Full Transcript
Robert Pattinson earned $20 million in 2009. He made it into Time
Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. If it wasn’t for
the annoying boy wizard Daniel Radcliffe, he’d currently be the highest
earning British entertainer in The Sunday Times Rich List (Radcliffe –
£54m, Pattinson – £40m. Forbes have gone so far as to describe him as
one of the most influential celebrities in the world. Make no mistake,
whatever your thoughts on his pasty white skin and sticky up hair,
Pattinson is what agents describe as a ‘Big Deal’. And yet, when you
look back at his body of works, starting properly with 2005’s Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire, you have to admit that the man has made
some really average films. Which is probably why INDUSTRIA knows so
little about him. Yes, we were vaguely aware of the teenage based
hysteria surrounding his role as Edward Cullen in the tween vampire
series Twilight, bit in the same way we know of Justin Bieber, ballet
shoes and those small fish that clean women’s feet. With the arrival of
David Cronenberg’s movie Cosmopolis this month, however, all that looks
set to change.
Originally a starring vehicle for Colin Farrell and based on the novel by Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis aims to be the vehicle to deliver Pattinson some mainstream credibility (read: anyone but screaming teenage girls) and if an actor is good enough for such a visionary director who’s given us the likes of Videodrome, The Fly, Scanners, Eastern Promises and most recently A Dangerous Method then we felt we should pay attention to “R-Patz”.
“When Colin left the project to film the remake of Total Recall it made me rethink everything,” says Cronenberg. “Anyway he was too old for the part; he’s 35 and I wanted to be faithful to the book, it was necessary to have a 25 year old actor. Then I started to check all the actors of that age and that’s how I thought of Rob. I had seen him in Twilight, of course, but nothing he had done so far had really predisposed him to act in Cosmopolis. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. We talked a lot on the phone. Rob is not one of those people with a big ego. He wanted to make the movie, but seriously wondered if he could. It was his only concern. He said, “Do you really think I’m good enough to play this part? I’m afraid to ruin your movie.” I told him that this conversation more than convinced me he was perfect for Cosmopolis.”
Quite what the breathless followers will make of Pattinson’s latest career move remains to be seen. As he’s made, without question, the least accessible movie of his career (which has also included drama Water for Elephants and more recently sex romp Bel Ami), but one that makes him an acting force to be reckoned with as Pattinson dominates the screen (he’s in almost every scene) in a warped and very wordy tale of a billionaire city boy travelling across Manhattan in a high tech limo having to deal with death threats, riots, a new high maintenance wife and all the while in desperate need for a haircut.
On a rainy Friday evening, the 26-year-old Pattinson is kicking back with a few drinks in his hometown of London before heading off to premiere Cosmopolis to the sniffy film press at Cannes. Once more making us reassess out previous disinterested stance on him, he’s fun to talk to (the story of the one armed washing up man had us in fits of laughter, more of that later) and anyone who starts an interview by declaring “I’m probably going to be quite drunk by the end of this interview…” is alright by us.
Q: When did you first hear that Cronenberg was making Cosmopolis?
A: I got sent the script about a year before I did it.
My agent thought I would be interested, as I told her I wanted to be
sent anything from whoever was writing good scripts. Colin Farrell was
attached at the time, I liked it, but I felt I was too young and I think
I was considering doing a different part in it. But it disappeared.
Then when I was finishing the last Twilight movie, I was resent it out
of nowhere again with a straight offer for the lead. I didn’t understand
what had happened. It was a nice surprise.
Q: Did you then have a chat with Cronenberg about it?
A: I re-read it again and I didn’t particularly
understand it. I knew that there was something really passionate about
it, it seemed like someone really knew what it was about but that
someone was not me. So I was terrified to talk to David about it. My
agent was like, ‘You have to accept this job’ but it’s a terrifying
prospect to call up one of the best directors in the world and talk
through a script you don’t really understand.
Q: So did you call him?
A: I spent a week putting off the conversation. I was
trying to figure out how I could say no, as it seemed like the logical
thing to do if you don’t understand something. But I love all of David’s
movies and the only reason I would be saying no is because I’m a pussy.
So I called him up, was honest and said I didn’t know what it was about
but I really wanted to do it and he was like, ‘Great, I don’t know what
it’s about either’. It all worked out in the end.
Q: What was the first Cronenberg film you saw?
A: I think it was Scanners. I loved it. I was obsessed
with Jack Nicholson when I was growing up and I bought the DVD because I
thought it was him on the cover and it turned out to be Michael
Ironside, who I then became obsessed with. I also remember buying
Videodrome. I’d never really acknowledged how much I liked Cronenberg
but I realised I owned about 10 of his DVDs before working with him. I
never thought I would be able to do a film with him, as he seemed to be
always making films with Viggo Mortensen. He’s amazing and you can see
why actors keep going back to work with him.
Q: How does his directing style differ from others?
A: He’s just incredibly confident. He doesn’t make out
that anything is a big deal at all. And in doing that there’s kind of an
indirect assumption that actors need to come to the set prepared to do
any scene in the movie. David would turn up and if he couldn’t figure
out the best way to shoot something he would just move onto something
else. Cosmopolis is fairly wordy and required a significant amount of
thought to figure it out so I was preparing 40 pages of dialogue for
every day. I hadn’t done that since my theatre days. And everyone else
would be prepared for that so you didn’t want to let everyone down.
Q: Is it true he didn’t want you to deviate from the script at all?
A: Completely. That was one of the thing I wanted to do
too, what I liked about it most was the writing and the irregular
pacing of it. I read the book too and it has an odd, slightly off-rhythm
cadence to it that David obviously liked. But it was nice as you don’t
have to try and make words your own.
Q: Most of you scenes were filmed in the back of a limo. How claustrophobic was that?
A: For me it was great as I was extraordinarily nervous
at the beginning but I could stay in my comfort sear and every other
actor had to genuinely enter my world. I would turn up before everyone
else everyday so I would be the first one in the car so I would have
that moment where the other actors would have to approach and come into
my car. There was no one else in there but me and the other actor as the
camera was on the crane and David would speak through an intercom. It
meant that these other great actors like Samantha Morton and Juliette
Binoche came in a little bit nervous, which was fantastic for me as it
evened the playing field.
Q: Had you met your co-stars beforehand?
A: I had barely met anyone other than Jay Baruchel and
Sarah Gadon. I met Juliette Binoche two or three minutes before we had a
sex scene, and she is one of my three favourite actresses in the world.
It was an incredibly strange thing to deal with.
Q: It’s a pretty brave role. In one scene you seduce a co-worker while having a prostate exam.
A: That was one scene where I wished I’d worked out a
bit beforehand haha. I thought it was one of the funniest scenes I’ve
ever read and one of the only things that has been cut down – it gets
even more extreme in the book, the last line is, ‘I’m going to bottle
fuck you slowly with my sunglasses on’ and all this while I have a
doctor’s finger up my arse. You get to the day and you think, ‘I’m the
one who’s vulnerable in this scene’, usually it’s totally the other way
around. David was laughing all the way through. You are in a position,
bent over, where you are the butt of all the jokes, so you have to
quickly give up your pride quite quickly.
Q: Despite the complexity of the dialogue did you have fun making it?
A: For something so wordy and seemingly very complicated you would think
that it was highbrow on set, but it was the most fun job I’ve done. We
were making it kind of like a comedy; it’s an odd movie.
Q: At one point you get a pie in the face.
A: I think I broke my nose in one of those takes. My nose breaks really
easily and Mathieu (Amalric) is a bit of a method act so really went for
it. In that scene I was slightly off camera pissing my pants laughing, I
was useless. I was treating it like a stand-up comic was performing for
me.
Q: Was it a deliberate move to do something a world away from the Twilight films?
A: It really came out of the blue. There are very few auteur directors
who can still get movies financed and the best way to improve as an
actor is to work with the best directors out there. Unfortunately
studios love firing first timers more than the classic directors. It’s
such a risk. With David it won’t just be a string of recorded events
stuck together with some music over the top as every single one of his
movies is “something” – it’s a self contained piece of art. The only way
I judge what to do next is when I read a script that is so insanely
different from everything else that I question if it will ever get made.
And I think this is one of those. The last scene of the movie is a 20
page two hander with a completely new introduced character. If you read
any script writing manual they will tell you it’s breaking every single
rule in the book. The only reason it got made was of Cronenberg. It
would have been ridiculous not to have done it.
Q: Do you not think that you now have the pulling power to get a movie made?
A: Not really. I guess I have been put in the category of potentially
getting Twilight fans into a movie but I don’t know if that’s even
guaranteed. I’m just lucky with this Cronenberg film, as it’s the sort
of thing I would have auditioned for even now, I would have auditioned
as many times as they wanted in order to get it. I’m just trying not to
do stuff that’s bad. Hopefully people will start to see that I’m making
interesting choices and then it’s a legit career. I don’t want to have a
career that’s just an illusion. I was scared that I would never be
asked to be in anything interesting, that my life would pass by and
someone, someday would ask me, ‘So apart from Twilight, what did you
do?’
Q: How do you cope with the attention?
A: I have never been fooled by the hysteria that surrounds me. It’s the
character I play, Edward Cullen, the romantic vampire. Before the movie
was even made, girls would scream at Stephenie Meyer’s public readings.
Most people who are famous really like it and I can’t figure out how to
like it that much. I’m not a particular horrible person so when a fan
comes up to me in the street I’m nice to them but whenever you are mean
people have no idea why. Not sure if that makes sense, sometimes I have
no memory of what comes out my mouth.
Q: It’s ok. It did. You have The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 in October will you be relieved when it’s all over?
A: The only difficult thing about the Twilight series was that the
character didn’t change. And so I didn’t really know what to do with it
after a while. It works in the book, he’s much more of a canvas for the
readers, which was why the first one worked so well for me. After a
while people start to know you and you make other movies and you’re not a
fantasy figure anymore. You’re just a guy. I don’t know how I feel
about it, I’m still working on it. I just did the final reshoots a
couple weeks ago. If the character could have got older and if he could
have got hurt, it would be different for me. It’s beautiful as a self
contained love story – where the two main protagonists will never leave
each other no matter what – that’s a nice idea, but to play it? The
audience already knows what’s going to happen before it happens. You
don’t even have any suspension of disbelief.
Q: Now that you’re making a success of acting do you
ever look back at the time you were waiting table and think, ‘I’m glad
I’m not doing that anymore?’
A: The weird thing is I didn’t hate the jobs I did before I was an
actor. I loved being a waiter. I was terrible at it, but I enjoyed it
and I got fired from three different places. I once dropped a bottle of
wine on a bald guy’s head. It was a full bottle of wine, luckily it
didn’t break. After that incident I was regulated to the kitchens and I
worked with this one armed Turkish guy washing all the dishes as I
wasn’t allowed in the main restaurant anymore.
Q: How did he wash dishes with only one arm?
A: Actually, I think he was mainly drying the dishes.
Q: Surely that would still have been a struggle?
A: He seemed to manage OK haha.
Q: You loved Jack Nicholson as a child, are there any other actors’ careers you’d like to have?
A: I think it’s impossible to emulate another actor. Everyone always
looked up to Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis but there’s no way
to follow anyone’s route these days. People get over-saturated so
quickly. I want to do my thing and if people like it, they like it. That
whole thing about an actor’s career – you do one for the studio, one
for yourself – doesn’t work anymore as you can do twenty for the studio,
twenty for the money basically, and you’ll do one for you that tanks
and your whole career will go down the toilet.
Q: What are you doing next?
A: I’m doing Mission: Blacklist #1 with Jean-Stephane Sauvaire who made
Johnny Mad Dog, about Eric Maddox who is the interrogator who led the US
to find Saddam Hussein. I hung out with Eric in Washington, he had just
got back from Afghanistan, and he gave me the full run down, over 16
hours, of how he found Saddam Hussein. He has a photographic memory and
talking through every single detail. Hopefully we will be shooting in
Iraq, I think it’s going to be very cool. I’m also going to do David
Michod’s new film The Rover, he’s part of this group called the Blue
Tongue and I have been a fan of theirs for years and would watch all
their short films on YouTube. They are a group of friends who have
reinvigorated the entire Australian film community, they can all write,
act and direct and they only employ Australians. I read the script and
desperately auditioned for it, I think I’m the only non-Australian
person in it.
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