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Kristen Jaymes Stewart (born April 9, 1990) is an American film and television actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the films Panic Room, Catch That Kid (Mission Without Permission), Speak, Zathura, The Messengers, In The Land Of Women, and the critically acclaimed Into the Wild. She recently finished filming Twilight, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer.

Stewart’s first role was a short, nonspeaking part in the Disney Channel TV production The Thirteenth Year. She subsequently appeared in the independent film The Safety of Objects where she played the tomboy daughter of a troubled single mother (Patricia Clarkson). Stewart had a role in the major Hollywood film Panic Room, playing the sullen, diabetic daughter of a divorced mother (Jodie Foster). While the film received mixed reviews, Stewart garnered positive notices for the role.

After Panic Room’s success, Stewart was cast in another thriller, Cold Creek Manor, playing the daughter of Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone’s characters; the film generally failed at the box office. Her first starring role followed, in the children’s action-comedy Catch That Kid (Mission Without Permission), opposite Max Thieriot and Corbin Bleu. Stewart also played the role Lila in the thriller Undertow. To date, Stewart’s most critically acclaimed role may be in the television film Speak (2004), based on the novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. Stewart, thirteen at the time of filming, played high school freshman Melinda Sordino who stops almost all verbal contact after being raped and has to deal with enormous amounts of emotional turmoil. Stewart has received great praise for playing the character, who had only a few speaking lines, but kept up a dark witted commentary inside her head throughout the film.

In 2005, Stewart appeared in the fantasy-adventure film Zathura, playing the role of Lisa - an irresponsible older sister of two little boys who, by playing a board game, turn their house into a spacecraft hurtling uncontrollably in outer space. The movie received praise by critics, but Stewart’s performance didn’t garner much media attention as it was noted that her character is immobilized during most of the movie.  The following year, she played character Maya in Fierce People, directed by Griffin Dunne. After that, she received the lead role of Jess Solomon in the supernatural thriller movie The Messengers, but the movie was unsuccessful both commercially and critically, with highly negative reviews by critics.

In 2007, Stewart appeared as beautiful teenager Lucy in In The Land Of Women, a romantic drama starring Meg Ryan and Adam Brody. The movie, as well as Stewart’s performance, received mixed reviews.

This same year, Stewart starred in Sean Penn’s critically acclaimed adaptation film Into the Wild. For her portrayal of Tracy– a teenage singer who had a crush on young adventurer Christopher McCandless– Stewart received generally positive reviews. Salon.com considered her work a “sturdy, sensitive performance,” and Chicago Tribune noted that she did “vividly well with a sketch of a role.”  Meanwhile Variety magazine’s critic Dennis Harvey commented skeptically, “It’s unclear whether Stewart means to be playing hippie-chick Tracy as vapid, or whether it just comes off that way.”

After Into the Wild, Stewart had a cameo appearance in Jumper and also appeared in What Just Happened?, which is scheduled for a release in October 2008. She will also co-star in The Cake Eaters and The Yellow Handkerchief, which was filmed in Louisiana.

On November 16, 2007, Summit Entertainment announced that Stewart would play Isabella (Bella) Swan in the upcoming movie Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling vampire/human romance novel of the same name. She will star alongside Robert Pattinson, who will play Edward Cullen, her character’s vampire boyfriend. The film began production in February of 2008 and finished filming in May of 2008. The film has a scheduled release date of December 12, 2008 in the US.

All credit to Wikipedia for the source of this biography.