Hollywood Popular Artists

Sep 7th 2012, 15:00

Adapting any highly regarded piece of literature comes with a lot of pressure, but for the cast and crew of "On the Road," the status of Kerouac's seminal novel was in a category of its own.

For the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, two of the stars of "On the Road," Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund, spoke with MTV News' Josh Horowitz about that pressure and how they dealt with it.

Read more after the jump!

Hedlund said that he felt the director, Walter Salles, had the most riding on the success of the film. "When you're the director of a film like this, a book like this, Kerouac's 'On the Road,' the fact that it couldn't be made for 30, 40 years," he said. "Francis Ford Coppola tried many different routes to overcome the obstacles to complete this route and this journey, it's all on Walter. He had outstanding devotion to the film. He was on this seven year ago, making documentaries about and traveling around, interviewing all of his heroes of road film directors. He's just been so devoted, so passion about it. It's so rare, so wonderful."

Stewart recalled her first days on set and how those were the most stressful of the entire shoot. "Maybe just the start of it, entering the rehearsal period and getting to know everyone and making sure people thought you were worthy of being there," she said.

"It took about two seconds, luckily because Walter is such a genius and brought together the right group of people. The first time I had met Garrett and Sam and walking into boot camp, I was like 'I love it. I totally deserve to be here. I promise. Let me tell you why.' It went away as soon as we started filming. There wasn't a second where I questioned anyone I was there with or why I was there. It was so the right place to be."

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