Kristen Stewart reveals the incredibly X-rated meaning behind her latest tattoo at the Cannes Film Festival launch of her new movie

Kristen Stewart has revealed the X-rated inspiration behind one of her latest tattoos after unveiling her new movie at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. 

The American actress took centre stage at the annual ceremony with her directorial debut The Chronology Of Water, a stirring drama based on American swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch’s visceral memoir about surviving abuse as a child, on May 16. 

And she admits her latest tattoos – the single word WHY on her bicep and MINE on her thigh – were heavily inspired by the film, with the latter referencing one of its most sexually provocative scenes.

She told Vulture of its genesis:  ‘The coolest song in the movie is when she c**es on her hand, smells it, wipes it on her f**king bicep, and goes, “I didn’t know a girl body could do that. Shoot c**e.”

‘And then this song comes on and it goes, “Mine, mine, mine, mine.” And it’s just f**king mine.’

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Kristen Stewart has revealed the X-rated inspiration behind one of her latest tattoos after unveiling her new movie at the 78th Cannes Film Festival 

she admits her latest tattoos – the word WHY on her bicep and MINE on her thigh – were heavily inspired by the film, with the latter referencing one of its most sexually provocative scenes

A labour of love for Stewart, 35 – who refused to act again until she was able to finish it – The Chronology Of Water had been well received in Cannes, where it earned a standing ovation following an initial screening. 

And first time director Stewart says the positive response fully justifies its two hour, eighteen minute run-time – the inspiration for her cryptic WHY tattoo.   

‘I didn’t need to make an hour and a half digestible experience so it would be less difficult for the consumer,’ she explained. 

‘It’s cool that at one point you go, “Are we still doing this? Why?” I have “Why” tattooed right here [her upper arm].’

Variety has called her latest film “a stirring drama of abuse and salvation, told with poetic passion”, while Indiewire critic David Ehrlich said “there isn’t a single millisecond of this movie that doesn’t bristle with the raw energy of an artist”. 

‘I had just never read a book like that that is screaming out to be a movie, that needs to be moving, that needs to be a living thing,’ Stewart told AFP following its May 16 launch. 

That Yuknavitch was “able to take really ugly things, process them, and put out something that you can live with, something that actually has joy” is awe-inspiring, she added.

‘The reason I really wanted to make the movie is because I thought it was hilarious in such a giddy and excited way, like we were telling secrets. 

(L-R) Thora Birch, Imogen Poots, Kristen Stewart and Kim Gordon attend a photo-call for new movie The Chronology Of Water at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival on May 16 

Stewart has numerous tattoos, but her latest were heavily inspired by her directorial debut

‘I think the book is a total lifeboat,’ said Stewart, who also wrote the screenplay.

It certainly saved Yuknavitch and made her a cult writer, with her viral TED Talk The Beauty of Being a Misfit inspiring a spin-off book, The Misfit’s Manifesto.

‘Being a woman is a really violent experience,” Stewart told AFP. ‘Even if you don’t have the sort of extreme experience that we depict in the film or that Lidia endured and came out of beautifully’.

Stewart insisted there were no autobiographical parallels per se that drew her to the original book.

‘I didn’t have to do a bunch of research (for the film),’ she explained. ‘I’m a female body that’s been walking around for 35 years. Look at the world that we live in.

‘I don’t have to have been abused by my dad to understand what it is like to be taken from, to have my voice stifled, and to not trust myself. It takes a lot of years (for that) to go.

‘I think that this movie resonates with anyone who is open and bleeding, which is 50 percent of the population.’ 

The Chronology Of Water, Stewart’s directorial debut, is  a stirring drama based on American swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch’s visceral memoir about surviving abuse as a child

‘I think the book is a total lifeboat,’ said Stewart, who also wrote the screenplay (pictured on the Cannes red carpet) 

Stewart – who cast singer Nick Cave’s son Earl as the swimmer’s first husband and Sonic Youth rock band’s Kim Gordon as a dominatrix – told reporters she was never really tempted to play Yuknavitch herself.

Instead she cast British actor Imogen Poots, who she called “the best actress of our generation”. 

‘She is so lush, so beautiful and she’s so cracked herself open in this,’ Stewart said.  ‘She has this big boob energy in the film – even though she is quite flat-chested – these big blue eyes and this long hair.’ 

She described her movie’s fever-dream energy as “a pink muscle that is throbbing” and that Poots was able to tap into, channelling Yuknavitch’s ferocious but often chaotic battle to rebuild herself and find pleasure and happiness in her life.

‘Pain and pleasure, they’re so tied, there’s a hairline fracture there,’ Stewart told the Cannes Festival’s video channel.

Yuknavitch’s book “sort of meditates on what art can do for you after people do things to your body – the violation and the thievery, the gouging out of desire. Which is a very female experience.”

Stewart said Yuknavitch discovered that the only way to take desire back was to “bespoke it… and repurpose the things that have been given to you in order for you to own them.”

She added: I’m not being dramatic, but as women we are walking secrets.’