Kristen Stewart Explains Appeal Of 'On The Road'

The Toronto International Film Festival media cadre threw Kristen Stewart a bone this week: they seemingly let her stick largely to talking up her premiering Jack Kerouac-adaptation role in "On the Road."

The break-out co-lead of Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate's "Twilight" saga - including this November's franchise-concluding "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2" - was conspicuously absent from Thursday's MTV Video Music Awards, where co-stars Taylor Lautner and estranged boyfriend Robert Pattinson premiered a 90-minute preview of the fall blockbuster. That's because she instead hopped a Wednesday flight to Toronto to attend Thursday night's premiere.

It was her first major public appearance since acknowledging in early August that she'd cheated on Pattinson with her married "Snow White and The Huntsman" director, Rupert Sanders. Admirably, she and 22-year-old "On The Road" co-star Garrett Hedlund stuck with hyping the Beat Generation drama, according to "Access Hollywood." Hedlund stars as the freewheeling Dean Moriarty, who was inspired by Kerouac's Beat Generation contemporary scribe Neal Cassady. Stewart co-stars opposite him as Marylou, Dean's long-suffering sometime lover.

"I don't think it's ever been more relevant," Stewart commented on the Beat Generation classic of spontaneous, traveling exploration of self's importance more than a half-century after its first publishing. "There's never going to be a time when people like that don't exist. There's never going to be a time when like the little outskirt of people that wanted to do things a little bit differently aren't there and that's why it's, in a way, I think it's not about how rebellious they were being for the time or what conventions they were going against, it was so much more than that. It's not about being rebellious. It's about being yourself."

Director Walter Salles reportedly chose Stewart for the role based on appreciation for her "Into The Wild" performance, but had to film her scenes prior to Stewart's back-to-back October 2010 "Breaking Dawn" filming. Despite receiving mixed reviews at its May 2012 Cannes Film Festival debut in competition and a shorter, 124-minute version being screened in Toronto, Hedlund's praise would suggest Stewart has more range than the limited capabilities for which her "Twilight" performances have been maligned.

"I'm so proud of her performance and I think everybody's wonderful," Hedlund said. "Like, everybody that came on was such a fan of Kerouac and the book and the project and a fan of Walter Salles. Everybody brought their hearts to the role and it's sometimes a rare experience but in this case it's really wonderful."

The film makes its wide-release debut in the U.S. on Dec. 21.