New Rob Interview With Phillipine Daily Inquirer

LOS ANGELES—ROBERT PATTINSON usu­ally arrives at our inter­views with an easy, sly grin on his face. The smile reminds us that we’re in for another humor-filled talk with the guy.

What was dif­fer­ent this time was his haircut—cropped on the side—which made him look younger.

In this chat, Robert talks about his anx­i­ety over the com­ing end of the “Twi­light” series, how he feels about the kiss­ing scenes between Kris­ten Stewart’s Bella and Tay­lor Lautner’s Jacob, and a life-changing moment, among others.

Robert has come a long way from the first time we inter­viewed him on the Lon­don set of “Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire,” in which he played Cedric Diggory.

Below are excerpts:

What are you look­ing for­ward to about “Break­ing Dawn” being shot back-to-back as two films and of Bill Con­don direct­ing them?
I’m glad that it’s Bill Con­don. I love his stuff. I haven’t seen the script yet but I am fear­ful about the series’ end. It’s such a great secu­rity blan­ket. It’s like a net. You can afford to make mis­takes when you have another “Twi­light” film to make. After that, I guess you’re on your own.

I’m glad the “Break­ing Dawn” films will be done together. Because oth­er­wise, it’s quite hard to fit another film in-between each one. Like what hap­pened in “Eclipse”—having to get your mind back to where it was before. I had about a week of prepa­ra­tion time. It was quite stress­ful in the begin­ning. With the two films done together, you can just stay in char­ac­ter the whole time.

In the tent scene which is already the much talked-about thing in “Eclipse,” your vam­pire char­ac­ter is of course cold, body tem­per­a­ture wise, while Taylor’s Jacob dri­ves home the point that he’s lit­er­ally hot­ter.
It’s sort of an odd scene. It’s quite dif­fi­cult. It’s incred­i­bly depress­ing for Edward (laugh­ing). It does make him seem incred­i­bly unat­trac­tive. But I never really got it in the first place. It’s like hav­ing some freez­ing cold per­son next to you (laugh­ing). It’s horrible.

Tay­lor told us that you were always crack­ing up in that scene.
I was in a very strange room when we were shoot­ing that scene (laugh­ing). I kept get­ting obsessed with the idea of the word “thoughts” with an Amer­i­can accent. It sounds like “farts.” I couldn’t get over it the entire day. The open­ing line was, “Can you at least keep your thoughts to your­self?” I’m sit­ting in this tent and every sin­gle time, I laugh over that line. Tay­lor got to the point where he was like, “Those words don’t even sound the same. It’s not funny at all.”

I think I was tired. I find all this stuff where we have to boss each other all quite funny. Con­sid­er­ing that we’re in teen-girl mag­a­zines and stuff … Tay­lor always has his shirt off. And I’ve got my lit­tle quaff (laugh­ing). We’re try­ing to act all macho. I thought it was really funny.

Talk about the dynam­ics between the three of you now that Jacob gets to kiss Bella in this movie.
It’s weird. Not only do they do the kiss­ing scenes—they never do it when I am even on the set. I have the day off. You gen­uinely feel like someone’s cheat­ing on you. Then you come back to the set. And almost always, it’s after one of their scenes where I sus­pect them of doing some­thing. It just so hap­pened every sin­gle time—I would come into work being like, “So how was it?”

Can you set the record straight—your Edward char­ac­ter is a 100-year-plus-old vir­gin?
I think he’s … how old is he now? He must be 109 or 110. There’s an arguable point with another vam­pire in Alaska from the first book. It’s briefly men­tioned. But I can’t remem­ber if it’s actu­ally fully explained if he is a vir­gin or not. I think the fans like to believe he is.

Since these “Twi­light” films are fantasy/romance/thriller dra­mas, may I ask which love sto­ries inspired you?
I have to sound really cheesy and say my par­ents. My par­ents met when my mom was 17 and my dad was 26. They’re still together. I grew up in an age where every­body gets divorced.
But in terms of film, I’ve always liked despair­ing, painful love sto­ries. I think that’s prob­a­bly because I’m still young. There’s a Godard film called “First Name: Car­men.” I’m not even going to attempt to say the French pro­nun­ci­a­tion. I always found that to be one of the most truth­ful and inspir­ing love sto­ries I’ve seen on film.

How uncom­fort­able is it to be act­ing with con­tact lens on?
You can’t feel prop­erly. You can’t sweat. If you do any­thing to sweat, every­thing starts break­ing on your face. You can’t even psy­che your­self up for a scene. I don’t know how peo­ple do scenes with con­tact lenses on. I just find it impos­si­ble. The Edward char­ac­ter is about restraint and restrict­ing your­self about every­thing. He’s not a very effu­sive per­son. A lot of the per­for­mance should be done with your eyes but then you elim­i­nate that abil­ity by putting the con­tacts on. When­ever I do other movies in which I don’t have to wear con­tacts, I breathe a sigh of relief.

In “Break­ing Dawn,” you become a father and Bella becomes a vam­pire bride. Do you have tips for Kris­ten on play­ing a vam­pire? Do you feel that you’re mature enough to play a dad?
It’s funny because I’m play­ing a dad in some scenes in “Break­ing Dawn” and I’m por­tray­ing one in a movie I’m doing now as well. I’m ter­ri­fied about doing it. I don’t know what I’m going to do when it comes to those scenes. I’ve been com­plain­ing so much about hav­ing the makeup on and con­tact lenses. Kris­ten is like, “You’re so pathetic. You have to just get over it. Why can’t you just get used to it?” [Now, since Kris­ten has to wear con­tact lens, too], I can finally be like, “You will know what it’s like. You’re going to be in con­stant aggra­va­tion the whole time.” Which is great.

We don’t see a lot of guys like Edward who pro­tects a girl’s virtue. Do you relate to him at all? How old-fashioned are you?
I think I’ve become more old-fashioned. I feel like I’m already turn­ing middle-aged now (laugh­ing). It’s quite nice to be doing a series of films that a lot of peo­ple think uphold pos­i­tive virtues. Some peo­ple actu­ally think the films are a good influ­ence on their kids.

Stephe­nie Meyer was on the set of “Eclipse” more often than she was on the first two movies. What was that like?
It’s not intim­i­dat­ing. She’s really nice. She really likes the films. It was strange, though. I didn’t really notice until toward the end of the film­ing. I was like, “Stephe­nie has been here every day” (laugh­ing). It was inter­est­ing. She’s always open. She would never really come in and push any­thing on us. She was open to answer­ing questions.

You have a west­ern genre film project, “Unbound Cap­tives,” in devel­op­ment. Why are you fas­ci­nated with west­erns?
I grew up watch­ing west­erns. My dad’s favorite movies are all west­erns. I hope that film hap­pens. It’s such a com­pli­cated film to get together because it’s not really an action film or any­thing. It’s a slightly depress­ing roman­tic drama, half of which is in Comanche. It will def­i­nitely be dif­fer­ent. My char­ac­ter is a mas­sive stretch for me.

You play the gui­tar. How impor­tant is music for you?
It’s really impor­tant. Inci­den­tally, my sis­ter is a singer and a song­writer. Act­ing has helped as well because I’ve never really had any par­tic­u­lar inter­est. The only rea­son I’d start releas­ing records is hope­fully so I get a name in music and have good peo­ple who would want to col­lab­o­rate with me. I guess hav­ing a name in act­ing, you can get your foot through the door with quite a few musi­cians. I hope I’ll be able to record some stuff just for myself. The idea of sell­ing it—as soon as you start mak­ing it—it dies in a lot of ways. It’s too scary at that point. Then every­one feels the need to judge it. But if you’re not mak­ing money and you’re doing it for your­self, then no one’s going to judge it.

“Twi­light” is very pop­u­lar with young peo­ple, includ­ing Jaden Smith. What kind of books and music did you like when you were a teenager?
I was obsessed with a writer called Mar­tin Amis when I was a teenager. I read every­thing. Every sin­gle time I went to a book­shop, I’d see if he has other books. I used to buy mul­ti­ple edi­tions of his books.
Mar­tin, Van Mor­ri­son and Jimi Hendrix—they were my peo­ple when I was grow­ing up. I’d obses­sively col­lect all their stuff.
That’s funny about how Jaden likes the “Twi­light” thing. He’s like the first guy who’s will­ing to admit it (laughing).

What has so far been a life-changing expe­ri­ence for you?
My mov­ing to sec­ondary school. I was kicked out of my first school. There is a whole sys­tem of the schools in Lon­don where I went from one school to another and then to uni­ver­sity. Every­body went to the same schools. But I got kicked out. I ended up going to an arts school which was prob­a­bly the best thing that ever hap­pened to me.

Why were you kicked out?
Secret (laughing).


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