Two years ago, anyone who wanted to talk to Robert Pattinson could have probably just phoned up his agent or publicist and gotten a lunch date with the struggling actor. Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire didnt exactly have groupies, and that was his only really visible role.
Now even journalists have to check in with security and wear colored bracelets simply to attend a press conference with Pattinson. The executives in charge of publicity knew that Twi-hards could easily find out about Rpattz's appearance in the Four Seasons ballroom, so they tagged the select few authorized attendees.
The character of Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyers' Twilight books is described as impossibly beautiful. A daunting description for anyone to live up to, but the humble Pattinson seems particularly unprepared for the attention that description is bound to garner. In person, Pattinson appeared in his familiar uniform from covert paparazzi photos: untucked, unbuttoned rumpled flannel, stubbly and otherwise disheveled. While the reality of playing such an idyllic role may still be settling in for Pattinson. The fans have fully embraced him as the embodiment of their beloved character, as sales of Edward Cullen posters at Hot Topic can attest.
Those fans may be heartbroken by New Moon. Its bad enough that Edward breaks up with Bella in the movie. Worse, after that he's hardly in it. Pattinson only appears as a series of visions Bella has while she tries to put her love life back together.
Question: Do you agree with the decision to make Edward appear as a vision and not just as a voice?
Robert Pattinson: I was always very worried about that. Even before we started shooting, people were asking questions and saying, Oh, do you think people are going to be worried about not having enough Edward in it? But he's not in the book. I was so worried that it was just going to be random scenes. It was interesting when they said, You're not just there. You're supposed to be playing something, whether I achieved it or not to play this thing. You're just playing a vision and if you play it as realistically as possible, it becomes an interesting thing to try to figure out. It was interesting for me, at the time.
Q: How did you figure that out?
RP: I just talked to [director] Chris [Weitz]. He wasnt ever going to just do things for the sake of doing them. He was always on the side of the story. Even since it's been edited, there were loads and loads of the apparition sequences cut out. A lot of them, Chris cut out without me saying. But, when I was doing ADR, I was saying, It will be more interesting and mystical if you cut out more of these shots. It becomes more eerie and more realistic, the less of these visions you have, the less visible. Just having head-on shots, it doesn't become a vision. It becomes a super-imposed image, which is not interesting.
Q: Was it a big shock to have Bryce Dallas Howard on the set of Eclipse, instead of Rachelle Lefevre?
RP: Yeah, it was a shock, but shes lovely. Shes really, really nice.
Q: What has this past year been like for you? How are you dealing with things? Are you more comfortable with everything now?
RP: I guess it's inevitable that you become more comfortable. You still fight against some things. The franchise itself, theres nothing really scary about it. I like all the people I work with. I generally have very few disagreements about the script or anything while were doing it, especially on New Moon. It just seemed so relaxed and easy. I've been on three different sets, since January 14th. I've had like three days off. I was saying the same thing last year about has your life changed? I said I'm on set all the time and I'm still on set. I'm going to be on set all next year as well. So I don't really know. Getting errands and things, I don't know what that really is like because I haven't had a sustained period of time where I've been off. I still don't know how it's really changed. I still feel like I'm pretty much exactly the same, which is maybe not a good thing.
Q: This franchise has made you a bankable leading man. How has that changed your career, and where do you want to be in five years?
RP: I don't know. I've only done one movie outside of the series [since it started], which was Remember Me. That's going to be out sometime next year. But, even that, I did with the same studio. I'm still a little bit blind as to what my actual economic viability is outside of the series, but it's definitely different. You get offered stuff that you never would have dreamed of getting offered before, but that's also scary as well because you don't have to audition for anything. You're just like, I don't want to do a movie just because it gets made. I have no idea. Its a scary situation to be in, in a lot of ways. You have to question yourself a lot more. Before Twilight, I did any movie that I got and you try and make the best of it afterwards. Now, you're expected to come into the movie and provide not only economic viability, but a performance as well. People are like, You can't just mess around. Were employing you to be a star and an actor. It's difficult and it's scary.
Q: Isn't that what you dream about when you start out in the business?
RP: You do. You always think, Oh, when I've done a big movie
because when you haven't gotten a big movie behind you and you're not bankable, everyone is like, He's not bankable enough, so you can't get the roles that you want to get. And then, when you do, especially with a movie like this where there's a perceived specific audience, which I think people are quite confused about as well, but people start thinking, Oh, you need to get in with this audience. You need to do this or that. You need to look a certain way, blah blah blah. There are some limitations to it, whereas when no one is watching your movies and you get a part, you can do whatever the hell you want. That's just the way it is. So, there are good and bad points, either way.
Q: What personality traits do you share with Edward?
RP: I guess stubbornness, in some ways, about some things. He's pretty self-righteous. I get quite obsessive about things, and possessive as well.
Q: Like what?
RP: I have very, very specific ideas about how I want to do my work and how I want to be perceived, to the point of ridiculousness, sometimes. I dont listen to anyone else. That's why I dont have a publicist or anything. I can't stand it if someone is trying to tell me to do something, which is probably maybe a mistake sometimes. I like being meticulous, and it's quite difficult, as an actor, to have that much control. The good thing about the Twilight series as well is that it does give you a lot more control over tiddly little things, which I want to have. I'm a control freak about it.
Q: Have you ever had your heart broken, like Edward does when he leaves Bella?
RP: I'm just trying to think of a really stupid answer. I can't think of one. No, I don't think so.
Q: With all of the fan encounters that you've had, has there been anything thats just made you laugh?
RP: Yeah, a lot of the time. Recently, I have less direct interaction with people because there's way more security and stuff on set. But, I always find it funny when older people come up. There was a woman who came up to me the other day who must have been in her 90's. Its very unusual and they say exactly the same things as 12-year-old girls. That is kind of bizarre.
Q: What movies have you committed to in 2010?
RP: Depending on how things go, I'm doing a movie called Bel Ami in February, which is an adaptation of this Guy de Maupassant novel. And, I hope I'm doing a Western with Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman, called Unbound Captives, sometime around there as well. They've got to try to muddle everything around everybody's schedules and stuff.
Q: Youll be a gunfighter?
RP: No, actually I'm playing a kid who is kidnapped by the Comanches when he was four years old, and he's brought up by them. His mother spends her entire life trying to find me and my sister, and when she finds us, we can't remember who she is and can't remember anything about the Western culture that we grew up in. We speak Comanche the whole movie. So you can't really be more different from Edward.
Q: Is that why you responded to it?
RP: No. I actually signed on to that after I had done Twilight, in the summer, just a couple of months after I finished. It was really before anything had happened, so I wasn't even really thinking about it. It was just a cool script and it reminded me, in a lot of ways, of Giant, and that's one of my favorite movies. I think that's why I responded to it.
Q: What about The Searchers?
RP: It is kind of similar to The Searchers. That's a scary thing but actually it's nothing like The Searchers. Only in general terms.
Q: Are you going to have to learn Comanche for your role?
RP: Yeah.
Q: Have you had time for your music?
RP: I'm trying to.
New Moon opens November 20.
Now even journalists have to check in with security and wear colored bracelets simply to attend a press conference with Pattinson. The executives in charge of publicity knew that Twi-hards could easily find out about Rpattz's appearance in the Four Seasons ballroom, so they tagged the select few authorized attendees.
The character of Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyers' Twilight books is described as impossibly beautiful. A daunting description for anyone to live up to, but the humble Pattinson seems particularly unprepared for the attention that description is bound to garner. In person, Pattinson appeared in his familiar uniform from covert paparazzi photos: untucked, unbuttoned rumpled flannel, stubbly and otherwise disheveled. While the reality of playing such an idyllic role may still be settling in for Pattinson. The fans have fully embraced him as the embodiment of their beloved character, as sales of Edward Cullen posters at Hot Topic can attest.
Those fans may be heartbroken by New Moon. Its bad enough that Edward breaks up with Bella in the movie. Worse, after that he's hardly in it. Pattinson only appears as a series of visions Bella has while she tries to put her love life back together.
Question: Do you agree with the decision to make Edward appear as a vision and not just as a voice?
Robert Pattinson: I was always very worried about that. Even before we started shooting, people were asking questions and saying, Oh, do you think people are going to be worried about not having enough Edward in it? But he's not in the book. I was so worried that it was just going to be random scenes. It was interesting when they said, You're not just there. You're supposed to be playing something, whether I achieved it or not to play this thing. You're just playing a vision and if you play it as realistically as possible, it becomes an interesting thing to try to figure out. It was interesting for me, at the time.
Q: How did you figure that out?
RP: I just talked to [director] Chris [Weitz]. He wasnt ever going to just do things for the sake of doing them. He was always on the side of the story. Even since it's been edited, there were loads and loads of the apparition sequences cut out. A lot of them, Chris cut out without me saying. But, when I was doing ADR, I was saying, It will be more interesting and mystical if you cut out more of these shots. It becomes more eerie and more realistic, the less of these visions you have, the less visible. Just having head-on shots, it doesn't become a vision. It becomes a super-imposed image, which is not interesting.
Q: Was it a big shock to have Bryce Dallas Howard on the set of Eclipse, instead of Rachelle Lefevre?
RP: Yeah, it was a shock, but shes lovely. Shes really, really nice.
Q: What has this past year been like for you? How are you dealing with things? Are you more comfortable with everything now?
RP: I guess it's inevitable that you become more comfortable. You still fight against some things. The franchise itself, theres nothing really scary about it. I like all the people I work with. I generally have very few disagreements about the script or anything while were doing it, especially on New Moon. It just seemed so relaxed and easy. I've been on three different sets, since January 14th. I've had like three days off. I was saying the same thing last year about has your life changed? I said I'm on set all the time and I'm still on set. I'm going to be on set all next year as well. So I don't really know. Getting errands and things, I don't know what that really is like because I haven't had a sustained period of time where I've been off. I still don't know how it's really changed. I still feel like I'm pretty much exactly the same, which is maybe not a good thing.
Q: This franchise has made you a bankable leading man. How has that changed your career, and where do you want to be in five years?
RP: I don't know. I've only done one movie outside of the series [since it started], which was Remember Me. That's going to be out sometime next year. But, even that, I did with the same studio. I'm still a little bit blind as to what my actual economic viability is outside of the series, but it's definitely different. You get offered stuff that you never would have dreamed of getting offered before, but that's also scary as well because you don't have to audition for anything. You're just like, I don't want to do a movie just because it gets made. I have no idea. Its a scary situation to be in, in a lot of ways. You have to question yourself a lot more. Before Twilight, I did any movie that I got and you try and make the best of it afterwards. Now, you're expected to come into the movie and provide not only economic viability, but a performance as well. People are like, You can't just mess around. Were employing you to be a star and an actor. It's difficult and it's scary.
Q: Isn't that what you dream about when you start out in the business?
RP: You do. You always think, Oh, when I've done a big movie
because when you haven't gotten a big movie behind you and you're not bankable, everyone is like, He's not bankable enough, so you can't get the roles that you want to get. And then, when you do, especially with a movie like this where there's a perceived specific audience, which I think people are quite confused about as well, but people start thinking, Oh, you need to get in with this audience. You need to do this or that. You need to look a certain way, blah blah blah. There are some limitations to it, whereas when no one is watching your movies and you get a part, you can do whatever the hell you want. That's just the way it is. So, there are good and bad points, either way.
Q: What personality traits do you share with Edward?
RP: I guess stubbornness, in some ways, about some things. He's pretty self-righteous. I get quite obsessive about things, and possessive as well.
Q: Like what?
RP: I have very, very specific ideas about how I want to do my work and how I want to be perceived, to the point of ridiculousness, sometimes. I dont listen to anyone else. That's why I dont have a publicist or anything. I can't stand it if someone is trying to tell me to do something, which is probably maybe a mistake sometimes. I like being meticulous, and it's quite difficult, as an actor, to have that much control. The good thing about the Twilight series as well is that it does give you a lot more control over tiddly little things, which I want to have. I'm a control freak about it.
Q: Have you ever had your heart broken, like Edward does when he leaves Bella?
RP: I'm just trying to think of a really stupid answer. I can't think of one. No, I don't think so.
Q: With all of the fan encounters that you've had, has there been anything thats just made you laugh?
RP: Yeah, a lot of the time. Recently, I have less direct interaction with people because there's way more security and stuff on set. But, I always find it funny when older people come up. There was a woman who came up to me the other day who must have been in her 90's. Its very unusual and they say exactly the same things as 12-year-old girls. That is kind of bizarre.
Q: What movies have you committed to in 2010?
RP: Depending on how things go, I'm doing a movie called Bel Ami in February, which is an adaptation of this Guy de Maupassant novel. And, I hope I'm doing a Western with Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman, called Unbound Captives, sometime around there as well. They've got to try to muddle everything around everybody's schedules and stuff.
Q: Youll be a gunfighter?
RP: No, actually I'm playing a kid who is kidnapped by the Comanches when he was four years old, and he's brought up by them. His mother spends her entire life trying to find me and my sister, and when she finds us, we can't remember who she is and can't remember anything about the Western culture that we grew up in. We speak Comanche the whole movie. So you can't really be more different from Edward.
Q: Is that why you responded to it?
RP: No. I actually signed on to that after I had done Twilight, in the summer, just a couple of months after I finished. It was really before anything had happened, so I wasn't even really thinking about it. It was just a cool script and it reminded me, in a lot of ways, of Giant, and that's one of my favorite movies. I think that's why I responded to it.
Q: What about The Searchers?
RP: It is kind of similar to The Searchers. That's a scary thing but actually it's nothing like The Searchers. Only in general terms.
Q: Are you going to have to learn Comanche for your role?
RP: Yeah.
Q: Have you had time for your music?
RP: I'm trying to.
New Moon opens November 20.
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
and c'mon, TRUE vampire sotries must have, above all porky romances, BLOOOOOOD!