Kristen Stewart has revealed that filming the 2012 Beat Generation adaptation On the Road left her convinced she had ruined the project, despite it going on to be one of her most underrated performances. The film, based on Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel, spent decades in development hell before finally reaching cinemas, and its long-awaited status weighed heavily on Stewart as she worked to do justice to such beloved source material.

Director Walter Salles cast Stewart alongside Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund in 2007, having been impressed by her work in Into the Wild, well before her breakout role in Twilight made her a global star. Stewart described intensely scrutinising her own performance for four weeks during filming, saying she "tortured" herself before deciding she had to stop overthinking or risk regretting the whole experience. The film eventually premiered at Cannes in 2012, the same year as the final Twilight instalment, and while critics found the adaptation uneven, it is regarded as containing one of Stewart's most overlooked performances.