Edward Cullen may have eternal life, but Robert Pattinson never wanted to play the role forever. While participating in Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series on Wednesday, December 6, the Twilight alum, 31, opened up about the consequences of filming sequels.
“When something becomes really big, you really get an awareness of how small you are, like where it is when you first start acting and you feel like a big shot when you’re only doing something small,” Pattinson said. “My ego was a lot bigger when I first started. Then you start losing control of a lot of different aspects of your life and also the job, especially when you’re doing sequels to something, It doesn’t matter what you think: a) it’s already been in a book and b) the tone has already been set up and the machine is already in motion. It’s frightening when you lose your sense of identity.”
The British actor has been vocal in the past about his experience working for such a popular franchise for four years. Twilight premiered in November 2008 and the last film in the franchise, Breaking Dawn Part 2, debuted in November 2012.
While covering GQ magazine in September, Pattinson opened up about going to great lengths to dodge paparazzi. “It worked after a while. They’re just like, ‘Oh, the guy is just a hassle,’” he recalled. “There are ways to disappear, like fairly easy. But you have to be living a quite strange life. It just involves effort and most people can’t really be bothered to put the effort in … They’re just losers trying to do their jobs.”
While speaking to Variety in May 2015, the Remember Me actor revealed that his vampire days are long behind him. “I couldn’t do another Twilight movie. I’m too old,” he told the outlet, noting that he never anticipated the hype that the blockbuster films brought. “No one thought it was going to be a big deal.”
Pattinson’s Twilight costar and former girlfriend Kristen Stewart — the duo dated on and off for four years before calling it quits in 2013, one year after 27-year-old Stewart’s affair — has also opened up about the impact that the franchise has had on her personal life. “When I was dating Rob, the public were the enemy — and that is no way to live,” she told London’s Sunday Times in March. “[Twilight] shaped me enormously. Not just those movies, but the subsequent effect.”
