ROBERT PATTINSON is taking his first few steps on a long road. You don’t get any sense that he is ashamed of Twilght. He would be a fool (and he’s no fool) to adopt any such stance. One can, after all, safely assume that the adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire novels have put him in a position where he need never work again. But, as the final part looms, he wants to put some distance between himself and the pale, dreamy Edward Cullen.
The latest lunge for freedom involves a fascinating collaboration with David Cronenberg. The Canadian director’s Cosmopolis, adapted from a novel by Don DeLillo, finds the Tsar of Cheekbones playing a young asset manager confined within an absurdly well-appointed limousine.
Pattinson has arrived in Cannes to promote the film. But nobody is allowing him to escape his past life. Why, Eric Packer, the protagonist of Cosmopolis, is just a another class of vampire, is he not? Pattinson must identify with him personally. Like Mr Packer, the actor – a victim of hyper-fame – is driven into a class of seclusion.
“I’m not the best self-analyst,” Pattinson says in his polite accent. “I can’t consciously bring anything from my life into my work. I don’t know. He is just trying to find something. It’s about the hopelessness of it all. It’s about the claustrophobia of being looked at. I wasn’t that much of a social person anyway. So, I don’t really care. Why can I not just answer the question?”
Raised in outer London, Pattinson spent some time as a model before drifting into acting. He remembers, with some embarrassment, securing a role in Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, then turning up at the premiere to find that all his scenes had been cut. Further inconveniences followed. He was sacked from a play in the Royal Court. But he then managed to gain a part in the cinematic behemoth that was Harry Potter. Unfortunately, Cedric Diggory was among of the select band of Hogwarts students to be killed off. What were the odds?
Then came Twilight, and much to his surprise, he soon found himself an object of fanatical desire. But he does seem to be telling the truth when he claims that he prefers the quiet life. He has, for example, kept admirably quiet about his relationship with Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart.
“When you are followed constantly by fanatical fans, you try to eliminate the times you come up against them. That’s why I hide myself sometimes,” he said recently.
A serious cinema nut, he was never likely to resists the opportunity to work with Cronenberg. The director of Dead Ringers, The Fly and Eastern Promises remains the most singular cinematic terrorist of his era. Pattinson does not pause when asked what drew him to Cosmopolis.
“Cronenberg, obviously! I have played in only a few films, and none of them came close to what I expected working with him would be like. I wasn’t disappointed. I knew he would be very creative, and that it would be a real experience,” he says.
But David is an odd, fellow, is he not? The most cerebral director ever to launch a horror career, he is more likely to reference Freud and Nietzsche than Wes Craven or George A Romero. “For preparation, I spent two weeks in my hotel room worrying and confusing myself,” he laughs. “The weekend before we began shooting, I phoned David and said I want to ask one question: ‘Do you want to talk about the movie for a second?’ I went round to his house and he said: ‘Let’s just start and something will happen’.”
He furrows his magnificent brow and whitters some more about the poetry of the script, before breaking down.
“If you’re trying to do something in a cerebral way, it becomes about ego. Actors aren’t supposed to be intelligent.”
He does himself a disservice. Pattinson has the chops to separate himself from young Mr Cullen and forge a career among the living. But it is a long, long road. Be aware, Robert. Fifty years on from Dr No, journalists are still asking Sean Connery about James Bond.
