Rise to Fame
She was already doing serious indie work when Twilight happened. Panic Room at 11, minor roles, years of festival circuit films nobody mainstream watched. Catherine Hardwicke cast her as Bella Swan in 2008, and the franchise made her the highest-paid actress in Hollywood by 2012, with Forbes estimating $34.5 million for the year. She spent that money on arthouse choices nobody expected from a franchise star, including the first Cesar Award won by an American actress, for Clouds of Sils Maria in 2015.
In the Spotlight
The Chronology of Water, her directorial debut, premiered at Cannes 2025 to a six-and-a-half-minute standing ovation and landed a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety named her one of ten directors to watch for 2026. She's acting more deliberately now too, picking projects like Flesh of the Gods with Elizabeth Olsen and Oscar Isaac, and playing Sally Ride in Amazon's The Challenger series. She quietly bought the century-old Highland Theatre in L.A. in 2025 to program it herself. She's not pivoting to directing. She was always headed there.
Side Notes
Both of her parents worked in film (father a stage manager and producer, mother a script supervisor), and she wanted no part of performing. An agent spotted her in a school Christmas play at 8 and overruled her. She's said working with Sean Penn on Into the Wild made her want to direct. When her character in Clouds of Sils Maria got a temporary Picasso Guernica tattoo on set, she liked it enough to make it permanent. She came out as gay on Saturday Night Live in 2017 like it was a weather update, then co-founded a production company with her wife, screenwriter Dylan Meyer.