Robert Pattinson Q&A

27 March 2010

New Moon

To say that Robert Pattinson had take the world by storm would be a little of an understatement as the role of Edward Cullen shot him to global fame.

This week New Moon, the second movie in the series was finally released and it's been flying off the shells.

- What do you make of New Moon now that you’re finished shooting?

I’m not carrying New Moon, which is nice, I’m just supporting really. It means I’m looking forward to it which normally I don’t. I don’t usually like watching myself! But this book, I could relate to this one more.

In this one, what Edward goes through is a lot more relatable for guys whereas in Twilight it was quite difficult for me to express it. In a lot of ways, guys find it difficult to accept the kind of emotions that are shown in Twilight, even to watch them, let alone feel them.

I also think most people like to have a secret in their relationship with a girl or boyfriend. It keeps things exciting. With New Moon, anyone who has had a relationship will understand if I have done it right!

- How did it feel returning to the character of Edward Cullen. Was it like visiting an old friend?

Kind of. I tried to do the same things, and keep the performance relatively similar. I went up a month before other people got there and stuff, but I was surprised how relaxed and easy it was to get back into it this time. I’d always connected more to the second book more than the first one.

I really understood the story a lot more and the emotions in it I could connect to in real life as well.

It was actually kind of relaxing doing this one. It is always difficult in the first film to portray the profundity of finding love when you’re feeling absolutely nothing, and are completely fossilized, and then, suddenly , you’re feeing everything.

t is really difficult to show that and I was always stressing myself out but I know that for some reason I could feel what it was like. In the second one he can feel that he is making the wrong decision but he makes it anyway.

- That’s a typically male trait!

Isn’t it? You do feel that a lot as a guy in relationships and I felt I knew how to do that. In New Moon, he can see he is making the wrong decision, the audience can see it, Bella can see it . every body can see it but he is compelled to mess it up.

The way I see the story from Edward’s point of view, anyway, is that it is about commitment and finding someone you love and then not knowing it.

It’s much more applicable; people can relate to it a lot more than you realise. When people first read it they think it is a fantasy story.

I have never ever seen it as a fantasy at all. I never even see him as a vampire. I don’t think it is about conservativism. He thinks about things in a very realistic way. He thinks he is doing the right thing. I don’t think anyone is trying to push any kind of ideology with these films.

- Do you get teased by your friends when you get mentioned in all these lists, like the ‘sexiest man alive’?

Not really. I hang out with people I have grown up with, with a lot of people who are musicians. Actually I worked a bit with them on the sound track and it is so funny what has happened with them, just having their name on a Twilight sound track, they have been doing gigs in America and they are sold out, every single time they do it and they have really started on careers. They should have had a career anyway.

They are good enough to do it but it is amazing. That is the only power aspect which I have seen as being a really positive thing.

A friend of mine is doing a gig at The Whiskey in LA. This is a guy who is unsigned, completely unadvertised, just on his MySpace page, and the tickets and presale sold out quicker than any gig at the place ever. They sold out within an hour.

- Really, though, do you like all the attention? It must be great for pulling!

I don’t feel that I am sexy at all. Really, I don’t feel very connected to that kind of talk, anyway. I know that other people say it, but I never thought like that. I never got any of the good looking guy roles before this, so that says something!

- But now you are like a sexual fantasy for thousands of girls

It is funny because even the people that think like that, if you talk to them for five minutes and if one of them came up, after about five minutes the illusion has gone. It doesn’t make any difference if you are seen or not seen, or that people are saying things like that about me.

People still hold onto an illusion because they want to have, so it doesn’t really matter what you do, unless you start going around deliberately getting rid of fans, people are going to form these fantasies. I think people don’t really know what they want, and often it is an imaginary thing that they want.

- Have you had many strange fan experiences?

I did get this really bizarre horoscope thing from someone. It was a full-on zodiac reading, charting and intersecting all this stuff. It was over 20 pages long basically saying we were destined to be together!

That was totally bizarre. I don’t really believe in that stuff anyway, although I do believe in karma, mainly because it’s bitten me on the ass so many times!

- Have you ever used your celebrity to your advantage?

It’s funny, I don’t have any massive desires. I really don’t. I like shitty stuff. I still have a crap car somewhere lost in LA. I don’t recall where I parked it. I don’t request anything from anyone, so I don’t want them to ask things of me.

There are actors who want that attention, and the paparazzi feel they have a right for me to give them something. But I don’t care about any of that stuff.

- Do you reckon you could be tempted by the prospect of eternal life?

Oh god, no. My great aunt is a very, very funny woman, who is about 96 and every single time I talk to her, it is like, ‘When you come up to see me next, could you just bring some poison?’ I wouldn’t want to live for ever under any circumstances.

- Edward Cullen is such an iconic character. Do you worry about getting typecast?

A little maybe. The good thing is that the economy is so bad, I can be like, ‘I don’t care if you think I’m right for it or not, I can get your movie made!’ which is great. I am a little worried but it hasn’t affected me so far.

No one has ever said that to me when I’ve had a meeting. It’s really difficult to get female audiences to go to things that are directed at girls, so if someone can make a film targeted at guys, but you have my presence which might attract girls, that’s a goods thing. And I don’t think too many guys know who I am, so it won’t affect them.

- You’re working solidly this year, right, following New Moon with Eclipse and a couple of other projects?

Yeah, I’m working without a day off for a year now and I’m doing really different stuff, and they’re all really personal. I’m not making career choices, as it were, I just felt a need to do them.

I’m not doing any massive movies not as an antidote to Twilight. Twilight was a strange thing; I never really knew what it was that I was getting into. I just met Kristen and really liked her.

Now I’m doing Remember Me this summer, and the character is halfway between being cynical about his emotions and getting to the age where you can be authentically earnest and not question it all your head, not be all existential about it. That’s a very adolescent thing in guys. It’s treading that line, which I am I guess.

- Are you going to play Frank Sinatra?

I want to, but so does everyone. I’m a little too young. I can sing, but I can’t do his voice. There is a lot of competition, and I’m not really into competition. I did play a real-life person with Salvador Dali.

I did not trying to play him exactly, though. I just had certain thing I connected to that he’d said and written and I tried to do some of his mannerisms. There was some kind of essence that I connected to I read a lot of stuff that he wrote and I just liked it. I’d like to have been friends with him!

New Moon is out on DVD now.