RPattz in France's Premiere Magazine

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The vam­pire strikes back

As you’re nei­ther Amish or a char­ac­ter from Lost (cor­rect me if I’m wrong), we won’t do you the dis­hon­our of intro­duc­ing you to Robert Pat­tin­son, 24 years old, the vam­pire that sparkles under the sun, the actor who was unknown two years ago but who con­quered the Hol­ly­wood fortress and dri­ves girls around the world crazy. You already know all that. You almost cer­tainly know that The Twi­light Saga: Eclipse (directed by David Slade, direc­tor of Hard Candy), comes out in the­atres July 7th, a mere seven months after New Moon. The vam­pire saga which is now worth more than a bil­lion dol­lars at the inter­na­tional box office isn’t ready to hang up it fangs as the fourth instal­ment, Break­ing Dawn, is already announced for Novem­ber 2011. Pat­tin­son is get­ting tons of offers and is cur­rently nego­ti­at­ing an impor­tant turn in his career: become the new Johnny Depp or join Orlando Bloom and Hay­den Chris­tensen in the frozen aisle sec­tion. As he was fin­ish­ing Bel Ami, a Mau­pas­sant clas­sic and get­ting to begin­ning film­ing Water for Ele­phants, a Fran­cis Lawrence drama (I am Leg­end) with Reese With­er­spoon and Christoph Waltz, R-Pattz got caught by Pre­miere for an exclu­sive interview.


P: The last time we spoke you were film­ing New Moon. Now one year later we meet again for The Twi­light Saga Eclipse. I have trou­ble fol­low­ing it’s going so fast…

RP: Only two months went by between the film­ing of New Moon and Eclipse, dur­ing which I filmed Remem­ber Me. Every­thing, went by so fast that I feel like I never really left Twi­light. That being said, I still felt lost when I arrived on the set of Eclipse. I didn’t have any prepa­ra­tion time and it took me a few weeks to adapt.


P: What did you expect from David Slade and was he dif­fer­ent on set from what you imagined?

RP: I had absolutely no idea what to expect from a Direc­tor who was spe­cial­ized in movies more for adults, who doesn’t back away from very explicit bru­tal­ity. I sin­cerely won­dered how this uni­verse would merge with the Twi­light uni­verse, which isn’t known for its unbear­able vio­lence. David had very spe­cific ideas of what he wanted to do, with a work method and approach that was totally dif­fer­ent from Cather­ine Hard­wicke or Chris Weitz.


P: For example?

RP: Eclipse intro­duces many new char­ac­ters; the atmos­phere is less con­fined than the oth­ers. Twi­light was based on the romance between Edward & Bella, New Moon on the rela­tion­ship between Bella & Jacob with Edward in the back­ground. Eclipse allows each char­ac­ter to have his “moment”, the spec­trum is larger. The film also has more rhythm; it’s less based on intimacy.


P: Know­ing that there was a huge bat­tle at the end between vam­pires and were­wolves, did you some­times feel like you were film­ing a war movie?

RP: You couldn’t have said it bet­ter; we went through train­ing for almost a month before we began shoot­ing to learn how to fight and do stunts. It was noth­ing remotely like the pre­vi­ous instal­ments, where rehearsals were rather basic. Now it was purely phys­i­cal prepa­ra­tions. The fun­ni­est thing is that vam­pires and were­wolves each had their train­ing camp.


P: You had instruc­tors that were yelling at you and order­ing you to do push-ups?

RP: Con­stantly! To say that when I went to rehearsals I thought it would be like the 2 other movies: Kris­ten, Tay­lor and I rehears­ing the script in a room… I was surprised.

P: The choice of David Slade as a direc­tor stunned and showed courage from Sum­mit who pro­duces the saga…


RP: I don’t know if it was inten­tional, but each Direc­tor that worked on Twi­light had noth­ing to do with the pre­vi­ous one. Cather­ine and Chris had styles that were totally opposed, as artists as well as peo­ple. It’s the same with David, they all prac­tice three movie styles that are very spe­cific. It’s a good thing: I rather go to set and not know what to expect. I’m actu­ally impa­tient to dis­cover what Bill Con­don (Dream­girls) will do with the forth instal­ment. Once again it will be noth­ing related.

P: All this juicy stuff hap­pens in Break­ing Dawn: the sex scene, a birth scene where your char­ac­ter must per­form a c-section with his teeth.


RP: I know! I won­der how they’ll bring that to the big screen. We’ll end up hav­ing to ban it for peo­ple under 16… Can you imag­ine if they decided to go full out and Twi­light sud­denly became this totally hard­core series for adults with nude scenes? Sum­mit would sud­denly become the most pro­gres­sive stu­dio in the world. It would be funny.


P: I’m sure Stephe­nie Mey­ers would love that. Fans have actu­ally launched a peti­tion to keep the book inte­grally and so the movie is pro­hib­ited to peo­ple under 16. As the major part of the Twi­light fan base is quite young they’re basi­cally protest­ing to get banned from see­ing the movie.

RP: (Laughs) I’m sure they’d buy the DVD and would appre­ci­ate it even more


P: When you read the script of Eclipse which scenes where you more look­ing for­ward to film?

Up to now the major­ity of the scenes in Twi­light were between Kris­ten & I. I was happy to be able to play my role with other actors. In the first two, I always found that Edward had some­thing con­tained and reserved. In Eclipse, he freaks out a bit. Like that it seems sim­ple but it’s the fact that he has less tact in this film. To the point where I some­times felt I was play­ing another character.

P: If I played a guy as seri­ous as Edward Cullen for months, I’d need to let off steam when film­ing ended, prob­a­bly by get­ting wasted an entire night.

RP: But I already spend the entire time get­ting drunk (laughs). No but seri­ously as soon as I fin­ish a Twi­light movie I start a new project right away, there­fore I don’t have time to take a step back regard­ing all that. At the begin­ning of May I went to re-shoot some Eclipse scenes as I had just fin­ished Bel Ami, and I was com­pletely lost. I had trou­ble with the accent and find­ing my marks… But once I was in makeup and they put the con­tact lenses in every­thing came back. For the first time I real­ized that I had missed this char­ac­ter and it would be weird when the adven­ture would end.

P: Really? We would think that the end of Twi­light would be lib­er­at­ing for you.

RP: I got the role of Edward Cullen when I was 20 and I’ll be 26 when the fourth film comes out. I just real­ized that Twi­light is an impor­tant step in my life. The fun­ni­est thing is that I’m play­ing a 17 year old the entire time. (Laughs)

P: Break­ing Dawn will start film­ing at the end of the year. Are you impa­tient or do you feel like the movie is a con­tract oblig­a­tion to be honoured?

RP: I feel like it’s going to be inter­est­ing. The story goes in direc­tions so dif­fer­ent and I’m curi­ous what it will turn out like. We stop play­ing around — Bella say­ing “Turn me into a vam­pire” and me reply­ing “No, no, no.” – She becomes a vam­pire in this movie. We get mar­ried, sleep together… All the ten­sion from the three pre­vi­ous films is resolved in Break­ing Dawn. I don’t have the script yet but it’s promising.

P: Rob we know each other well enough now so you can tell me the truth: Do you lose all your power if we cut your hair?

RP: We’ll know soon enough as I’m get­ting my hair cut this afternoon!

P: You know how to keep the sus­pense going… I’d like to come back to Remem­ber Me, which sur­prised me by its sever­ity and matu­rity. Do you think the dark­ness of the movie played a part in the timid suc­cess at the box-office?

R: Remem­ber Me was never made as a block­buster like Twi­light, it was always a small film with a low bud­get and that there would be no major pro­mo­tion. In total it brought in 60 mil­lion dol­lars world­wide: not bad for a movie that cost 16. I’m happy that it wasn’t a huge flop, but at no time did I worry about the box-office.

P: It’s been said that the movie was a test regard­ing your movie star sta­tus which seemed pre-mature for me…

RP: I know! I read all these arti­cles that spoke about Leonardo DiCaprio, and how fans fol­lowed him after Titanic. But for me, Twi­light has noth­ing to do with this. Fans go see the movies because they love this story. I never felt like I had a role in the suc­cess of it all. Like I’ve always said, it’s the char­ac­ter that peo­ple love, not me. I hope to be able to reach out to peo­ple due to the qual­ity of the films that I make and not because peo­ple will hope to see a new Twi­light as soon as my name is in the end credits.


P: We heard all types of sto­ries sur­round­ing the film­ing of Remem­ber Me, like those of paparazzi that came out of the water when you were shoot­ing the beach sequence. You’re chang­ing their entire profession.

RP: No one can really under­stand this sit­u­a­tion unless you’ve lived it. The Remem­ber Me crew was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing when they saw 40 cam­era­men try­ing to steal pics of the set. Most of the actors hadn’t seen one Twi­light movie and didn’t under­stand what was going on.


P: They were ask­ing you why you paid so many pho­tog­ra­phers to show up on set?

RP: That’s it: “Hey Rob, I didn’t know that you needed that much of an ego boost!” (Laughs)


P: You say that being a celebrity opens doors but closes oth­ers. Which ones would you have liked to keep open?

RP: I’d like to not be para­noid of meet­ing new peo­ple. When I walk down the street I’m scared of meet­ing anyone’s eye in case they rec­og­nize me. I have to hide con­stantly, it’s a bit unset­tling. At the same time I live this weird way, I can’t be as open as I wish I could be. You learn as you go. Over the years, you learn to man­age the sit­u­a­tion more and more, I’m more at ease with the crazi­ness sur­round­ing Twi­light. I think you reach a peak at some point: either you lose it and become a recluse and turn your back on human­ity or you learn to accept it.


P: You seem more relaxed than last year…

RP: That’s the case. I’m begin­ning a new movie which I’m so enthu­si­as­tic about; I just fin­ished another one that I like. I know well enough that things wouldn’t have gone so fast for me with­out those fans who fol­low me every­where and peo­ple that rec­og­nize me on the street. You have to be realistic.


P: Do you think you’ve over­come the crazi­ness of the press or do you think there are still sur­re­al­is­tic expe­ri­ences to live?

RP: I have no clue… The advan­tage is that you don’t stay the object of so many stares for­ever. New actors will come and the atten­tion of peo­ple will move on to them. All this only lasts a while. The hys­te­ria reached its peak dur­ing Remem­ber Me, but it has already dropped since. When I was film­ing Bel Ami in Lon­don it was clearly calmer. I could go around freely.


P: Regard­ing Bel Ami, you know that French peo­ple will be wait­ing with this movie with a knife between their teeth…

RP: I’m aware of that, believe me. I would never have the courage to do promo for this movie in Paris I’m so stressed. I met Mar­ion Cotil­lard dur­ing a party before film­ing began and I asked her to read the script care­fully because there was a per­fect role for her. She asked me: “Why make Bel Ami in Eng­lish? It’s weird isn’t it?” At that moment I under­stood how the film will be received in your coun­try. I hope it will suc­ceed and that you will be open minded about it. What impresses me is that the book is not well known else­where. I only dis­cov­ered it after read­ing receiv­ing the script and it imme­di­ately became one of my favourite books.


P: At the moment you’re rehears­ing for Fran­cis Lawrence’s Water for Elephants…

RP: Yes with Reese With­er­spoon and Christoph Waltz. I’m really excited and ter­ri­fied at the same time to find myself face to face with actors such as these.


P: If Christoph Waltz asks you to give him a glass of milk start ask­ing your­self questions.

RP: For sure! He has a great role in the movie: he plays the Mr. Loyal of a cir­cus, a per­son who’s a totally cyclothymic and a bit crazy. I’m try­ing to steal his wife.


P: I admire your courage.

RP: Don’t you?


P: How would you react if every­thing stopped tomorrow?

RP: The end of the world you mean? I think I’d live well (Laughs). Actu­ally I have no idea. I would find some­thing else to do. The wave I’m surf­ing on right now is really help­ing me, but I haven’t accom­plished every­thing I wish to accomplish.


P: I’d see you play­ing music in bars in the mid­dle of nowheres in France.

RP: You couldn’t have said it bet­ter: when I was 19, I filmed a short movie in Brit­tany for 2 weeks. Every night I’d go play music in their pubs, it was fan­tas­tic. One of my favourite memories.

- Inter­view by Math­ieu Carrat

Robert Pat­tin­son will be in The Twi­light Saga: Eclipse by David Slade. Out in the­atres July 7th.

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