Kristen Stewart has purchased the historic Highland Theater in Los Angeles, which closed in 2024, and plans to restore it as a community space. The Oscar-nominated actor confirmed the news to Architectural Digest, expressing her fascination with “broken-down old theatres”.
The theatre opened in 1925 and operated for nearly a century before shutting down. Designed by Lewis Arthur Smith, it began as a vaudeville and silent-film house before transitioning to mainstream releases and later being subdivided into a triplex in the 1980s. Owner Dan Akarakian told the Los Angeles Times in March 2024 that the theatre could not recover post-pandemic, leading to its permanent closure on 29 February 2024, six days before its 99th anniversary.
Stewart intends to turn the venue into a gathering space for the community. “It’s an opportunity to make a space to gather and scheme and dream together,” she said. “We want to make it a family affair, something for the community. It's not just for pretentious Hollywood cinephiles.” She described the project as “an antidote to all the corporate bulls***”.
The actor acknowledged the scale of the restoration work, noting the need to restore many beautiful details. Her purchase follows other film figures preserving LA’s cinema heritage, such as Quentin Tarantino, who bought the New Beverly Cinema in 2007 and the Vista Theater in 2021, and a group including Jason Reitman, Steven Spielberg, and Bradley Cooper, who bought the Village Theater in 2022.
Stewart, who recently promoted her directorial debut The Chronology of Water, has been critical of Donald Trump’s presidency, saying she “can’t work freely” in the US but does not want to give up completely. She added, “I’d like to make movies in Europe and then shove them down the throat of the American people.”
