Kristen Stewart knew Julianne Moore way before they filmed their new indie drama Still Alice.
"I've known her for a number of years [because] I worked with her husband [Bart Freundlich] on a movie that I did when I was really little called Catch That Kid," Stewart told me last night at the Still Alice screening at the AFI presented by Audi film festival.
She was just 10 years old when Freundlich directed her in the 2004 crime comedy co-starring future High School Musical star Corbin Bleu.
In Still Alice, Stewart plays the daughter of a woman with Alzheimer's (Moore).
"Everyone always says that you want to work with people that you truly have a connection with, but it doesn't always happen," the Twilight star said. "That's the kind of stuff that I really go after when I know that I could play her daughter because it's not a stretch. It's something that is so very much in us. The story is powerful and sad and scary, so I was very comfortable jumping into that with her."
Moore gushed about Stewart, "I couldn't love her more. She's such a wonderful actress and she's so emotional, so full of feeling. She really has it at her fingertips, and I just love her. I love her to death."
Too sweet.
Preparing for the movie involved intense research. Stewart spent time with an elderly Alzheimer's patient with severe dementia.
"She was quite old, so it made sense that she wasn't fully with me," she said. "But I knew, for a second, that she had been dropped into her body, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is rare, and this is very brief.' I really held on to those few seconds, and I really appreciated it.
"Cut to two seconds later, we're hanging out with her and her family, and she's trying to say something about the dinner or something, and everyone's just talking over her," Stewart continued. "I felt instantly that she has so much to offer, and she might not be able to cognitively explain how she's feeling, but she's feeling so much. I had a connection to this subject. I judged harshly people who couldn't deal."
To find out what Moore did to prepare, check out the rest of my interviews in the videos below.