

See my post Shyness, Introversion, Sensitivity – What’s the Difference?

[Photo from Official Site for the Snow White and the Huntsman.]

What is interesting is the reactions by some reporters, and their interpretations of her behavior.

A USA Today article said, “Visibly shaking with stage fright, Stewart tended not to say much in front of the crowds.” (Kristen Stewart in a different light at Sundance, By Anthony Breznican, Jan 25, 2010.)

A Los Angeles Times article (For Kristen Stewart, this is her dawn, by Chris Lee) said she “appeared to not enjoy the red carpet activities” and referred to her “continuing hostility toward the celebrity limelight” and that she “appeared visibly repulsed by the red-carpet action.”

In a New York Times article, Brooks Barnes wrote about “Ms. Stewart’s shyness and hints of awkwardness,” but added those qualities “make her accessible to fans.”

The article adds that Stewart “has coped with the suffocating attention by giving off an air of inapproachability, a tough exterior that Chris Weitz, the director of New Moon, said she has methodically adopted.”

“Jodie Foster, the article continues, “who co-starred with Ms. Stewart in David Fincher’s ‘Panic Room’ said ‘Kristen isn’t interested in blurting out her emotions all in front of her, and that results in really intelligent and interesting performances.’”  [From Media Vampires, Beware, by Brooks Barnes, nytimes.com]

Getting more comfortable with experience

Kristen Stewart does seem much more relaxed and confident and expressive in more recent videos of interviews, compared with ones she was doing earlier.

She says, “I think I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with talking about myself and knowing that what you say, people are really going to take into consideration.

“That always intimidated me so much that I minced every word that came out of my mouth. I couldn’t finish a sentence because I was so concerned about how it was going to sound. I didn’t want to come across insincere about something that I really love to do.” [From dawnmasuoka.com interview 21 Nov 2009]

“You stuck-up party-pooper”

Introversion- or shyness-related actions like “holding back” in interviews and public appearances (and ordinary conversation, for those of us who aren’t celebrities) can often lead to negative judgments and reactions from others, such as fans writing that she is aloof, a snob, obnoxious or rude.

Writer Sophia Dembling comments in a post on her Psychology Today blog The Introvert’s Corner:

Introverts  tend to be, by nature, fairly mild-mannered. But that doesn’t mean we don’t silently-and sometimes not-so-silently-seethe.

Look at poor Kristen Stewart, an introvert in the limelight. This young actress (Bella Swan in the wildly popular Twilight movies) gets all kinds of grief because she was awkward on Oprah, hates being stalked by paparazzi, and generally doesn’t seem to enjoy the pander-to-the-public aspect of her acting career.

“I think it’s funny that when I go onstage to accept an award, they think I’m nervous, uncomfortable, and awkward–and I am–but those are bad words for them,” she recently told Elle magazine.

Dembling lists a number of reactions we introverts may get from other people (in Stewart’s case often very publicly) that can inspire us to feel: “I f***ing hate it when they say…” – reactions such as “She’s stuck up.” “You don’t know how to have fun.” “Party pooper!” “You hate people.”

From her post How To Piss Off An Introvert.

Paparazzi can be assaultive

In an interview for the July issue of British Elle, Stewart said about some paparazzi photos of herself:

“What you don’t see are the cameras shoved in my face and the bizarre intrusive questions being asked, or the people falling over themselves, screaming and taunting to get a reaction. The photos are so…

“I feel like I’m looking at someone being raped.”

But she quickly apologized, telling People mag.: “I really made an enormous mistake – clearly and obviously. And I’m really sorry about my choice of words… ‘Violated’ definitely would have been a better way of expressing the thought.”

She has done PSAs [Public Service Announcements] for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) and played a rape victim in her 2004 film “Speak.”

I don’t know if this is one of the photos Stewart was thinking of, but there are others I’ve seen where she seems really angry or stressed.

Of course her remark about rape was extreme, but hopefully it did get more people aware of how assaultive paparazzi can be – and forced publicity appearances, especially for sensitive people.

More depth

“There’s a threat to her health in the way she works, in that she can’t project feelings she doesn’t feel herself,” Stewart’s “New Moon” director Chris Weitz said.

“If you shoot a scene in which she has a nervous breakdown, that’s potentially what you’re going to get. I have found myself concerned for her at moments.” During the filming of Twilight, studio executives found themselves concerned about Stewart and co-star Robert Pattinson. “Both of them have the tendency to go deep, to find the emotional core of a scene,” says the first movie’s director, Catherine Hardwicke. [ELLE mag. interview by Amanda Fortini, May 05, 2010]

Pattinson, has also referred to himself as introverted, and others have called him shy. Actor Christian Serratos (who plays Angela in the movie) thinks all the frenzied fame has affected Pattinson: “If anything he’s become more humble and more introverted.” [okmagazine.com]

Signs of sensitivity

Many highly sensitive people experience the kind of strong concern for authenticity and truthfulness, and caution (even perfectionism) when speaking that Stewart mentions above.

Another indication may be how much she cared about creating her character Bella in “Twilight” and making her dialogue ring true.

A magazine article noted, “Stewart, who was just 17 when she shot the movie, was uncompromising about what she’d allow her character to do and say. ‘We had to rewrite and improvise a lot of the most intense scenes, because Kristen will not say something if she doesn’t feel good about it,’ recalls [director Catherine] Hardwicke.”

[Entertainment Weekly, Nov 14, 2008 - posted on kristenstewartweb.com]

Source of video clip (from 2007): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_9vVWtSzQ

More on the personality traits

Shyness – “Although most shy people feel they are more shy than other people, shyness is a self-reported characteristic of personality that is expressed by over 40% of those surveyed. Only about 7% of Americans surveyed indicate that they have never experienced shyness in their entire life. Thus, shyness is a pervasive phenomenon; if you are shy, you are not alone.”

From The Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast.

The director Bernardo J. Carducci Ph.D. is author of Shyness: A Bold New Approach.

Wikipedia says “Shyness is a social psychology term used to describe the feeling of apprehension, lack of confidence, or awkwardness experienced when a person is in proximity to, approaching, or being approached by other people, especially in new situations or with unfamiliar people.”

Introversion – Wikipedia: “The trait of extroversion-introversion is a central dimension of human personality. Extroverts (also spelled extraverts) tend to be sociable, assertive, and interested in seeking out excitement. Introverts, in contrast, tend to be more reserved, less outgoing, but are also marked by a richer inner world.

“They are not necessarily loners but they tend to have smaller circles of friends and are less likely to thrive on making new social contacts. Introverts are less likely to seek stimulation from others because their own thoughts and imagination are stimulating enough.”

Also see The Inner Actor site for more on sensitive actors.

Highly Sensitive books

Related pages/sites:

Introversion / shyness page

Highly Sensitive

Highly Sensitive/Facebook

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Cheryl Richardson relates an example of her own sensitivity:

“Last night I went to see a movie with a group of friends. 

“I’d heard wonderful things about the story from people whose opinion I respect, and I was so looking forward to enjoying the film.

“However, within twenty minutes of watching, I made a decision to leave the theater.

“I’m very sensitive to violence and human suffering and therefore my threshold is pretty low.”

From her article So Sensitive: Are you tired of sucking it up?

Chapter 8 of her book The Art of Extreme Self-Care is titled “You’re So Sensitive.”

Her book The Art of Extreme Self-Care: Transform Your Life One Month at a Time is available in Hardcover, Kindle, Paperback & Audiobook.

There is also a 12-session online course.

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Video: You’re So Sensitive: The Art of Extreme Self Care

Published on May 4, 2012 by CherylRichardsonTV. “Learn how to protect your sensitive side in this second video about The Art of Extreme Self-Care. Cheryl Richardson is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including, Take Time for Your Life, Life Makeovers, Stand Up for Your Life, The Unmistakable Touch of Grace, The Art of Extreme Self Care and her new book with Louise Hay called You Can Create an Exceptional Life.”

Thanks to Jacquelyn Strickland (co-creator of the HSP Gathering Retreats ™ along with Dr. Elaine Aron) for mentioning this video on her Facebook page.

She comments that this video from Cheryl Richardson is ‘on the positives of being a HSP & “taking care of your sensitive self.” Her book, The Art of Extreme Self-Care has a chapter on The Highly Sensitive Person, and she credits Elaine Aron in this chapter. I’m pretty sure Cheryl is a HSS, Extravert HSP as well.’

[HSS is High Sensation Seeking - see Elaine Aron's page for more info: Personality and Temperament: The Highly Sensitive Person Who Is Also A High Sensation Seeker.]

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Also see more posts on High Sensitivity

and the Highly Sensitive site and Highly Sensitive / Facebook

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“This is a ridiculous thing to say,” she admits, “but I never liked being a teenager. I never felt comfortable being in a group of giggly girls. I always felt embarrassed and frightened by it.

“I couldn’t quite handle the high school thing, and I wanted to leave as soon as I could. So I suppose I never really wanted to explore it, whereas I did want to be a woman. Some of the teen flicks can be great, but it wasn’t the story I wanted to live in.”

She added, “Apart from Natalie Wood’s character in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ [1955], where she plays a teenager, I just couldn’t imagine doing it. I wish I could have. I think I would have been a much better person for it.”

[Interview mag., Dec/Jan 2008; photo from 'Atonement']

Many other talented and creative people “couldn’t quite handle the high school thing” and felt like outsiders, finding their teen years to be difficult and emotionally challenging.

“The passage through adolescence was a lonely, involuted time for me,” said writer Maxine Kumin. “I had no one to eat lunch with, and took my sandwich to the locker room, where I pretended to be busy writing an article… I took refuge in scholarship…

“At Radcliffe, epithets with which I had been branded — bookworm, greasy grind, brain trust — became a badge of honor.”

[From book: Jane Piirto. My Teeming Brain: Understanding Creative Writers.]

“Maxine Kumin (born June 6, 1925) is an American poet and author. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1981-1982.” [Wikipedia]

Anthony Hopkins was dyslexic and hated rugby, and so was treated as an outcast in his native land – but he claims the treatment from his peers gave him just what he needed to become a movie star:

“It gave me the fire and anger to become an actor. I wasn’t afraid of anything. The acting covered up the loneliness.” [imdb.com 1.30.01]

As a teen, Nicole Kidman towered above most of the others in her class and has said she thought of herself as “the ugliest person alive on earth.”

On weekends, when most kids were at the beach, Kidman was often alone on the stage of the school theater. “I would just lock myself in there,” she says.

“I thought it was fantastic having that stage all to myself. I’d be teased about going off to the theater instead of the beach with everyone else. I felt like an outsider, but it is character building not to be a pretty child who just bats her eyes and gets her way.”

[Cosmopolitan, Jul 1991]

One of a number of my posts about her: Nicole Kidman on fame, and actors as highly sensitive people.

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It’s a word that has a wide range of associations, including some pretty negative or dismissive ones.

Many people connect “psychic” with storefront charlatans and stage performers. The Wikipedia page defines a psychic, also called a sensitive, as a person “who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses.”

In our interview, Judith Orloff, MD noted she had psychic abilities at an early age, but her family did not encourage her to develop them. She is now integrating those talents with traditional medicine, and is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, has a private practice, and leads workshops on intuitive ability and healing.

She thinks psychic ability can be used for life enhancement, and agrees with a quote of Jean Houston (from our interview) that “a lot of giftedness, though by no means all, has to do with having a broader palette of perceptual capacity, being highly sensitive to all the senses.”

But Dr. Orloff thinks “it goes beyond the senses, as we know it. It’s our ability to intuit the mystery. And it’s through our capacity to intuit the mystery that we know cosmic truths about ourselves. And it’s exactly the same thing as creativity.”

Continued: Psychic Ability and Creativity: Going Beyond the Senses.

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“Many more people are highly sensitive than realize it. Besides being empaths, HSPs are gifted in many ways.

“They write, play music, engage in practicing the healing arts, paint, sculpt and so much more. Inherently creative with a knack for seeing what others can’t… Being HSP is not a curse, burden or life sentence to being out-of-synch with the world.”

From article What Everyone Needs to Know About Highly Sensitive People (HSPs), By Sarah Dolliver.
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Shyness is one of a number of personal qualities that Malick shares with many other creative and gifted people.

In a recent profile article, writer Steven Zeitchik notes that friends and collaborators ‘paint a portrait of the reclusive filmmaker as a complicated and contradictory man…

‘The director dislikes being photographed, avoids public appearances — he skipped the premiere of his highly anticipated, long-delayed “Tree” last week here at the Cannes Film Festival — and turns down all interview requests (including this one), creating an impression of a cranky, precious artist.

‘But conversations with nearly a dozen friends and collaborators reveal a different portrait of the 67-year-old director who has made only five movies in nearly four decades: “Badlands,” “Days of Heaven,” “The Thin Red Line,” “The New World” and now “Tree.”‘

These people who know him say he is ‘painfully shy in public but jovial on his sets, gentle but fiercely driven.’

Continued in The Creative Personality: Director Terrence Malick

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“But I was a highly sensitive child, and the last thing my parents wanted was for their child to go in and get hurt…

“Most actors are highly sensitive people, but you have this incredible scrutiny. You have to develop a thick skin, but you can’t have a thick skin in your work. So it’s that constant push-pull…”

Continued in Inner Actor post Nicole Kidman on fame and actors as highly sensitive people

“It’s really tough to suddenly be very famous. I think you get this feeling like you have to kind of be what everyone thinks you are, and if you slow down, then it’s all going to go away.”

Read more of her thoughtful comments and perspectives on being an actor, and the kinds of pressures affecting her life – and so many other talented and sensitive artists – in the Inner Actor post Winona Ryder on staying sane with so much attention and work.

Once upon a time, HSPs might have been written off as shy or even neurotic, but Aron [Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person] believes these labels are demeaning and inaccurate. Shyness, she says, is a learned response; HSPs are born with a heightened sensitivity meter.

Kirwan-Taylor notes that an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the population suffers from the condition, a choice of phrase indicative of our cultural tendency to pathologize sensitivity.

I should confess that when I first heard about HSP, it reminded me of the first time I learned about ODD (oppositional defiance disorder), which I felt was just another way of saying “bratty child.”

This time, my thinking went something like, “They’re trying to turn those irritating people who force others to walk on eggshells into bona fide victims.”

But I kept reading, and the more I read, the more I began to think that the HSP label explained a lot — about me, about my siblings, and about many of my friends.

Aron’s argument is that there are a lot of us whose feelings get hurt easily, and that this huge sector of the population is mistakenly being written off as weak and thin-skinned.

But as with ADD (attention deficit disorder) and even ODD, sooner or later society catches up with science and accepts that these terms are more than a fashionable excuse for being difficult or neurotic.

Though not currently classified as a disorder, HSP will, I suspect, soon become a part of the psychological lexicon.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (where you challenge your negative thoughts with logic), as well as antidepressants, can also help.

Sadly, sensitivity may indeed become part of the canon of psychiatric disorders as psychiatry expands its definitions of mental illness and narrows the range of normalcy.

Highly sensitive persons, or HSPs, can be misdiagnosed with mental illnesses by professionals who are unfamiliar with the characteristics of sensitivity.

In spite of growing evidence that they are both ineffective and toxic, psychiatric drugs are often prescribed, sometimes resulting in permanent disability.

Ane Axford, LMFT, of SensitiveAndThriving.com, has another take on sensitivity in her blog post High Sensitivity vs. Disorder — Autoimmune, Emotional, Mental, Relational:

It is healthy to be sensitive.

Disorders are not a natural result of sensitivity and they are not the same thing as sensitivity. Disorders develop as a result of the context and highly sensitive people are the most vulnerable.

Everything can go REALLY deep when you are highly sensitive and it’s not healthy for everything to enter you.

Care for your highly sensitive self and respect your sensitivity.

Know that you are just right as you are and you can meet all of your own needs.

Understand yourself, connect to your self, and accept yourself completely…

You will see that not only can you function with sensitivity, you can thrive.

In fact, thriving is THE way to combat disorder. You thrive by being fully you.

Your joy, peace, talents, and authentic expression will come out and it will feel fabulous.

Language impacts our perceptions. The choice to describe our sensitivity, to ourselves and others, as part of our character versus a mental health condition, will have an effect on our capacity to flourish as highly sensitive people.

Related:

Posts:

Woman interrupted: misdiagnosis and medication of sensitivity and giftedness

Misdiagnosis of the Gifted

Articles:

Highly Sensitive People – Traits and Characteristics

Books:

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

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sensitivity and mental illness, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity personality, sensitivity and psychiatric drugs, Elaine Aron, Ane Axford

One of the other characters impacted by those abilities is Marie, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who revealed in a recent news story her own psychic experiences.

She knew early on in her mother’s pregnancy that she was about to become a big sister to twins, before a scan confirmed it.

Continued in Highly Sensitive site post Bryce Dallas Howard and Judith Orloff on psychic ability.

See the post Kristen Stewart and shyness and sensitivity for one example.

In her article Jesse Eisenberg on playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in ‘The Social Network’ (Los Angeles Times, Sept 27, 2010), Amy Kaufman described the actor as showing up for the interview irritated from accidentally seeing the last 30 seconds of the movie, that he had been avoiding it because he doesn’t like to watch his own performances.

“I’ve been so furious this whole morning about what I did in that scene,” Eisenberg said. “It’s just uncomfortable to watch me. Not in the same way that it’s uncomfortable to listen to your voice on an answering machine. I just felt that I didn’t get the scene right.”

Kaufman adds, “Given that the 26-year-old’s portrayal of an aloof, socially awkward Zuckerberg during the founding years of Facebook has already sparked some award buzz, Eisenberg’s self-critique may sound like typical false Hollywood modesty. Yet Eisenberg genuinely seems more panicked than excited by any acclaim.

“It feels like — and again, this is just the way my mind works, which is why I go to therapy twice a week — I immediately think that there could be nothing worse than getting that kind of attention,” he said.

“Because, how can you maintain that kind of level of interest and attention? And I really have worked hard and done well in other things that have gotten no attention. So it makes you feel like those kind of things are inconsistent.”

“It wasn’t important to us that Jesse do an impersonation of Mark Zuckerberg,” [screenwriter Aaron] Sorkin said in an e-mail. “Jesse came to work knowing the scene he had to do that day, and how he prepared — whether it was listening to Mark’s voice, fencing or standing on his head — was entirely up to him.”

But Eisenberg was exacting. During one scene in which his character is being deposed and has a notepad, he jotted down which takes he considered best.

For the 18 days of rehearsals and 72 days of shooting, [director David] Fincher said, Eisenberg was hyper-aware of his performance.

“He kept asking me, ‘Am I doing OK? Am I doing OK?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, ask anybody, if you’re not doing OK, I will let you know,’” Fincher said, laughing.

“I think he wouldn’t be as good as he is if he wasn’t hard on himself. But I hope he’ll get to enjoy it…. He got the very thing that we discussed time and time again about the film, which is: I want you to figure out a way to remain an enigma, and that’s a really hard thing.”

For more on the psychology and personality of acting and actors, see The Inner Actor.