New Rob Interview with The Courier Mail + David Michôd Talks About Rob
ETA: Another new picture of Rob as Rey from The Advertiser (source)
Seven weeks in the baking heat of the South Australian Outback has accomplished something even an army of vengeful Volturi couldn’t.
Described by one influential industry magazine as “career redefining”, Robert Pattinson’s against-type performance as a slow-witted drifter in desert Noir thriller The Rover has enabled him to emerge from the long shadow cast by the Twilight franchise.
That might explain the 28-year-old English actor’s relaxed and charming demeanour during interviews for David Michod’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to Animal Kingdom — the film that reinvented both Jacki Weaver’s and Ben Mendelsohn’s careers — which stands in marked contrast to his polite and unassuming but slightly-guarded approach to the media at the height of the Twilight phenomenon.
Pattinson says the glowing reviews that came out of the Cannes Film Festival last month, where The Rover screened in a prestigious midnight slot, felt like a validation “for about five seconds”.
But his next film is almost more important.
“With all that Twilight stuff, I know that if I was not me, I would be judging me,’’ he says.
“It’s almost like setting up a brand. If you get enough good reviews so that people go in expecting a good movie, then half your job is done.”
Guy Pearce, Pattinson’s co-star in The Rover, made the transition from soapie heart-throb to serious actor two decades ago with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, which was also selected for a midnight screening slot at Cannes.
“Basically, he is a leading man but he consistently does character parts,’’ says Pattinson.
“I always kind of admired how he did that and it is basically the same career path that I would like to have.”
If you were anywhere near Sydney’s State Theatre on Saturday night you might have been mistaken for thinking we were back in the times of Beatlemania, as hundreds of fans lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the British heartthrob.
Thinking of Rob 