Kristen Stewart 'Crashed' Robert Pattinson's Birthday Party, Reveals Twilight Director: 'We All Hugged'

Robert Pattinson turned 37 in May, and his birthday party became a surprise Twilight reunion.

The 2008 film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke, revealed on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that she, Toni Collette and Kristen Stewart all “crashed” Pattinson’s birthday party earlier this year. 

“Strangely enough, I ended up, I went to Rob's birthday party recently. I kinda crashed with my friend Toni Collette, who had just done a movie with him,” Hardwicke, 68, said.

“We had a fun thing, and then Kristen crashed it too. That was just a few months ago, and it was just like, ‘Oh my God!’ We all hugged each other — like, this is so crazy and cool.”

Hardwicke said when Stewart, 33, walked in, she was shocked to see the Twilight director there. 

“When Kristen walked into Rob’s birthday she’s like ‘Catherine? Rob’s birthday? What’s going on?’ I go, ‘I kinda crashed it with Toni.’ And she goes, ‘Well I crashed it too.’ ”

Stewart “rang the bell at the gate” and checked if it was “cool” for her to come, Hardwicke said, to which Pattinson “of course” welcomed her. “He’s such a lovely person,” Hardwicke said of the Batman actor.

Stewart and Pattinson’s recent reunion comes 10 years after the costars ended their off-screen romance, which spanned all five of the hit movies but was kept largely private by the actors. 

Now, Pattinson is currently expecting his first child with girlfriend Suki Waterhouse, and Stewart is engaged to fiancée Dylan Meyer.

In 2019, Stewart said she and Pattinson chose to keep things between them out of the spotlight because “so much was taken from us.”

“In trying to control one aspect, we were just like, ‘No, we will never talk about it. Never. Because it’s ours,’ ” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK. 

Thinking back on the casting process, Hardwicke told Horowitz that the pair’s chemistry was “instant.”

“I could tell when they were doing the chemistry read — the biology scene — at my kitchen table. I saw the sparks were flying so much,” she recalled.

She said she was so affected by their dynamic that she made a comment to Pattinson, reminding him that Stewart was only 17 at the time and “underage” legally speaking. “They were, like, shocked that I said anything,” she said. 

The director added of Pattinson’s performance during the chemistry read, “Right when Rob came in there was pretty much no contest because the two of them felt that connection so strong. I don’t think she felt it so strong with the others.”

It wasn’t all that surprising to her, though. “It totally makes sense because they’re both, like, so indie — indie music, indie authors, writers, films. I mean they had all that stuff together.”

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She also shared that Pattinson paid for a flight to the U.S. on his “own dime” and slept on his agent’s couch in order to audition for the role — and she said she thinks Stewart being cast as the lead was “why” he put so much effort in.

Hardwicke wasn’t shocked either when the costars took their romance off-screen and into real life, she told Horowitz: "You look at them, you feel it."