Great but lengthy interview with Robert by Times Online.

Every young girl’s fantasy vampire, the actor has to keep himself hidden since the phenomenal success of the Twilight books and film

Lesley White

On a balmy autumn day in Vancouver, a young man is longing for a walk outside in the sunshine, and deciding against it. Far easier for him to stay in his hotel room, cocooned in five-star luxury with a mobile phone that has run out of charge, safe at least from the girls chanting his name outside. Robert Pattinson, 23 and from Barnes in southwest London, ought still to be one of Hollywood’s beautiful dreamers, moving up the ranks of movie acting, enjoying his American adventure, his guitar, his good looks. Instead he lives in danger of being trampled in a stampede of teen love. He plays the vampire Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga, the biggest books-to-screen phenomenon since Harry Potter — in which, by the way, Pattinson was Cedric Diggory, heroic golden boy and victim of Voldermort. Boy, his life has changed since Hogwarts.

In Canada he is shooting Eclipse, the third of Stephenie Meyer’s quartet of novels. The second, New Moon, is released this month in a publicity extravaganza that will involve shutting down New York’s Times Square. The last time the actor was there, the square was also closed to traffic, for an event only marginally more fascinating to the world: the election victory of Barack Obama. We talk on the phone. Even now, a year after Twilight’s release, Pattinson sounds utterly stunned by the hysteria swirling around him.

“It’s been a little frightening,” he laughs, a sort of embarrassed chuckle that punctuates his conversation, the sound of someone negotiating the best bit of luck they have ever had, not wanting to sound arrogantly blasé or overexcited. “In England no-one had heard of the series when I went for the audition, so it has been a total, utter surprise. The change to my everyday life is so extreme. Before this I was used to working 10 days a year. Originally, I did a three-picture deal, but I wasn’t even really thinking about that… I had no idea that I’d still be working on it now.”

Does the poor boy, who still calls London home, feel he has to hide? “I tend to stay in the hotel because it’s highly publicised where I’m staying all the time. There’s always a bunch of people outside. I can’t really be in LA now at all. It’s not that the fans are threatening, but the paparazzi follow me all night.” This hounding can evoke an absurd sympathy, considering the kid’s fortune and prospects. But then he brightens, telling me he was buying a guitar the other day and had to spell his name 12 times, and the guy still didn’t twig. “I loved that. It was my fault — I wasn’t speaking loud enough.”

When he read the first script, he had no idea how to play it. “I thought Bella, the heroine, would be a damsel in distress and I’d have to be the alpha-male hero type, so I thought I was never going to get it. But when they cast Kristen Stewart, she’s not really like that, so I realised there was a different way to play Edward, to show his vulnerability.” Could he get trapped, find it hard to move on to different sorts of roles?

“It worries me, because the whole Twilight thing keeps getting bigger and bigger, and now it’s so big that even my own ego can’t cope with it. A certain amount of success you can mentally deal with, but there’s a point where you think, ‘Jesus Christ, what is this? I’m not that great!’ I just wanted to make an American film, and I wanted it to be relatively good and to be good in it. I have never pushed to do anything… As soon as you start going to the gym every day and try to look like a movie star, you’re going down a worrisome track.” He laughs. “Being an English guy you get a lot more breaks. You’re allowed to look a little worse. It’s that thing about English teeth. Actually, Canadian teeth are pretty bad.”

Read the rest here

source : Times Online UK