{"id":167777,"date":"2026-02-07T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/167777\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T05:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:00:08","slug":"how-kristen-stewart-is-restoring-las-historic-highland-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/167777\/","title":{"rendered":"How Kristen Stewart Is Restoring LA\u2019s Historic Highland Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Highland Theatre, a 1925 neighborhood landmark in Highland Park<\/a>, went dark in February 2024, just days shy of its 100th birthday, another pandemic-era casualty in a city where cinema increasingly lives on couches and tablets. Now, actress Kristen Stewart is betting that a grand old theater still has something urgent to say.<\/p>\n

Stewart quietly purchased the Highland in mid-2025 and has been candid about why. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize I was looking for a theater until this place came to my attention,\u201d she told Architectural Digest<\/a> in a feature published this week. \u201cThen it was like a gunshot went off and the race was on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The building, which is both noble and battered (yet still unmistakably theatrical), was designed by architect Lewis Arthur Smith, whose other mid-1920s projects include the Los Feliz’s Vista Theatre<\/a> and the El Portal Theatre<\/a>. It opened with vaudeville acts and a personal appearance by Norma Shearer and over the decades evolved with the neighborhood, eventually operating as a budget-friendly triplex.<\/p>\n

What Stewart wants to do now goes beyond a cosmetic restoration. In the Architectural Digest interview, she talks about the Highland as a place to \u201cgather and scheme and dream together,\u201d a community-centered home for adventurous cinema that isn\u2019t governed by box-office math or studio calendars. In other words: less megaplex, more clubhouse. <\/p>\n

The original bones are still there, including an ornate mezzanine and a long-dormant stage, but bringing them back will be a heavy lift. The lobby was partially stripped during a 2025 Netflix shoot and decades of deferred maintenance are obvious. Stewart isn\u2019t pretending otherwise. \u201cThe place is falling down,\u201d she told the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u201cWe definitely need a lot of help, but it\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moviegoing in Los Angeles has been under pressure well before last year\u2019s wildfires and ongoing production slowdowns. While filmmakers are struggling to get projects made, independent theaters struggle to keep the lights on. Stewart\u2019s acquisition\u00a0places her alongside a small but growing group of filmmakers taking preservation into their own hands\u2014following Quentin Tarantino\u2019s revival of the Vista<\/a> and Jason Reitman\u2019s Westwood Village Theater project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For Stewart, a native Angeleno who has been vocal about the city\u2019s cultural and social contradictions, the Highland is also philosophical. She\u2019s spoken openly about supporting the Downtown Women\u2019s Center and about resisting what she calls the corporatization of movie culture. Saving a theater, in her view, is part of that same fight: protecting spaces where people sit together, watch together and argue afterward.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reopening date yet and no glossy renderings, so for now, the marquee stays dark\u2014but the idea behind it is very much alive: that Los Angeles still needs rooms like this and that cinema works best when it\u2019s shared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Highland Theatre, a 1925 neighborhood landmark in Highland Park, went dark in February 2024, just days shy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[50946,48,52,51,47,50,49,1399,50947],"class_list":["post-167777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-categories-movies","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-movies","tag-news-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}