Kristen Stewart was born on 9th April 1990 in Los Angeles, California, USA. where her father worked as a stage manager, producer and director on numerous Fox television shows and her mother was a scriptwriter. Her performance in a grade school Christmas play caught the eye of a talent agent in the audience, so at the age of eight, Stewart began auditioning for film and television roles.
She landed a bit role in the Disney Channel TV production, "The Thirteenth Year" (1999) and snared a more substantial part two years later in Rose Troche's challenging independent drama "The Safety of Objects" (2001), in which she played the tomboyish daughter of troubled single mom Patricia Clarkson. Stewart found herself at the center of a major Hollywood production in 2002 when she was cast as the juvenile lead in David Fincher's Panic Room.
Her first leading role came with "Catch That Kid" (2004), a breezy, teen-friendly caper, with Stewart as a young mountain-climbing aficionado who orchestrates a high-tech bank robbery to pay for an operation for her gravely ill father. A minor hit with 'tweens, it allowed Stewart a chance to show a lighter side of her acting talents and finally showcase herself to family audiences.
She had a starring role in the moderately successful supernatural film "The Messengers" (2007), and her career began to soar with no less than 10 film releases in the subsequent two years. She starred opposite Meg Ryan and Adrian Brody in the comic drama "In the Land of Women" (2007), and gave a bold performance as a teenage commune dweller who falls for an idealistic young drifter (Emile Hirsch) in Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" (2007), one of the top critics' picks of the year.
It was while working on the sequel "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" (2009) - that rumors began swirling that the much beloved onscreen coupling of Stewart and her co-star, Robert Pattinson - her seductive vampire love, Edward Cullen - was becoming a lovefest off set.Blogs and teeny bopper magazines dissected every photograph and interview the two participated in, all in order to get to the bottom of the question at hand: was the couple dating? Neither officially said, but the furor only added more luster to the highly anticipated "Twilight" sequel.
She is best known to TV audiences as Karen Arnold, the hippie older sister on "The Wonder Years" (ABC, 1988-92) who personified the restless youth of the late 1960s, wearing headbands and bell bottoms, and cutting school for "love-ins".
She has since often been cast as free spirits and sexpots, but has managed to move between comedy and drama, including her send-up as a sex kitten nursemaid lusting for Kirk Douglas' bank account in "Greedy" (1994) and the poignant "The Last Good Time" (1995), in which d'Abo played the younger half of a May-December romance with Armin Mueller-Stahl.
After filming an unsuccessful sitcom pilot for ABC, she joined the cast of the NBC sitcom "The Single Guy" (1996-97) as a voice actor who has moved into the title character's apartment building.
