Everywhere in the streets, Robert Pattinson sees himself on posters, magazines covers and tells himself: This isn’t me. “I don’t recognize my face, my hair, nothing. It’s like an out of body experience.”
Yet standing on the terrace of a big hotel in the morning light, the lead of Cosmopolis, by David Cronenberg, looks like his image. Though, he’s more discret and soft, and above all more happy. He laughs all the time, his contagious cheerfulness that nothing disarms.
Subtle. The eternal question on celebrity, for starters. The star of Twilight that caused a riot during his last visit at Cannes (security had to carry him out so he could escape 700 rabid fans), starts with a serious answer. “The most frustrating is to know that it isn’t me they like or hate. To know that I serve as a support to a feeling that has nothing to do with me.” He think for a bit. “The paparazzi, you get used to them. But it’s still weird to see those guys who decided to be assholes their whole lives. You feel like telling them: ‘Why did you chose that job?’ Everyone hates you!'” And then he starts laughing so hard he can’t stop. “It’s like people who give you parking tickets. You watch them, they all seem so happy! Mhhh cool, I’m gonna ruin someone’s day!”
When David Cronenberg called him, he jumped with joy and then with fear. His working method was different for the actor. “David didn’t do rehearsals. A few days before the movie started, I called him. ‘Don’t you think we should talk about it a little?’ He told me: ‘Oh no, don’t worry about it. It’ll come on its own.'” On the set, he tried the old method. “I would lock myself all day in the limo to live like my character. I was hot, sweating and sleeping. They had to shake me to wake me up.” On the third day, he finally got out.
He claims that working with David Cronenberg gave him confidence. “I would look at the end of Twiight approaching and I started asking myself questions ‘What to do, what are the right choices?'” Among his dreams, working with Jacques Audiard. “I love all his movies and his male characters are amazing. I would love to be like this.”
He lives in Los Angeles, like his girlfriend Kristen Stewart, a ‘particular’ life where he can’t really go out for a coffee but he won’t complain. One last anecdote: “When I go to restaurants, if I’m a little drunk … and that I see someone with a phone, I tell myself: ‘He’s taking a picture of me!'” He starts laughing again. “So I get up, pissed off, go to his table: ‘Show me your phone!'” He puts his hands on his sides. “Last time, I almost threw some guy’s phone through the window. He wasn’t he even taking a picture of me, he didn’t even now who I was!”
Robert Pattinson has gone from playing a vampire to depicting another kind of bloodsucker – a billionaire financier whose world crumbles in the course of a nightmarish cross-town drive in “Cosmopolis.”
The “Twilight” heartthrob stars in David Cronenberg’s Cannes Film Festival entry as sleek, self-centered moneyman Eric Packer, who sees his fortune and sense of self evaporate during an eventful day in his stretch limo.
Pattinson’s famously handsome face is on-screen in every scene, but “Twilight”`s young fans may be surprised and confused by a film that explores Cronenberg’s fascination with physical, social and psychic violence.
The 26-year-old actor is not worried.
“If some 12-year-olds went to go and see that, or got the video for their birthday – sitting down and watching that, it’s incredible,” the actor said during an interview on a Cannes hotel rooftop. “I would love that to happen if I was a kid.”
CANNES – Having ended his vampire duties, Robert Pattinson is working hard to establish himself as a leading man where his acting skills eclipse his heartthrob status. His new film, COSMOPOLIS, directed by David Cronenberg, is a bold step forward in that direction. Pattinson’s striking features are a perfect match for the film’s eerie plotting that owes just as much to Cronenberg’s macabre vision as it does to the original source material, Don DeLillo’s eponymous novel. Making its world premiere as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s official competition, COSMOPOLIS sees Pattinson play Eric Packer, a Wall Street billionaire whose life undergoes a strange sequence of events against the backdrop of his rapidly collapsing Manhattan universe. Is this how the 26-year-old Pattinson hopes to conquer new audiences? “I didn’t expect to be able to find a project as brilliant as this even though I could spend my life working with directors like Cronenberg,” explains Pattinson. “I have led a charmed life so far as an actor but I’m trying to find as many different and complex roles as possible and being able to work on this film is another gift that I’ve been given. It’s up to me to show what I’m capable of now!” Though his previous film, BEL AMI, failed to catch on at the box office, Pattinson has high hopes that COSMOPOLIS will be the film that redefines his screen persona. Pattinson was joined at Cannes by his equally famous girlfriend and TWILIGHT co-star, Kristen Stewart, although they typically avoided appearing together even though Stewart has repeatedly “outed” their relationship and Pattinson has similarly admitted their love affair and commitment to each other. In conversation, Pattinson is exceedingly polite and responsive and utterly indifferent to his celebrity status. One gets the impression he would be just as happy if COSMOPOLIS was his first film and audiences would get to know him afresh.
Q: Rob, your role in Cosmopolis is very different from anything we’ve seen you in before. How would you describe your character, Eric Packer? PATTINSON: He exists in his own, separate reality in a way and in the course of the film he’s trying to discover something about the world he’s really living in and how he can adapt to it. Packer lives in this complex financial universe which is guided by trading algorithms and he plays the game which is dictated by those laws which are their own distinct reality. That’s his central dilemma. He’s dealing with financial data that is constantly projecting him into the future and he doesn’t know what it’s like to live in the present. Packer has become so disconnected from the world that it’s made it difficult for him to understand what the world is really like. I’m sorry if that sounds very metaphysical but that’s how the story unfolds.
Le Figaro: How does it feel to be at Cannes?
Rob: It’s crazy. I was at the screening of On the Road the evening before yesterday. It was intense. At every scene, I felt terrified, blown away, captivated. On the Road and Cosmopolis are kind of similar in a way, they talk about a journey. They’re road movies. In a way, they talk about the same thing, freedom, this desperate attempt to look from something different than the sad daily reality.
LF: You and Kristen Stewart, both actors from the Twilight Saga, are in competition at Cannes. Is that a game, a coincidence or a challenge?
Rob: I don’t think of it as a challenge. I admit that it’s really strange. The year when Twilight ends, Kristen and I end up in Cannes … For me, Cannes is the most important competition in the world. When I was a kid, even before I knew I wanted to be an actor, I would rent DVDs with the Palme logo on it to impress my friends. As an actor, you dream that one day all your movies could have that logo on their DVD cases. My secret goal was to one day be invited at the Festival. I thought it could happen in 10 years and it happens now! I think the phone call I got to tell me that Cosmopolis was selected for the official competition, was one of the happiest moments of my life.
LF: What push you to make this movie?
Rob: The script. I read it in half an hour. It was perfect. The only thing that terrified me was that the fear that I could screw everything up. What helped me decide too was the conversation I had with David Cronenberg. I asked him why he chose me and he answered: ‘I don’t know!’. Then, I asked him if he understood anything about the script and he simply told me that he didn’t but that it wasn’t important. I hesitated for a week then I called him back one night, almost in tears: ‘I want to do it, as soon as possible!’
LF: Who’s Eric Paker?
Rob: He’s a guy who did everything to empty himself. A lot of people think he’s nihilist. On the contrary, I think he hangs on to the slightest bit of hope. But every time, he’s disappointed.
LF: How did the filming go?
Rob: David Cronenberg did everthing he could to unsettle me. Eric Packer slipped through my fingers like an eel. David constantly told me: ‘If you understand anything to what we’re doing, it’s over!’ So I played my role like a melody to a song. I didn’t understand the lyrics but I felt like I was in tuned to it. After one week of acclimation, we often filmed scenes in one take. Even the 15 minute scene with Paul Giamatti was done in one take! At the end, this is the movie that gave me the most confidence.
LF: Will Cannes be a launching ramp for you after Twilight?
Rob: People don’t watch Twilight for what the movies are but more as a global phenomenon. Edward Cullen is like a superhero A superhero who doesn’t do anything but be super. In Cosmopolis, I’ll finally be judged for my performance. That’s why I’m scared!
Robert Pattinson is bankable and it helps the auteur cinema. David: Funds for the movie were really hard to find. Actually, Robert helped us a lot because of Twilight and that we can’t deny. So bless them! Bless the Twilight movies without which I couldn’t have made this movie.
Rob: You end up running out of ideas. I’ve done 5 movies withe same character. Especially someone who doesn’t change, I mean, he doesn’t die, who has no fears. You get to the point where you’re like … I don’t know, people are gonna start calling me out on it.
David: I’m hoping that Rob will be in the 5 sequels of Cosmopolis that I have planned. I didn’t want to kill you in case we might want a sequel.
Metro has met Robert Pattinson on the eve of the film presentation.
Twilight in the cinema of David Cronenberg, there is a world. Cosmopolis is the beginning of a new career for you?Already be here with this film, it’s great. For a young actor like me, for people who truly love the cinema is the ultimate festival. One of the few who consider cinema as an art form. Here it is not about fame and everything that goes with it. Going back to my career, this is probably the beginning of something. Because Cosmopolis turn gave me the confidence to now get involved in projects that really interest me.
This month, Ricci stars in Bel Ami, based on the novel by Guy de Maupassant. She plays Clotilde de Marelle, who’s seduced by social-climber Georges Duroy, played by Robert Pattinson. At the time of filming, Pattinson was at the peak of Twilight hysteria. Did the more experienced Ricci give him advice on handling the attention?
“God, no,” she says. “I’ve not experienced that kind of fame and I don’t think I ever will, so I wouldn’t have any advice to give.
“But it doesn’t seem to get to him at all,” she adds. “When we were shooting in Budapest, there were quite a few girls screaming on the street, but he wasn’t annoyed by it in the slightest.”
Ricci found herself in the position those girls dream of – filming love scenes with Pattinson. “We joked and had a laugh about it,” she says. “We made a point of trying to put each other at ease. It’s just part of the job. Sometimes those scenes can be funny, but they aren’t terribly thrilling.”
Here’s a new interview of Rob with Rai News – Italy (dubbed but you can hear it some):
Translation
I: Is it weird for you to be here in Cannes with Kristen Stewart, who is in another movie? R: Even my friend is here and it’s really weird; this is the year when Twilight ends and both me and Kristen and my best friend Tom are here in Cannes.
I: Robert pattinson, in this movie you are a vampire of finance. Can we analyze this role in this key? R: I mean, kind of. I actually never considered it to be a movie about banks or Wall street. I don’t think Eric sees himself as a person working in the finance world. I think he believes he made money thanks to finance but what he actually likes are numbers; so i don’t think the movie is necessarily about the conclusion of capitalism, not at all. I don’t even know what it is about.
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