Robert Pattinson’s key to giving a great onscreen performance is to forget everything he’s done before.
“I know the next time I do something, I’ll be like, ‘I can’t remember how to do any of this stuff,’” the Twilight star, 37, shared in a recent interview with Barry Keoghan for Wonderland magazine. “It’s kind of nice to go into it as an amateur every time and be like, ‘This is a huge mountain to climb.’ It’s like being a total fake again.”
Keoghan, 31, agreed with his The Batman costar, adding, “I feel being familiar with this stuff is dangerous because you kind of lose spontaneity. You lose a lot of that instinctive thing that we love and the directors love, obviously.”
For Pattinson, the “nice thing” about starting fresh is learning to avoid repeating things that may not have worked in the past. “If something worked in a previous movie and you’re like, ‘Oh everyone said that was good’ and instinctively you go, ‘Well, everyone liked that — I want to do that again,’” he explained. “And then next time round, everyone just says it’s s—t and you’re like, ‘What the f—k?’ … You’re forced into reinvention.”
Pattinson’s “amateur” mentality has lent itself to portraying a variety of different characters over the years, from Harry Potter’s Cedric Diggory and The Devil All the Time’s Rev. Preston Teagardin to romantic leads in films such as Remember Me and Water for Elephants.
While the actor’s work has garnered him multiple accolades and a legion of fans, Pattinson revealed that he leaves a character behind after filming on a project wraps. “I used to really struggle to watch myself,” he told Keoghan. “Now, once it’s finished, I feel quite disconnected. I mean, not disconnected in a bad way.”
Although Pattinson may prefer to keep his past work behind him, his role as Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise is one fans continue to discuss today. Earlier this week, the original film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke, revealed that the film studio was initially unsure whether Pattinson was the right fit to play the 100-year-old vampire.
“They call me back and go, ‘Do you think you can make this guy look good?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Did you see his cheekbones?’” Hardwicke, 68, shared on the Monday, November 20, episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “’We’re doing a makeover on the hair and everything and he’s going to start working out and he’s going to be gorgeous.’”
Pattinson — who is currently expecting his first baby with girlfriend Suki Waterhouse— also didn’t seem so sure of his casting at first. “I never really quite knew how to play a vampire though,” he admitted to W Magazine in September 2017. “I mean, if it hadn’t been so successful, I think people would have thought it was really weird. It’s a really weird story. But I think once it becomes mainstream, it’s difficult for people to see how strange the story is.”
He went on to share that the Twilight series was “really fun” to film, adding, “It was such a wild experience. And what a strange way to spend my early twenties.”
