The National Post Speaks About Robert Pattinson and Remember Me

The con­sen­sus is that Robert Pat­tin­son has mas­tered the James Dean art of brood­ing as the sullen poster boy for the lat­est generation.

Pattinson’s heart­throb sta­tus has been defined by his por­trayal of the con­flicted vampire-in-recovery, Edward Cullen, in the pop­u­lar Twi­light film series based on the Stephe­nie Meyer novels.

First, there was Twi­light in 2008, New Moon last year and Eclipse set for release, to a great deal of antic­i­pa­tion, on June 30. Break­ing Dawn, the finale, is expected to be released as two movies over the next few years.

In other words, the Eng­lish actor is com­mit­ted to the Edward sulk for at least another few films. But that doesn’t mean Pattinson’s become self-entitled or sat­is­fied with his accomplishments.

His lat­est effort to expand on his brood­ing hori­zons arrives with his role in Remem­ber Me, which opens March 12.

In the roman­tic drama, set in life-altering new mil­len­nium times, Pat­tin­son plays Tyler, a rebel­lious young New Yorker who clashes with his over­bear­ing father (Pierce Bros­nan) in the after­math of his brother’s sud­den death.

Only when Tyler meets up with the charm­ing Ally (Emi­lie de Ravin) does he find some peace of mind and a rea­son to believe, though this may be threat­ened by Ally’s pro­tec­tive Man­hat­tan cop dad (Chris Cooper).

To say that Pat­tin­son as Tyler rede­fines James Dean’s Rebel With­out a Cause angst is not an exag­ger­a­tion, although the actor expresses some reser­va­tions about the assessment.

“I think it’s a fairly typ­i­cal state to be in,” notes Pat­tin­son of the clas­sic rebel­lious pos­tur­ing of his char­ac­ter. “And yes, I think there’s that ele­ment, but I was also inter­ested in the arro­gant things about Tyler.”

The good news for Pat­tin­son is that he could pro­tect the del­i­cate tone and tex­ture as a pro­ducer on the film. Yet, he’s hes­i­tant to take credit.

“I’m kind of embar­rassed about the pro­duc­ing thing, because I wasn’t really act­ing like a proper pro­ducer,” he con­fesses. “I only came on after film­ing to help make sure the prod­uct was the prod­uct we all wanted to make at the end.”

Indeed, Remem­ber Me is pre­cious to him, so he wanted to ensure the project wasn’t mod­i­fied or dimin­ished in the post-production phase.

“The way Tyler reacted to spe­cific things seemed very relat­able to me,” Pat­tin­son admits. “I hadn’t seen a char­ac­ter like it in a hun­dred scripts, so when it came avail­able between film­ing New Moon and Eclipse, I went for it, because it seemed like a per­fect fit.”

He has lots of choices avail­able to him, thanks to Twi­light. Before his debut as a vam­pire, the London-born Pat­tin­son was intro­duced to the mod­el­ling world by his mother, Clarie, who worked for an agency in the city. He was suc­cess­ful as a teen and found time to get involved in a neigh­bour­hood the­atre group while per­form­ing pop music as well.

Sub­se­quently, a TV and movie agent liked what he saw and signed Pat­tin­son. As good for­tune and tim­ing would have it, Pat­tin­son even­tu­ally won a high-profile cameo in Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire, por­tray­ing the doomed Cedric Dig­gory. Shortly after the release of that Pot­ter pic­ture, he was dubbed the next Jude Law

But that’s not why Twi­light direc­tor Cather­ine Hard­wicke selected Pat­tin­son to play Edward oppo­site Kris­ten Stewart’s Bella.

“Their chem­istry was instant,” recalled Hard­wicke just before the release of the first film. In fact, Stew­art and Pat­tin­son con­nected so con­vinc­ingly, they have been linked romantically.

What Hard­wicke didn’t men­tion is that a deter­mined Pat­tin­son had to endure mul­ti­ple Edward audi­tions to beat out more than 5,000 other actors from around the globe. He has that kind of drive.

Still, Pat­tin­son says he never antic­i­pated the over­whelm­ing — and con­strict­ing — atten­tion that arrived with his Twi­light role. Indeed, he’s still baf­fled by the inten­sity, just as he was when film­ing began in New York last year for Remem­ber Me.

“The first two weeks were kind of crazy, because I was all around NYU and Wash­ing­ton Square Park where there would be tons of peo­ple around any­way,” he says, refer­ring to the hun­dreds of Twi-hards who showed up dur­ing shoot­ing there. “I just tried to block things out.”

Mind you, that’s all the Twi­light series and Remem­ber Me have in com­mon — and Pat­tin­son is thank­ful for that. He insists that he doesn’t take roles “that are polar oppo­sites of Edward Cullen,” but he does appre­ci­ate the change of pace.

Cur­rently, he’s enjoy­ing his against-type per­for­mance in Bel Ami, an R-rated drama with a racy sex sequence due in the­atres next year.

nationalpost Via thinkingofrob