01 | March | 2012 | Thinking of Rob

*VIDEO* Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod talks about casting Rob Leave a comment

They talk about Rob at 3:15. Click on the screencap or HERE to watch:

On the cast, Nick said: “Rob came very early on. He read the script and absolutely loved it, and really related to the character.

“We met him, and that was like a marriage immediately. He has always been wonderfully committed, and is a terrifically serious actor.”

Declan added: “Very interestingly, he insisted on rehearsing for a whole month in London before we shot one single piece of film, which is very, very unusual for somebody who has as busy a schedule as he has.

“He was incredibly committed, and couldn’t have been a nicer guy or a more talented guy to work with.”

Nick also said of the Twilight star’s involvement: “I think the reason that Rob was attracted to this role is that it’s the complete opposite of everything that he’s played so far.

“The character of Bel Ami is talentless, vacuous and really totally selfish. Rob is very talented, but he completely understood the part, completely understood the character.”

“At the risk of sounding po-faced or pretentious, all artists will grapple – I do – with insecurity about your own talent,” Declan explained. “It’s a very dodgy artist indeed who says ‘I know exactly what I’m doing; I’m a genius, I’m talented’. Nobody I know who does good work thinks like that at all.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why this character is so fascinating to us, really, because he gets to the top with nothing, and it’s very much a parable for our time.”

Source | via

Declan Donnellan talks Robert Pattinson and Bel Ami – “Rob is unbelievably talented” Leave a comment

Very interesting article. From Herald Scotland :

As the winner of several Olivier awards, British director Declan Donnellan is used to the odd coup de theatre, that moment when events on stage take a turn for the astonishing.

But what happened on the red carpet in Berlin for Bel Ami, his feature film debut, had even Donnellan thinking he had lost the plot.

“There was one moment when I thought I’d gone mad,” says Donnellan, who was in Glasgow last month for the film festival premiere of Bel Ami with the movie’s co-director, the theatre designer Nick Ormerod.