Why She's No.21

Kristen Stewart is an industry vet, and she’s not even 20 years old. The actress was playing Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room when kids her age were getting their first paper routes. But unlike Haley Joel Osment, Stewart has made the transition from child star to adult actress look relatively easy, namely thanks to her high-profile role as Bella Swan in the big-screen adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.

When the film hit theaters in November 2008, she and costar Robert Pattinson experienced the same kind of unnerving immediate rise to fame that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet experienced post-Titanic. Posters of Stewart suddenly became makeshift wallpaper inside locker doors in high schools across America, or they substituted as dartboards for all those females who were envious of her onscreen and rumored off-screen time with Pattinson, much to Stewart’s dismay. “I don’t want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie,” Stewart told BlackBook magazine. “Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable. I’m an actor. It’s bizarre to me that everybody’s so obsessive.”

With New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, proving to be one of the most successful movies (financially speaking) of all time, Stewart has the spotlight, whether she likes it or not, especially with the third and final installment, Eclipse, coming out in 2010 and her recent BAFTA nomination for Rising Actress for her New Moon role. If catching a vampire flick with a swarm of insanely hormonal girls isn’t your idea of a great Friday night, check out Stewart playing Joan Jett in the upcoming 2010 biopic The Runaways, opposite Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie.