Q: What made you go back to Cannes with Cosmopolis?
David Cronenberg: The festival and I have a long history. In a sense I have the feeling of coming home. I think it is an ideal film for Cannes and I’m excited about the idea of having Rob with me.
Q: Today it is impossible to imagine someone for this part. However, you offered it before to Colin Farrell …
DC: When Colin left the project to film the remake of Total Recall, it made me rethink everything. 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 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 really predisposed him to act in Cosmopolis. Even though you choose an actor by the perceived potential you see in him and not by his resume. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.
Happy start of Cannes FilmFestival day! There’s been a report on M6 on the 12.45 newspaper edition and they spoke about Cannes and Cosmopolis. (Thanks to Ptiteaurel for mailing this to us)
translation:
Reporter: No tag problems in Cannes the day before the opening of the famous film festival. The aim for Cannes is to be a kind of showcase for the international cinema. But we must notice that this year the festival is likely to be special.
Man: She’s never been to Cannes before but on this poster, she’ll be the queen this year.
Photographer: She’s gorgeous. When the star will be on the red carpet, we’ll be able to have a reverse shot with Marylin in the background. It’ll be great.
Man: And she’ll see a lot of stars. This 65th edition will be very American: Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman will be on the red carpet for 2 movies, and the so expected Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, a couple off screen , but in Cannes they’ll be in competition since both their fillms have been selected.
Kristen: I think this competition can’t hurt us. And if there’ll be only one winner, it’ll be our film. No, I’m kidding.
(1.08 – 1.25) : they are talking about Marion Cotillard)
Cinema Specialist: On paper, it’s a great festival. Some films are causing a great excitement such as David Cronenberg’s film starring Robert Pattinson, On the Road by Walter Salles. As usual, there’ll be some surprises, some outsiders, people coming from Asia or from Arabian countries. On paper, it’s likely to be a great edition. Last year, she went to present The Artist but this year , she’ll open the festival which promises to attract a wide audience. Nanni Moretti, the jury’s president has just arrived. Red carpet and emotions: all will start tomorrow.
Télérama: How would you present the movie to Rob’s fans? DC: We could tell them that it’s story of a vampire on Wall Street. It’s almost true, even tho a little deceiving. We can emphazise that Rob is in every scene, that he’s sometimes naked and that he has sex with Juliette Binoche. This, the fans won’t find in Twilight, it’s a more conservative cinema. During the filming of Cosmopolis? Tons of girls were waiting on set, in the streets, at any hour of the day and night. They had made t-shirts with the strange gun from the movie and the name ‘Nancy Babich’ that served as code to use the weapon. It was really cute. As were the internet websites about Cosmopolis, that Rob’s fans made when the movie got greenlighting.
David talks about a character at the beginning of the movie – a 19 year old businessman – who says his career is over and that he can’t face the abstraction of capitalism from today.
The interview was done in a private club in Sunset Boulevard.
He hid his intense beauty under a baseball cap, a blonde scruff, a lumberkjack shirt, a white tee and washed out jeans. They had the interview on the terrace where he could light up his cigarettes.
Between light coughs and nervous laughs, he explains that he doesn’t feel at home here.
His dream is to work in a black comedy of Todd Solodnz or in dramas for men by James Gray or Jacques Audiard.
“I was scared of being cut off from the art-house cinema that I always felt passionate about. I was scared to never be asked to play in anything interesting, that my life would pass and that someone would ask me one day, ‘so apart from Twilight, what did you do?’. In this industry, you’re easily typecast”
“I never proved anything, I was never fooled by the hysteria that surrounds me. It’s the character that I play, Edward Cullen, the romantic vampire. Besides, before the movie was even made, girls would screams at Stephenie Meyer’s public readings.”
When he got the script for Cosmopolis: He got the fear of the beginner/novice. “I was so scared I would screw this up that I spent a week trying to find a way to refuse the job. And then I told myself that I shouldn’t be so stuck-up. My agent was nervous: ‘why would you accept if you don’t understand it?’. I confessed my confusion to David and he liked it. I think that might be why he hired me. Most actors would have try to act cooler, try to say something smart but I was completely lost.”
Cronenberg said that the actor didn’t come on set with his hands in his pockets. That he’s an assiduous reader, who’s been interested in the character of the ‘golden boy’ for a long while, one who’s close to the one he portrays in Cosmopolis. ‘Money’ by Martin Amis – which describes the giddy heights of easy money and the chic hedonism – is one of his bedtime readings. He finds so many similarities with himself in the empty space of the star system, that he wrote how own version of the novel, in hopes of playing it one day.
“I thought about it for Cosmopolis of course but the characters are too different and Cronenberg prefered that I knew nothing. He wanted me to give in, to say my lines in almost an abstract way, like poetry. It was exciting and a little scary. Today I’m nervous about the idea of having to talk to an audience about a movie that stays dark. But Cronenberg, himself, wanted to have something that escapes him. He would tell me about Fellini and say that a filmmaker that has a goal is dead already. It’s so much more interesting than to know right away where an artist is gonna take you. Plus, its’ the first time I really like one of the movies I make.”
The Film: Probably the most eagerly hyped film at this year’s festival, and one of the supposed frontrunners for the Palme d’Or, Cosmopolis marks David Cronenberg’s return to the arena of the bizarre. Adapted from the novel by American author Don DeLillo, the film will follow Robert Pattinson’s young billionaire on a journey into darkness as he discovers his fortune has evaporated, and decides to cut loose from conventional society. Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Jay Baruchel round out a pleasingly offbeat cast.
Why We’re Excited: After a couple of enjoyable but conventional films in the form of A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises, we’re looking forward to seeing Cronenberg return to the outer-limits of big screen storytelling.Cosmopolis represents the director’s first self-penned script since 1999’seXistenZ, and from the looks of the clips and trailers we’ve seen so far, it promises to be deliciously weird. It also stands to catapult Pattinson out of the clutches of the soul-sapping Twilight series into a role more deserving of his talents. Put simply, we can’t wait.
Robert Pattinson
c/o Curtis Brown Group Ltd.
Haymarket House
5th Floor, 28-29
Haymarket
London, SW1Y 4SP
England
or
Robert Pattinson
c/o Endeavor Agency
Stephanie Ritz
9601 Wilshire Blvd. Floor 3
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
USA
Calendar
May 2026
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Partners
DISCLAIMER
Thinking of Rob is not affiliated with Robert Pattinson or his management in any way.
There is no copyright infringement intended on this blog. If you are the original owner of any media used and would like it removed, we will be happy to do so, please contact us.
Copyright and Trademark Notice
All original content on this site, including any manipulations or enhancements, is the sole copyright of ThinkingofRob™ and ToR™.