Beyond Twilight

by Rebecca Pahle | Published November 18, 2011

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in Adventureland (2009)

Today sees Breaking Dawn: Part 1, the fourth installment of The Twilight Saga, hitting movie theaters worldwide. Even before the first Twilight movie was released in 2008, the story and characters were already massively popular thanks to the bestselling book series by Stephenie Meyer. Many of the actors in the series, notably Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, are so associated with their Twilight characters that it’s hard to see how they’ll ever be able to shake their connection with the pop culture phenomenon. And while Breaking Dawn: Part 1 might end up being the highest-grossing film on many of the cast member’s CVs—it earned $31.3 million in ticket sales for midnight shows alone—it’s a fair bet that it’ll be far from the best in terms of quality. To that effect, MovieMaker highlights the best non-Twilight roles of Twilight actors.

Anna Kendrick (in Twilight as: Jessica Stanley)
50/50 (2011)
 directed by Jonathan Levine
As a mere high school friend of Kristen Stewart’s Bella, Kendrick’s character isn’t involved in the day-to-day politics of the vampire and werewolf clans that most of the series revolves around; as such, her character is one of the more minor ones in the Twilight series. That means Kendrick isn’t as indelibly associated with Twilight as others who had their first big break with the series. Of the group of actresses who can count 2008’s Twilight as their first high-profile acting role—Kendrick, Kristen Stewart, Nikki Reed and Ashley Greene—Kendrick is the one who has had the largest measure of success since. She was nominated for an Oscar, BAFTA and SAG Award for Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, and listed among her upcoming projects are next year’s The Company You Keep, directed by Robert Redford. In 50/50, out earlier this year, she was funny, endearing and sometimes painful to watch as Katherine, the well-meaning psychiatrist whose severe lack of on-the-job experience makes her interactions with cancer patient Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) about as awkward as a therapy appointment can possibly be.

Dakota Fanning (in Twilight as: Jane)
Coraline (2009)
directed by Henry Selick
This Oscar-nominated animated film, based upon the Young Adult novel of the same name by Neil Gaiman, follows Coraline (Dakota Fanning) as she explores her new home, meets her eccentric new neighbors and is pulled into an alternate version of her own life and almost killed by an evil doppelgänger version of her mother. Coraline‘s creepy visual aesthetic is a direct descendant of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which Selick also directed; it also maintained a lot of the whimsy and emotional poignancy present in his adaptation of James the Giant Peach. Much of that can be attributed to Fanning, who was perfectly cast as the lonely, adventurous Coraline, who is—rightfully—afraid of the creepy button-eyed people who want to kill her, but won’t let her fear stand in the way when it’s time to take care of business.

Kristen Stewart (in Twilight as: Bella Swan)
Adventureland (2009)
directed by Greg Mottola
In Greg Mottola’s (Superbad) coming-of-age comedy Adventureland, Stewart plays Em, a soon-to-be-college student whose distant father, gold-digging yuppie stepmother and—er—married boyfriend have managed to turn her into a human-sized ball of emotional confusion. Stewart is perfect in the role; though Em isn’t exactly the kind of person to bare her soul to her sort-of boyfriend James (Jesse Eisenberg), Stewart’s every gesture conveys Em’s fragile state, leading the audience to wonder when—not if—she’ll finally crack. When it finally happens—after James discovers Em’s affair with her married coworker (Ryan Reynolds)—it’s not some five-minute long weep-a-thon punctuated by tearfully-delivered explanations and apologies, and the movie is all the better for it.

Lee Pace (in Twilight as: Garrett)
The Fall (2006)
directed by Tarsem Singh
In The Fall, Lee Pace plays Roy Walker, a movie stuntman whose determination to keep his girlfriend from leaving him for the suave leading man by a way of performing an extremely dangerous stunt lands him in the hospital with two broken legs. There he befriends Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), an adorable five-year old with a broken arm and a vivid imagination. Roy tells Alexandria a fantastical story about five heroes (one of whom is played by Pace) on a quest to defeat the evil Governor Odious. What sounds on the surface like a cute story has some emotionally devastating moments; after all, Roy is seriously suicidal and takes advantage of Alexandria’s attachment to him to try and get her to bring him enough morphine to OD on, and that’s not exactly light and fluffy. Visually, the movie is stunning—it was directed by Tarsem Singh, after all—but that’s far from all it has going for it. For any fan of the short-lived TV series “Pushing Daisies,” starring Lee Pace—or, for that matter, for any fans of his performance in Breaking Dawn—The Fall is not to be missed.