Why Kristen Stewart just saved this historic L.A. theater

Kristen Stewart fears the decease of classical Hollywood cinema.

As the actor-turned-director drove done the streets of Los Angeles and saw beloved section theaters replaced by large retail chains, she decided to measurement successful and help. She and her peers struggled to get movies disconnected the ground.

So she bought a historical movie theatre successful L.A., emboldened to assistance prevention theatergoing successful the metropolis that started it all.

Stewart purchased and is restoring the Highland Theatre, a taste landmark that erstwhile hosted vaudeville acts.

“When radical are desperate, they commencement doing hopeless things,” Stewart said successful an interrogation with Architectural Digest. “I deliberation buying this theatre feels a small hopeless successful similar the astir beauteous way.”

The theatre unopen its doors astir 2 years agone — little than a week abbreviated of its 100th anniversary. The owner, Dan Akarakian, told The Times successful 2024 the theatre was incapable to retrieve economically from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Everything that’s already surviving present is truthful beautiful. It conscionable needs to beryllium similar taken attraction of,” Stewart said. “I mean, the spot is falling down. We decidedly request similar a batch of help, but it’s worthy it.”

The section movie and TV manufacture successful L.A. was struggling agelong earlier wildfires that ravaged the metropolis aboriginal past twelvemonth dealt different blow, halting accumulation and threatening the homes of stars and crews alike.

Stewart, who archetypal achieved planetary occurrence with her relation arsenic Bella Swan successful the “Twilight” saga, said movie theatergoing is becoming a mislaid art, arsenic “people are watching movies connected their tablets and their TVs and apt watching a mates of things astatine once.”

Stewart hopes the theatre tin go “a abstraction that families tin spell and that besides filmmakers tin spell and truthful we tin benignant of beryllium successful work of each other,” she said. “We tin beryllium successful existent connection with radical and not chopped disconnected from each other.”

The three-story gathering has theatre rooms and venue space, perfect to big screenings and nationalist assemblage events, she said.

The theatre was designed by designer Lewis Arthur Smith, known for different section theaters similar the Vista successful Los Feliz and El Portal successful North Hollywood.

“It’s an accidental to marque a abstraction to stitchery and strategy and imagination together,” Stewart said. “This task is astir creating a caller schoolhouse and restructuring our processes, uncovering a amended mode forward.”

Stewart’s effort to prevention section cinema is not new. A conjugation of filmmakers led by “Juno” manager Jason Reitman purchased the 93-year-old Village Theater successful Westwood successful 2024.

Oscar-winning writer-director Quentin Tarantino bought the Vista, besides designed by Smith, successful 2021. The theatre reopened its doors implicit 2 years later.

Stewart, who was raised successful the San Fernando Valley, has been a longstanding advocator of the L.A. community. She works intimately with the Downtown Women’s Center, which provides lodging to stateless women.

The histrion decried the deficiency of stories by and for women successful Hollywood during her keynote code astatine the yearly Academy Women’s Luncheon successful November.

“I perfectly f— emotion this city,” she said. “I similar the spaciousness. You tin determine however you privation to capable it.”