On the list of life’s great pleasures, walking down a grim street in a one-horse Australian town probably doesn’t rank very high.
Yet if you’re one of the world most recognized — and harangued — faces, it can have a remarkable effect on your psyche and work.
So it went, at least, for former “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson. The actor made the new post-apocalyptic Western “The Rover” in the otherworldly solitude of remotest Australia — veritable ghost towns with names such as Leigh Creek and Quorn — allowing him to escape the maddening swarms and focus on his acting as never before.
“It was great, just being able to be out there with no one around,” the British heartthrob recalled of making David Michod’s Aussie indie, which opens Friday, before giving his trademark laugh: a nervous chuckle that can seem to go on a half-beat too long and is decidedly at odds with the suave sullenness of the vampire role that made him famous.
Added Michod: “I don’t think I ever saw an actor so happy as when I saw Rob coming down the street toward me all by himself. He was practically bouncing.”
Maybe big stars should shoot in a down-under desert more often. In the waning years of his “Twilight” period and in the two years since, Pattinson, now 28, tried to redefine himself several times. He made a romantic melodrama, a period circus piece and a tale of the French nobility adapted from a Guy de Maupassant novel.
Yet though there have been shards of promise — his oddly introspective Wall Street tycoon in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis” in 2012 — Pattinson has never shown the range he does here.
The five blockbuster “Twilight” films aren’t fondly remembered as an actor’s showcase, but since saying goodbye to the franchise that made them into overnight superstars, both Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have proved their worth as performers by taking on challenging fare not tailored for the Twihards of the world.
This was especially obvious at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where the duo were both on hand in support of what many deemed the best performances of their respective careers. For Stewart, that was as an assistant to an actress in Olivier Assayas’ “Clouds of Sils Maria.” For Pattinson, it was as Rey, a socially awkward American struggling to stay alive in the Australian outback in David Michôd’s grim follow-up to “Animal Kingdom.”
With “The Rover” opening in select theaters on June 13, Indiewire spoke with Pattinson about this challenging post-apocalyptic role.
David said he put you through the “wringer” during your three hour audition for the part. What did he make you do?
I mean, he did it at his house in LA. I don’t know, it was kind of, it was slightly nerve-wracking. I always get incredible anxiety attacks when I audition. I try to avoid them at all costs. But I loved the script so much. I had an idea of how to do it as soon as I read it.
[The audition] was just long. Normally you do two takes in an audition and that’s that. I think that’s why I’ve always messed them up over the years… I also had a really good actor reading with me as well, which helps. But yeah, I mean, it wasn’t like it was grueling or anything. It was quite exhilarating. You could tell that David was great even in the audition. I would have almost been happy not getting it. It was a great experience just doing the audition.
Realy great Robert Pattinson interview with Brisbane Times. Rob talks about his current and future projects
The vampire is dead. Or at least by now he should be. With The Rover, the new film from Animal Kingdom director David Michod, Robert Pattinson has finally shaken off the Twilight tag that threatened to define him forever as an actor.
In The Rover, he has an accent from America’s deep south, bad teeth and a strange emotional dependency on others. It’s a role that has attracted some very positive reviews: Variety critic Scott Foundas talked about ‘‘a career-redefining performance … that reveals untold depths of sensitivity and feeling’’.
Pattinson is a relaxed interview subject. He has a hearty laugh, and the air of someone who hasn’t worked out all his lines in advance, but he’s also ready to explain and explore what interests him. He’s serious about his work, and keen to make movies with people he admires and respects.
He’s aware that he’s getting favourable reviews for The Rover. He’s happy about this, of course, he says, ‘‘because I really love the movie’’. But when it comes to his performance, he admits, ‘‘I always think of it as a work in progress, and it just gets frustrating, thinking about things you could fix.’’
Guy Pearce is introduced to Robert Pattinson for the first time in this clip from the new film The Rover, directed by David Michod (Animal Kingdom), but the scene could also serve as Pattinson’s reintroduction to the public: Never before have we seen the Twilight star step this far out of his cinematic wheelhouse. As the dirty, bloody Rey, Pattinson impresses in this post-apocalyptic Aussie thriller, which finds his two-bit thief reluctantly teaming up with lone wolf Eric (Guy Pearce) to track down Rey’s criminal brother, who has left both men in the lurch. Together, they’ll have to navigate an unforgiving Aussie wasteland in a future world set ten years after a great economic collapse, which leaves every hard-bitten survivor fending for himself and turns Australia into an unfamiliar and dangerous third-world nightmare. Press play for a sneak preview of Pattinson’s new act — trust us, that’s him under the scuffed-up look, unflattering buzz-cut, and gurgling Southern drawl — and catch the full thing this Friday, when The Rover debuts in theaters.
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