Is Kristen Stewart Really Just Human?

Jodie Foster. Damn that woman. I love her. And some of you might recall a little movie she did with a young actress, Kristen Stewart, called Panic Room. It was, overall, a pretty good movie. And Kristen was an eager child... pretty much portraying the standoffish personality she still embodies in film, only then she a was a child of only 11, not a woman with a Hollywood mansion and some British boyfriend.

Still, Kristen Stewart is only, like 22 years old. And it's easy to forget that while we are watching pictures of her dalliance with a married director smattered all over tabloids and US Weekly. That is, until Jodie Foster so movingly reminds us that Kristen Stewart is just an actress and her private life is, in fact, meant to be private.

There is a humanity that actors have that we public often forget about. I am among those who like to secretly judge those tabloid headlines while publicly pretending I don't care what happens. But let's face it, I watch the Kardashians and I am mildly addicted to them; I care if Scott and Kourtney stay together, what they name their child, and whether Kim and Kanye are dating. Is that shallow? Probably...

But the Kardashians are putting it out there... and Kristen Stewart is a young woman in an unforgiving career path whose private life was actually sought after, invaded, and then used as fodder for entertainment. And Jodie Foster has me thinking that it's something different. 

For all my talk about adulthood and freedom and such, when you come down to it, Kristen Stewart is really just a young woman trying to come grips with a complicated existence in the public eye. This British costar of hers was her first love; can you remember all the horrible things you and your first love did to one another??? I sure can. I can also say that he was my costar. Albeit it was a high school production of Romeo and Juliet and we were much less in the public eye, but the scrutiny tends to feel the same, doesn't it??

When I broke up with high school R & J star, (whom I lovingly refer to in my blog as Steve Martin), people made up the most ridiculous things about us... that we had sex on the stage of the school with the lights on. That he was having sex with my best friend. That I had cheated on him first. That we were still secretly together. Whatever. Maybe some of it was true... though I am not one to say which parts.

The truth is, sometimes love comes out beautifully and other times it's a beautiful effing mess. Most of us don't have to go through it in public, thank god. For some strange reason, we have this notion that if people are celebrities, it means that they are willingly subjecting themselves to this public scrutiny and that they simultaneously deserve it. It's a bit puzzling, too, because most celebrities are willing to give us an inch, but we'd rather have the mile, wouldn't we?

Maybe we need to spend a little more time worrying about what goes on in our own homes, with our own spouses, and our own children rather than looking to others to provide us with good stories. It's a whole lot of drama. People make mistakes. Even celebrities make mistakes. Go down the block and you'll find a story just like Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison. They are, after all, only human.

No need, as Jodie Foster points out, to drag them into your dregs to check their pulses and see just how human they might actually be.