Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson had so much chemistry during their Twilight audition that it caused Pattinson to injure himself, and the film's director, Catherine Hardwicke, to warn him after about
the age of consent. Hardwicke recalled filming their audition, where the two performed
She didn't expect a lot of Pattinson when he came in. “[Rob] walked in and he had his hair dyed black for some play, with these wacky bangs,” she started, via Insider. “He was a bit out of shape. His shirt was just all messy, and I'm like, ‘Oh, okay. Okay, let's see how this goes.’”
“Rob and Kristen auditioned on my bed, the kissing scene, Rob was so into it he fell off the bed. I'm like, ‘Dude, calm down.’ And I'm in there filming with my little video camera, whatever,” Hardwicke continued.
“At the end [after the audition], Kristen was like, ‘It has to be Rob,’” Hardwicke said. “I could tell they had a lot of chemistry, and I'm like, ‘Oh my God.’ I thought, Kristen was 17. I don't want to get in some illegal things. So I remember I told Rob, ‘By the way, Kristen is 17. In our country, it's illegal to have a sexual …’ And he's like, ‘Oh, okay, whatever.’” (Stewart and Pattinson went on to date from 2009 to 2012.)
Hardwicke added later in the interview, via Buzzfeed, that neither Pattinson nor Stewart expected the kind of fame the film brought them—or the backlash for Stewart.
“If you think about it, of course a huge chunk of the fan base are young women and they all wanted to be Bella,” Hardwicke said. “So they were just by nature, jealous of Kristen who got to be in the same room…with Edward, that would just be part of it. Nobody could be good enough because they didn't look like them.”
“Kristen, yeah that was a tough situation for her to be in. And for Rob, both of them,” she said. “They really thought they signed on to an indie film with the director of 13 and Lords of Dogtown. That's what we all thought.”
Stewart, for what it's worth, reflected on her spark-filled audition with Pattinson in an interview with the New Yorkerpublished in November. “It was so clear who worked,” Stewart told the outlet with a grin. “I was literally just, like...” Stewart mimicked a swoon, then elaborated on what made Pattinson so right for the role. “[He had an] intellectual approach that was combined with ‘I don’t give a fuck about this, but I’m going to make this sing.’ And 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.”