Kristen Stewart on Why She Clicked with Robert Pattinson on ‘Twilight’ : ‘We Were Young and Stupid’

Kristen Stewart said she and costar ex Robert Pattinson agreed on their approach to the teen vampire series: “I don’t give a f— about this, but I’m going to make this sing”

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in 2011. PHOTO: IAN GAVAN/GETTY

Kristen Stewart is looking back at her “young and stupid” days with former Twilight flame Robert Pattinson.

The Spencer actress, 31, reflected on making the blockbuster vampire romance franchise, telling The New Yorker about meeting eventual costar Pattinson and sharing aspirations about elevating the material with their performances.

“It was so clear who worked,” Stewart told the magazine of doing chemistry tests with potential actors to play Edward to her Bella. She added that Pattinson, now 35, had an “intellectual approach that was combined with ‘I don’t give a f— about this, but I’m going to make this sing.’ “

“I was, like, ‘Ugh, same.’ And, whatever, we were young and stupid and, not to say that we made it so much better, but that’s what it needed, and that’s what anybody playing those parts needed to feel,” she added.

Stewart also said that Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke was “kind of the perfect person to do a young-adult novel that had these dark romantic elements. She had this childlike openness and teenage triggers, and her whole sensibility was that the movie was going to feel horny and overconfident.”

Hardwicke, 66, told The New Yorker why she felt Stewart was the right fit for the movie series, which also starred Taylor Lautner in the lead love triangle. “She’s Bella. She’s got to be Bella, because she keeps it so grounded and so real. I built the whole film around her,” the filmmaker said of Stewart.

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in Twilight. ALAMY

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE‘s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Stewart and Pattinson famously dated after meeting on the set of Twilight and seemed to be going strong until photos emerged of her kissing her married Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders while she was dating Pattinson. The couple reconciled shortly after but ultimately called it quits in 2013.

The first of five Twilight Saga movies hit theaters in 2008, with the final installment Breaking Dawn: Part 2 debuting in 2012.

In 2018, Hardwicke told PEOPLE about their fateful chemistry test together.

“It was funny because they were both pretty shy and kind of a little bit nervous and awkward,” Hardwicke said at the time. “I said, ‘Okay, let’s go do the biology scene where you guys first meet.’ So we went to my kitchen table for that scene and you could see pretty quickly that they were vibing off of each other.”

“It was pretty positive. After the end of their audition, I could tell that there was a lot of electricity and chemistry,” she added.

Stewart recently confirmed that she is engaged to fiancée Dylan Meyer, a screenwriter. The actress told The New Yorker they bond over their shared work ethic.

“I’ve been with people where work isn’t at the forefront of the thing and therefore you don’t do it as much. That’s not good for me,” she said. “I don’t like that. When you find somebody that, every aspect of your life— well, I guess I don’t have many aspects. I want to make movies. That’s primarily what I want to work on, and we share that, luckily.”