Nikki Reed Plays Nice for ‘Twilight’
Source: AOL
Posted: 11/20/08 12:32PM
Filed Under: Film
Twilight may not be as wholesome a film as High School Musical, but there is nothing particularly X-rated about it. It involves violence, death and much sexual tension, but the main relationship is never consummated and the whole thing occurs in the fictional world of teen vampires. That's why it seems counter-intuitive that actress Nikki Reed, whose career was launched by her explicit semi-autobiographical account of teen rebellion (Thirteen), has a role in the film.
The 20-year-old writer and actor plays Rosalie Hale, an 18-year-old who becomes a vampire in 1915 when the patriarch of the Cullen family bites her after a vicious beating. She is then adopted by the vampire family and identifies herself as the sister of Edward Cullen, the blood-sucking beauty who falls for Twilight’s mortal and modern-day heroine, Bella.
Reed says the fact that her character hails from the beginning of the 20th century is one of the reasons she is so well-suited to the role. “I’ve kind of always been told – though I don’t know what it means, really – that I'm an old soul,” she says. “I feel like I should have lived [in 1915] anyway. I really don’t fit in well with this modern culture that we live in.”
That Reed was chafing against modern culture suddenly became apparent when she hit puberty. The former “shy bookworm” hit adolescence and jumped into a pool of drugged-out promiscuous rebellion. Whiler Reed's relationship with her mother became strained, the 13 year old turned to Catherine Hardwicke, a former girlfriend of her father’s who also happened to be a filmmaker.
Together, Reed and Hardwicke wrote Thirteen in 2003 when the former was just 14. The script, a treatment of Reed’s descent into adolescent mayhem, was completed in just six days. Reed then starred in the film (though Evan Rachel Wood played the character that more resembled the real Reed) because producers thought the role would be too “uncomfortable” for the majority of young actors.
Through her teens, Reed was typecast as sexually-promiscuous adolescents in various independent films. She appeared in Lords of Dogtown, a documentary-like take on the skateboarding culture, and Man of God, a low-budget drama that revolves around a 15-year-old prostitute who falls in love with a middle-aged rabbi. More recently, in 2006, she starred opposite Alec Baldwin in Mini’s First Time as a gutter-mouthed teenager who seduces her stepfather into murdering her mother.
AOL spoke to Nikki Reed in the penthouse of Toronto’s Soho Metropolitan hotel where she was promoting Twilight alongside stars Kristen Stewart (“Bella”) and Robert Pattinson (“Edward Cullen”). She appeared with her naturally brown hair, attractive, but not the image most fans would have of Rosalie.
In the book, Rosalie is described as being “astoundingly” beautiful and statuesque with wavy blond hair. Reed, who stands at a respectable 5’7½’’, took a lot of flack for her physical dissimilarity to her character.
“I think that nobody was happy at first because none of the actors cast in this film were people that they envisioned while they were reading [the book],” she says. “But how could you be? That's a figure of [readers'] imagination.”
Despite her insistence that she does not hold fans' criticisms against them, Reed still experiences exasperating fan encounters.
‘Somebody yesterday was, like, “Hey, why aren’t you still blond?” and I was just like [sounding exasperated]: “Uhm, you know, I like myself better like this.” And they were like: “Oh, but aren’t you playing the most beautiful person in the world?” And I’m like: “Yeah, nice to meet you.” ’
After mostly working in independent films, the world of mall signings and autograph seekers seems to have jarred Reed out of her comfort zone. The actress says that she and Stewart have come up with a buddy system to fend off overly adamant fans.
“When there’s a room full of 3,000 screaming people, sometimes it's really overwhelming and you get really sensitive," she says. ""It's really cool that we get to stand up there and hold hands."
Reed’s obvious affection for Stewart does not mirror the relationship between their Twilight characters. Rosalie is jealous of Bella’s status as a human and her willingness to “throw away” her mortality to be a vampire. As vain in death as she was in life, Rosalie would give anything to have Bella’s precious mortal life.
There is nothing vain about Reed, however. She reveals that one of the reasons she is not a fan of acting is because of its ephemerality. “If I got into a car accident tomorrow and my face got smashed, I would never work again, let’s not lie,” she says. “Even if I got a cut across my face, it would affect my career. I could never survive knowing I didn’t further my education, I didn’t read, I didn’t at least attempt to direct a film. Something real because [Hollywood’s] not real!”
Reed does however clarify that she is by no means anti-acting. “It’s not that I don’t want to be an actor; it’s that I don’t just want to be an actor,” she says. “It’s that I want to do more, because I can. Not that it’s available to me but that I know in my mind that I could. I guess that’s sort of what it is.”
100 %
0 %
