Actress Kristen Stewart says she is planning to flee the U.S.A. over her disdain for President Donald Trump’s America First policies. “I’d like to make movies in Europe and then shove them down the throat of the American people,” she said.
The Twilight star told the UK Times that she intends to continue pursuing her directorial career in Europe because she thinks she “can’t work freely” in the United States thanks to Trump.
She added that she shot The Chronology of Water, her directorial debut, in Latvia because “it would have been impossible to do in the States.”
Stewart also thinks Trump’s thus far unrealized threats to put tariffs on foreign film productions is “terrifying.”
“Reality is breaking completely under Trump,” she told the paper. “But we should take a page out of his book and create the reality we want to live in.”
She went on to say she will probably leave the U.S.
“I can’t work freely there,” Stewart insisted. “But I don’t want to give up completely. I’d like to make movies in Europe and then shove them down the throat of the American people.”
The president dallied with putting tariffs on foreign film and TV productions back in May of last year.
“The Movie Industry in American is DYING a very fast death,” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social at the time. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”
His post came after China announced that it would reduce the amount of Hollywood films that it import.
Despite the trial balloon, the president has made no move to follow up on his film tariff idea.
Regardless, Stewart has been attacking Hollywood aside from Trump talked about any sort of tariffs on foreign films.
In December she noted that it is financially almost impossible to make a film in the U.S. thanks to costs and overweening union demands.
“We need to start sort of stealing our movies. I’m so appreciative of every union. Trust me, we would not survive without them. But some of the terms and some of the rules and some of the structures we’ve set up have created unbelievable barriers for artists to express themselves,” she told the New York Times.
“It’s just so difficult to make movies, it just doesn’t need to be,” she added. “I’m just trying to think of some sort of weird, like Marxist, Communist-like, situation that other people can definitely think, of course this psycho is saying that, but I think it’s possible, especially in these kind of narrow and exclusive environments. I’m not talking about the world at large, but for us, the system has barred people and made it too difficult to be honest.”
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