Gadon and Pattinson did not rehearse, the idea being that their unfamiliarity would work to their advantage given the unfamiliarity of their characters. That said, I ask what she thinks Pattinson is really good at.
“Um, what is Rob really good at?” She chuckles. “He’s good at a lot of things! I think he was really great as Eric Packer. And I think that was one thing that kind of surprised me, because I didn’t really know him very well. And in real life he’s very kind of… I mean, you heard him in the press conference: he’s British and he’s self-deprecating and he’s much more self-conscious [than his character].
“And then all of a sudden he put on his suit, and this American accent would come out, and he would be so sure of himself and so powerful! And direct! And it was amazing to me to see that transformation of going from himself into Eric Packer. And I think that there’s few, few guys right now in the industry who can pull off that kind of powerful masculinity at such a young age.”
“One thing just to say: the girls who were at Geary Avenue at three in the morning were very sweet, and they had read the book,” says Cronenberg during a recent Toronto press conference alongside his cast. “This is quite extraordinary. They made a T-shirt for us that said ‘Nancy Babich’ and had a pistol on it,” a reference to DeLillo’s novel. “And I wore that, and they went crazy.
“But that’s interesting because very early on we were on the ‘Net [and] we had seen that they were making these Cosmopolis fan websites. Some of them were incredibly beautiful. There were a couple that were better than the official one.”
Adds Pattinson: “We were doing interviews in London, and someone asked about what the tagline was for the movie. I can’t remember exactly what it was now, but I thought, ‘Is that the tagline?’ And both of us didn’t know what it was. And I just found out the other day that it was from one of the fan-made posters. A whole bunch of journalists thought it was the real one!”
“They were making posters and they were reading the book, and the commenters were commenting on Don DeLillo’s book,” adds the director. “These were girls who had read Harry Potter and Twilight and now they’re reading DeLillo, and they still like it and they still want to see the movie. So I thought, ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.'”
Indeed. Pattinson’s presence in Cosmopolis lends Cronenberg’s film a pop cultural weight it might not otherwise have had original star Colin Farrell’s Total Recall schedule not kyboshed his casting as Packer. (Inception’s Marion Cotillard was to play his wife Elise, a role now played by Toronto actress Sarah Gadon.)
And while the teaming of Cronenberg and Pattinson might on the surface seem unusual, the strength of their relationship is evident not only in their interactions during the press conference but also by the fact that it has been reported that the duo plan to continue their collaboration with the director’s next mooted project, Maps to the Stars. (Frequent Cronenberg collaborator Viggo Mortenson (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, A Dangerous Method) is also rumoured to be eying a role in the film.)
There are only a few more hours left to cast your votes for the 2012 MTV Movie Awards, and should you need more reason to throw your support behind four-time Best Kiss nominees and three-time winners Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, we have one for you, courtesy of Pattinson himself.
When MTV UK recently caught up with the actor during an early press day for his highly anticipated film “Cosmopolis,” we asked him about his chances in bringing home a fourth golden popcorn trophy for his smooch with Stewart in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” and if they have plans to make a creative acceptance speech if they win.
The British actor Pattinson looks set to become the renowned sci-fi horror director’s new muse. Playing the financial genius Eric Packer – who heads across New York in a white limousine in search of a hair cut – he appears in every scene of Cronenberg’s new film Cosmopolis, which competed for the Palme D’or at the years Cannes Film Festival and opens in UK cinemas June 15.
Cronenberg today described the star of the Twilight franchise as “a beautiful actor who often responds to scenes without even realising what he’s doing. That’s why I love him.”
Pattinson will perform opposite Viggo Mortensen, best known for his role as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings franchise, who starred in Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method. The two are regarded as creative partners.
Speaking in London today, the Canadian director of The Fly, Scanners and eXistenz said: “There’s a brilliant script by an author friend of mine called Bruce Wagner. All of his books are fantastic. I tried to get this script off the ground five years ago, but I couldn’t get it made. In a way its like Cosmopolis; it’s a difficult sell. It’s edgy in a nasty, disturbing way. It has emotion, but it has a weird emotion like Cosmopolis.
“It’s hard to make difficult movies. When you have very credible actors who bring a lot of attention like Viggo Mortensen and Robert Pattinson, you think it would be easy to raise 15 million dollars, but it’s not.”
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