Hey, Hey, Booboo. Booboo Stewart as Seth Clearwater in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1." His newfound fame has spawned Tweeting impostors, but don't be fooled: @RealBoobooFivel, a Twitter account he shares with his sister Fivel, herself a "rising teen sensation," has 126,592 followers. On Jan. 26, one of them posted "Happy Birthday Booboo . . . Watch out for all those Cougars, you're legal now!"MORE TWILIGHT
Review: Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 new on DVD
Booboo Stewart is a 21st-century movie star. He is so hot right now, film-company flaks send out press releases claiming he has signed on to their latest projects before deals have been inked, and impostors set up fake Twitter accounts pretending to be him.
At 18, Booboo, nee Nils Allen Stewart Jr., has a Wikipedia page and an Internet Movie Database page boasting 28 acting credits, eight stunt gigs and 10 entries under a category called "self' -- red-carpet events where he has appeared as "himself." (Booboo favors a buffer version of Keanu Reeves during the "Bill & Ted" years. As a basis for comparison, Keanu, 47, has starred as "himself" a paltry 95 times.)
How famous is Booboo? To wangle an audience with the in-demand young celebrity, the Diva had to agree to meet with him while he grabbed lunch between interviews.
Undaunted, your roving scribe threw away her pride like a pair of $150 jeans that she could no longer squeeze into and decamped to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for a quickie Booboo.
Time was tight. In addition to Cleveland, Booboo would visit Orlando, Fla.; St. Louis; Denver; and Houston to promote the DVD release of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1." In the penultimate film based on the "Twilight" books by Mormon-mom-turned-millionaire Stephenie Meyer, Booboo has about a dozen lines.
For those who didn't line up at Target yesterday for the midnight sale of the special-edition disc, complete with "authentic flower from the set of Bella and Edward's wedding scene encased in a collectible Lucite keepsake," a recap:
"Twilight," published in 2005, and its film adaptation introduced the masses to a high school romance between an undead Romeo (vampire Edward Cullen, played by dour Brit Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan, his glum, Converse-wearing Juliet (Kristen Stewart, who is not related to Booboo and, to date, has never smiled in public). Vying for her clinically depressed affections is Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner, he of the Crest Whitestrips grin and abs you could bounce a Mini Cooper off of), a teen shape-shifter who periodically turns into a werewolf. In the final book, Bella and Edward tie the knot -- who needs college? -- go on a honeymoon and conceive a demon baby that is breaking Bella's ribs. Instead of aborting the abomination, she insists on taking Mini-Nosferatu to spectacularly bloody term.
Booboo was 15 when he was cast as teen wolf Seth Clearwater in "Eclipse," the third movie in the franchise. He did not go Method in tackling the coveted part. As Seth, the actor -- who is also a singer, dancer, model and martial-arts champ -- had to run around sets in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Baton Rouge, La., shirtless. To prepare for the role, "I definitely went to the gym a lot," he says.
Though "Twilight" devotees usually fall into one of two camps -- "Team Jacob" or "Team Edward" -- "Team Seth" is gaining steam. On one fan site, in answer to the query "Do you wish Seth would imprint on YOU?" (a reference to "Twilight" mythology; when a werewolf "imprints" on someone, that person becomes his soul mate), 63 percent of those responding said, "OMG YES!!!!!!!!!!!!"
But back to my $15 Cobb salad at Muse, the hotel's swank restaurant. (Team Seth, if you were wondering, Booboo snacked on a bacon cheeseburger and Tabasco-laced fries.)
Joining us was Booboo's dad, Nils Allen Stewart Sr., a bald, 6-foot-4-inch wall of man who fiddled with his iPhone and said, "I'm not here -- talk to him," when I asked where the nickname "Booboo" came from.
"Everyone remembers it," Booboo offered.
To my most pressing question -- does Kristen Stewart ever smile? -- Booboo laughed so hard that, had he been drinking Coke at the time, it would have come out his nose.
"Yes, she does! I think she might get nervous when she gets in front of people," he suggested, sweetheart that he is. "It's gotta be really hard to be her." God, yes, saddled with money, a cute boyfriend (Pattinson) and designers begging her to wear their frocks.
"She's just really nice," Booboo continued. "I remember one day, she wanted to play patty-cake -- and because of my sisters, I knew how to play the game, so I played it with her."
You heard it here first, folks.
Show business
runs in the family
Booboo is no stranger to movie sets. For the past two decades, his father has been an actor, stuntman and assistant director on big-name pictures ("Space Cowboys," "The Scorpion King") and cult fare alike (what, didn't catch "Wristcutters: A Love Story"?).
Stewart Sr. has played generic baddies ("biker," "bouncer" "demon bounty hunter," "shaved head robber" and "thug #1") as well as named characters ("Hammerhead," "Pecs," "Tiny" and "Adult Jesse Ventura").
In 2006, he was stunt coordinator for "666: The Child," an "Omen" knock-off in which Booboo starred as Donald, the Antichrist.
The next year, Booboo joined Miley Cyrus on her "Best of Both Worlds Tour" and trafficked in the family business as a body double for Ray Winstone's Beowulf in the 2007 film of the same name, directed by Robert Zemeckis.
So the strapping Winstone would look dwarfed fighting the giant Grendel (the twitchy Crispin Glover), Booboo took over during the motion-capture sequences, skittering all over Glover's body. "I got to run up his leg -- he was really nice," Booboo said.
He settled on a career in front of the camera in 2008, when he saw the late Heath Ledger play the Joker in "The Dark Knight." "That's when I was like, 'Acting is really cool,' " he said.
Soon, he'll begin filming "House of the Damned 3-D," a project he's excited about because he loves scary movies. "So, it won't be my first horror film, but it will the first horror movie I'll be in that . . ."
". . . will be good," his dad finished, materializing into the conversation.
"That's true!" Booboo said. Despite the frenzy of attention, Booboo doesn't seem to be huffing the fumes of his fame, coming off a lot like Seth. "He's just a straightforward, happy-go-lucky kind of guy," Booboo said.
At the center
of the swarm
Though he hopes to have the longevity of a Johnny Depp, he's pretty sure no movie will ever equal "The Twilight Saga" in sheer, mad spectacle -- and he's talking about the groupies.
"It's not like you get chased down the streets, is it?" I asked.
"No," Booboo answered.
"He's been swarmed to the point that they've had to shut down stores and take him out the back," said Pa.
"Girls must be all over you," I pressed. "In fact, I'm surprised they're not parachuting in here right now."
"That'd be kind of creepy but really impressive," he said. We imagined the clouds over St. Louis, Booboo's next stop, seeded with skydiving tweens.
"If someone goes to that effort, you're friggin' takin' them out," Sr. said.
As the waiter delivered the checks, I asked if there was anything they'd like to add.
"Only that he was raised by wolves," said Dad, which made me howl. "I'm serious," Sr. said.
Apparently, though no one has ever mentioned it in the endless "Twilight" promos, the Stewart family shared their ranch outside of Los Angeles with two wolves. Sr. used them for film work, and Bolo, a timber wolf, thought little Booboo was his cub. (Note to the suits at Summit Entertainment: Fire your entire PR team put the Diva on retainer, stat.)
"I used to sit on my blanket, and if anyone would try and raise their voice at me, he would growl at them," Booboo remembered. And Booboo said he wasn't a Method actor.
As they pushed their chairs from the table, Sr. handed Jr. a tablet and popped one himself.
"Hydroxycut," Sr. said. "Gotta keep him lean."