Consider how Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson’s careers may have been different if, instead of starring as lovers in the Twilight franchise, their breakout roles had been as lovers in a punk-rock biopic instead. If only Patti Smith had written her 2010 best-selling memoir, Just Kids—about her complex relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe—earlier, that could have been a possibility. Discussing the book, which she is currently adapting for the screen, Smith told Entertainment Weekly whom she might have cast as herself and Mapplethorpe a few years ago: “I remember the very first time I saw Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson together, when they were younger, and I thought, Those two kids could have easily played us when they were first starting. There’s something in his eyes. And Robert [Mapplethorpe] was also a bit shy, and a bit stoic. Kristen has a very special quality. She’s not conventionally beautiful, but very charismatic.”

But because the film, which she is writing with Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator,The Aviator, Hugo), would center on the couple when they were around 20, Smith has shifted her attention to newer talent. “We were unknowns, and I think it should be unknowns in the film, and young,” she explains, adding, “I love Mia Wasikowka. I love the girl who plays Hannah—Saoirse Ronan. She’s brilliant. The depth of that girl. There’s a lot of interesting actresses and actors for any project. It’s a subject I like to think about.”