Mackenzie Foy has never read the Twilight series, but wait — hear her out: “I don’t have that many memories of Twilight, so, in a way, I don’t want to read the books because I want my association and memories to be my memories and not necessarily the story,” she tells Teen Vogue. After all, Foy was just 10 years old when she played Bella Swan and Edward Cullen’s daughter, Renesmee, in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. “I’m trying to keep what I still remember as fresh in my head as possible.”
The memories are hazy, random anecdotes amid vague recollections. A series of firsts. The moment she saw an icicle for the first time. When she first ate Raising Cane’s Chicken in Louisiana. Once, on a hike with her mother and costars through the trails behind their hotel in Squamish, British Columbia, they came upon a waterfall, where she saw glacial water for another first. Says Foy, “I remember Lee Pace [who played the vampire Garrett] explaining how glacial runoff worked and what it was like, and then we went to the bottom of the stream and drank the water.”
Foy is now 24, with roles that include Interstellar, The Conjuring, Black Beauty, and dozens of others on her resume. But her career really began with the Twilight saga – all of which are being re-released from October 29th to November 2nd in theaters in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the publishing of the first book. While Renesmee wasn’t her first screen role, it was certainly her first big hit — the project that brought so many new experiences into her life and helped shape her, as it has generations of fans.
Before being cast as Renesmee, Foy had a faint understanding of Twilight’s fandom, “but I don’t think I understood the grand scheme of what fandoms were until I was older…and really hardcore into Teen Wolf, and I was like, I totally get it now. It’s a community and it brings so many people together…. It’s really special to be part of, and in community with, this art.”
Foy grew up in Los Angeles with one brother. She began modeling as a toddler, before gaining her first acting experience in the Fox series ’Til Death. She was determined to become an actor, an ambition that led to her landing the role of Renesmee at age nine, when she began filming Breaking Dawn.
“I'd never done a film before, so it was all very, very new. There was just a lot that I simply didn't know,” Foy recalls. “What are you supposed to do as an actor? How do you interact with the crew? How does it all come together? Because there's hundreds of people, a part of a crew, and everybody is trying to tell the same story.”
It was a fitting project for a fan of the fantasy genre. Foy’s family read The Lord of the Rings to her when she was a kid, which she then read herself several times over. At 14, four years after her role in Breaking Dawn, she began collecting first editions of fantasy novels. The Throne of Glass series by Sara J. Maas, which she recommends before reading A Court of Thorns and Roses or Crescent City, is her favorite. She read each book as it was published, hiding them inside her history textbooks during schooling hours on sets. In addition to the aforementioned Teen Wolf, Supernatural and Gilmore Girls were also among the actor’s first true loves.
Foy is also, it must be said, an unabashed “horse girl.” She always felt a strong connection with horses, but after starring in Black Beauty in 2020, they became her greatest passion. She purchased her draft horse, a big work horse named “Don,” after the film, and recently rescued and rehabilitated a wild Mustang named “Whisper.” Her connection with these animals has led her to become a vocal advocate for the passage of the SAFE Act, protecting horses from slaughter, as part of her work with the Wild Beauty Foundation.
This is all to say that Foy knows what it is to be a fan in the truest sense. To have it consume you and dictate your choices. Given her closeness to the subject matter, she is not a typical Twilight fan, but those stories have changed her life nonetheless. “Some of the people who've been fans since Twilight have been following [my career]. I've seen them grow up online too,” Foy says. “We've all kind of grown and evolved together, and that's really cool.”
I’m eager to know what Foy attributes the abiding, trans-generational love of Twilight to: Is it camp? Is it canon? She believes it goes back to the time delay between the books and the films, which ushered in fans of different ages; more importantly, though, she believes it is the conditioning of her generation to fall deeply for these mega-novels and their blockbuster worlds (she lists Hunger Games, Divergent, and Maze Runner as examples).
There’s also the influence of the internet, including the fan communities that cropped up en masse on Tumblr, and later, on TikTok. Foy is familiar with the Twilight virality, including accounts like @baseballscenefromtwilight and countless memes featuring Chuckesmee, an animatronic doll that was axed from production — whose leaked photos have since made the doll a viral sensation. Sadly, Chuckesmee and Foy never met.
“We were there at the same time and place, but I think they spared me from her,” she says with a laugh. “I think they were just figuring it out…. To age somebody up from an infant, I feel like that was still kind of experimental at the time [in CGI].”
Foy is “ridiculously” excited to return to the fictional world of Forks, Washington, even if just for a day during her Teen Vogue shoot at Bella Swan’s instantly recognizable home. The average foot traffic in front of the Swan house in St. Helens, Oregon, is anywhere between 50 to 200 people a day. Ascending a steep hill, you get a clear view: familiar white clapboard and green shutters; the wide, lace-curtained window through which Bella longingly peered down at Edward and his Volvo. Visitors take their requisite photos, or shoot a quick video if they tend to the theatrical.
The 24-year-old actor has actually never seen this house in person before, since she came in for only the last movie in the Twilight franchise. But she’s been feeling very much “in the Twilight mood,” given the recent rain in LA, listening to “Full Moon” by The Black Ghosts and “Possibility” by Lykke Li. That Twilight mood is another kind of cultural phenomenon, conjuring images of overcast skies, evergreens blanketing misty mountains, potent moonlight, a rusted red pickup truck, and the world seen through an inexplicably blue and green filter.
We hope to evoke that singular mood for our shoot. (Foy calls it “Hoa hoa hoa hoa season,” in reference to the song “Eyes on Fire” by Blue Foundation, featured in the first film.) As an homage to original Twilight costume designer Wendy Chuck’s Bella, whose story takes place in 2005, Foy is styled in low-top Converse sneakers, Henleys with lace camis underneath, skinny jeans, and Wellington boots. There are Easter eggs aplenty in each look, such as turquoise and silver jewelry that would have been handed down by Bella’s quirky, southwestern-influenced mother, or a replica of the moonstone ring Bella is seen wearing in the original film.
At dusk we drive to a meadow with moss-wrapped trees and mist hanging in the air. As Foy twirls in a full-length, eggplant-colored McQueen gown, we play “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse on a speaker, likely ruffling the feathers of the owls in the treetops.
In the Swan house kitchen, we can barely contain our glee as Foy re-creates the iconic Twilight book cover by stacking apples like Jenga blocks, then holding them in the palms of her hands. The house is modest, but above all, it’s real. Floorboard creaks and squeaky cupboards remind us of our grandparents’ homes, something Foy also remarks on.
Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke made the original film with $37 million, which grew to a budget of around $120 million by the time director Bill Condon took the reins and Foy arrived on set. The production budgets and number of cast grew in relation to the success of the films, building out a massive, richly detailed cinematic world.
“As I've gotten older and experienced things in life, and also as I've gone on through my career… It was my first movie, so it was a massive set, but I had nothing really to base it off of,” Foy says. “So it was like, Oh, this is what a set is like. Then I did normal films and I was like, Oh, I see the difference now of how just absolutely insane the scale was of that film. So I think my appreciation of Twilight has only grown as I've aged.”
As Twilight’s impact continues to grow, so does Foy’s career. She’s currently filming The Isolate Thief, a gritty Western set during the end of the Civil War, acting alongside Odeya Rush and Sean Bean.
One day Foy would love to play a very singular villain or star as a fantasy favorite. Fans have been busy fan-casting her as Violet Sorrengail, the protagonist in the best-selling YA Fourth Wing series by Rebecca Yarros. When I mention the specific titles, she gestures to the books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind her: “They’re right there.”
Of the Fourth Wing series Foy adds, “It’s got magic, it’s got dragons — it’s like, what’s not to love? I’m obsessed with it. The fact that there are people who want me to play Violet, that they would even think of me or want me for that, is really flattering.” When I press her a bit more she says, “It’s up to Ms. Yarros, so if she calls, I’m down.”
In the meantime, Foy continues to enjoy her life in LA, finding that people still recognize her as Renesmee — but mainly during hoa hoa hoa hoa season. “They're like, ‘Whoa, you're not 10 anymore,’” she says.
When I ask her what she thinks Renesmee would be doing with her life, Foy says she’s “given this a lot of thought,” believing that Renesmee would have grown up to be a vet, given her ability to project thoughts and memories onto other people. “I don’t know if [her power] transfers to animals too, but what if she could communicate with animals in a way, through her powers, and help heal them? I imagine she’d be close to the wolf pack.”
Personally? I can’t think of a better spinoff series.
Special thanks to Lionsgate, Twilight Swan House, and Volvo Cars for helping us bring this story to life.
Don't Miss The Twilight Saga - In Theaters Now. Forever Begins Again.
Photo Credits
Photographer Kristin Ellis
Photo Assistant Kevin Michaluk
Stylist / Associate Fashion Editor Samantha Gasmer
Hair Stylist Paige Ashcroft
Makeup Artist Amy Gillespie
Producer Caroline S. Hughes
Production Coordinator Becca Weston
Location Twilight Swan House
Transportation Volvo Cars
Design Director Emily Zirimis
Global Fashion Director Tchesmeni Leonard
Senior Designer Liz Coulbourn
Associate Visuals Editor Bea Oyster
Assistant Fashion Editor Crystal Okonkwo
Editorial Credits
Editor-in-Chief Versha Sharma
Features Director Brittney McNamara
Style Director Alyssa Hardy
Associate Culture Director P. Claire Dodson
Culture Editor Kaitlyn McNab
Associate Director of Audience Development and Analytics Mandy Velez Tatti
Senior Social Media Manager Honestine Fraser
Senior Social Media Manager Jillian Selzer
Style Editor Aiyana Ishmael
Beauty Editor Donya Momenian
News & Politics Editor Lex McMenamin
Editorial Assistant Skyli Alvarez
