Tokin' Women Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst Earn Oscar Nominations

Kristen Stewart as Diana Spencer

Kristen Stewart shares an important connection with Diana Spencer, the princess she portrays in the movie Spencer: Being hounded by paparazzi. 

On the day her breakthrough film Twilight was released, Stewart was photographed smoking a pot pipe. 

“You can google my name and one of the first things that comes up is images of me siting on my front porch smoking a pipe with my ex-boyfriend and my dog,” Stewart told Vanity Fair in 2012. “It was taken the day the movie came out. I was no one. I was a kid. I had just turned 18. In the tabloids the next day it was like I was a delinquent slimy idiot, whereas I’m kind of a weirdo, creative Valley Girl who smokes pot. Big deal. But that changed my daily life instantly. I didn’t go out in my underwear anymore.” 

Stewart went on to make more Twilight films and take other more interesting roles: She starred as Tokin' Woman Joan Jett in The Runaways (2010), and as the fictional wife of Neal Cassady, Marylou, in the 2012 film adaptation of Very Important Pothead Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Director Walter Salles learned that Stewart had "placed a copy of On the Road on the dashboard of her first car, that’s how much the book meant to her" and "was so passionate and insightful about the character that he never even auditioned her for the part."

Along the way, Stewart teamed with fellow marijuana lover Jesse Eisenberg on two stoner flicks: Adventureland from 2009, the same year she was photographed wearing a marijuana-leaf bikini; and 2105's American Ultra (pictured), where she utters the infamous line, "My stoner boyfriend is going to kill you." In 2019 she puffed pot in Seberg, for which she ought to have received an Oscar nom.  

Stewart dives deeply (as only a stoner can?) into researching her roles. For On the Road she spent hours talking to the daughter of LuAnne Henderson, Neal Cassady’s first wife and Marylou’s real-life counterpart. She spent months on her English accent and manners for Spencer, so much so that two weeks before shooting she was unable to open her mouth, having kicked in a brief case of temporomandibular joint disorder. She overcame it, and her performance just won her her first Oscar nomination, for Best Actress. 

Stewart's mother, Jules Mann-Stewart, is a script supervisor who has just directed her first film, about sexual politics in prison. Kristen is planning her feature directorial debut with an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water. And she's still a stoner: last September, she and her girlfriend were spotted leaving a cannabis store in LA. 

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress is Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog (which also snagged the only female Best Director nom for Jane Campion, pictured here with Dunst).

Dunst was delightful in films like Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Bring It On, Dick, and Wimbledon, and was in On the Road with Stewart (as another of Cassady's wives, Carolyn). 

While on a promotional tour for Spiderman 3, in which she reprised her role as Spidey's girlfriend Mary Jane, Dunst told Britain's Live magazine she smokes pot and thinks the world would be a better place if everyone did the same. "I drink moderately, I've tried drugs. I do like weed. I have a different outlook on marijuana than America does," she said. "I've never been a major smoker, but I think America's view on weed is ridiculous. I mean - are you kidding me? If everyone smoked weed, the world would be a better place." Saying smoking marijuana can be inspirational, she added, "I'm not talking about being stoned all day, though. I think if it's not used properly, it can hamper your creativity and close you up inside." 

Dunst, who is a friend of Sasha Sagan, the daughter of VIP Carl Sagan and NORML board member Ann Druyan, added, "My best friend Sasha's dad was Carl Sagan, the astronomer. He was the biggest pot smoker in the world and he was a genius." 

Also nominated: 

Best Adapted Screenplay - Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Lost Daughter

Don't Look Up, in which Jennifer Lawrence plays a Tokin' Woman astrophysicist 

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye  (yes, her make-up artist got a nom too).

Beyoncé, who's starting a CBD business and in 2020 gave a donation to a black-owned cannabis company in Maryland. Her first nomination for Best Original Song: "Be Alive" from King Richard.