Kristen Stewart said that the sex scenes and the nudity weren't the difficult part of playing Marylou in On The Road. Rather it was her character's emotional openness. "She loved so openly — and that's hard," Stewart said of Lu Anne Henderson. She also referred to her character, who Neal Cassady married when she was just 15, as "a bottomless pit" — presumably a reference to her emotional capacity — who would have been "ahead of her time even now." (For more photos of Stewart, check out our Toronto Film Festival photo gallery.)
Stewart, who wore a sparkly floral dress and black high-tops, seemed her usual intense and uncomfortable self as she spoke during an extremely brief Q&A session that followed the movie. But the more she spoke about Henderson, the more animated the actress became, particularly when she said that Henderson, in spirit, "was so fucking there for me" on the set.
The second and last question asked of her came from a fan, who drew winces when, in the spirit of On the Road, she asked Stewart where she'd choose to go if she could go anywhere. After taking a half-hearted stab at answering the question, the actress finally said, "I don't know, dude."
Judging from the polite applause that followed the screening, the crowd liked but didn't love On the Road, which, thanks in part to its source material, felt aimless at times. That said, the performances by Stewart, Garret Hedlund, who plays Cassady doppelganger, Dean Moriarty, and Sam Riley, who essentially plays Kerouac, are strong. Stewart doesn't have a lot of lines, but she brings a sultry radiance to the screen that is impossible to ignore. I don't know if this performance is going to net her an Oscar nomination, but it's clear that she's got the right stuff.
As for the sex scenes, the most envelope-pushing performance of the film belongs not to Stewart but to Steve Buscemi who is depicted taking it up the bum from Hedlund.
Well, you wanted to know, didn't you?
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