Kristen Stewart has learned to accept the online hatred she gets from Twilight fans.
The 26-year-old played Bella Swan in the teen vampire drama movie saga, based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. The five movies, which also starred Robert Pattinson as vampire Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner as werewolf Jacob Black, grossed more than $3.3 billion worldwide.
Kristen began dating her co-star Robert in 2009, before they eventually split in 2013 after she had an affair with Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders.
The actress was the target of fury from Twilight fans on social media after the revelations, and while it initially upset her, Kristen grew to accept it and move on.
"I don’t view the whole Twilight blow-up as being generally traumatic,” she told The Sunday Times. “It would take someone with a really unhealthy amount of ego to be upset that everyone doesn’t love them. It would be silly to say I don’t care what people think of my work and who I am, but stuff is polarizing, period.”
Kristen came out as bisexual last summer (16), and talked openly about her then girlfriend Alicia Cargile in an interview with Britain's Elle magazine in July (16). She's now dating model Stella Maxwell, and announced she was "so gay" while hosting Saturday Night Live last month (Feb17).
When asked in the interview why she's now so open about her personal life, compared to being so private when she was dating Robert, she admitted it was because she was dealing with the pressures of sudden fame at the time.
"I wasn’t hiding anything,” she explained. “I didn’t talk about my first relationships that went public because I wanted things that are mine to be mine. I hated it that details of my life were being turned into a commodity and peddled around the world."
And while Kristen wasn't struggling with her sexuality, she didn't want to make a public announcement because she didn't think it was a big deal.
"If it didn’t seem like a relevant topic, like something that needed help, I would have kept my life private for ever. But then I can’t walk outside holding somebody’s hand, as I’m followed everywhere," she said. "When I was dating Rob, the public were the enemy - and that is no way to live. It wasn’t this grand statement, ‘I was so confused! Now I’ve realized who I am!’ I have not been struggling.”