Kristen Stewart: Pole Dancing Hurts!

Twilight star reveals why her new indie flick Welcome to the Rileys left her with bruises. Not that she seems to mind...

By Marc Malkin Jan 24, 2010 3:00 PMTags
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Welcome to the Rileys was a real pain for Kristen Stewart—literally.

In the much buzzed about indie flick, she plays a 16-year-old stripper who is taken in by a married man, played by James Gandolfini...

"I did some pole dancing," Stewart told me Saturday at the movie's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. "I got bruises all over my legs. I tore myself up doing it. It sucked."

Oddly enough, she kinda enjoyed it. "The more I saw it, the more I wanted it," Stewart said. "It was like a weird self-hating kind of thing."

Yikes!

Director Jake Scott said it was pretty much a closed set when Stewart had to do her dancing scenes.

"She was terrified," Scott said. "The strip club we shot in was really a club, and it really was that dirty and really that tough. But she killed it."

Scott also hooked Stewart up with a professional stripper. "She's like one of the best in the business," he said. "So she was really reliable and didn't do drugs or anything like that, but she was able to introduce Kristen to girls that were. She was able to put her in that world."

But if you're expecting Showgirls moves from Stewart, you can forget about it. "This is not about a stripper," Scott said. "It's about a damaged child."

Stewart said, "The cool thing about my character is she is not sultry and she is not sexy."

(Originally published Jan. 23, 2010 at 3:40 p.m. PT)

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Get more on how Kristen prepped for the stripper role in the Awful Truth's Q&A with the actress!