New Rob Interview with San Francisco Chronicle #WFE

"She has such an amazing aura on a set. The days she was there were so different from days when she wasn't. She definitely creates a really nice vibe, and everyone's happier when she's around. They're almost depressed when it's just me," he says, laughing.

 It was hard to be depressed around Waltz, however.

"He's extremely funny. He had just done that skit on Jimmy Kimmel, 'Der Humpink.' It's one of the funniest skits I've ever seen in my life," he says of meeting Waltz. For the record, "Der Humpink" is an utterly insane sketch one can find online - but afterward one might never be able to look at Col. Hans Landa of "Inglourious Basterds" the same way again ... or feel at ease about his inquiries into life on that French farm.

"He's very, very good at making anything seem sympathetic. He is kind of, in the book and in the script, just a nutcase. But I think Christoph didn't want to play that straight up," Pattinson says. "But Jacob keeps trying to steal his wife, so where's the happy ending? He's destroyed this hardworking man's business, steals his wife."

British Pattinson confesses a foreigner's fondness for the American 1930s, Depression and all, for how iconically American they seem to him. He referenced Gary Cooper films to help create his "Water for Elephants" character. But it was another American star, playing the older version of Jacob, who connected surprisingly with the young actor.

"The first thing Hal Holbrook said to me was" - Pattison takes on a pretty good Hal Holbrook croak - " 'You look exactly like me!' He came in a couple of days to watch the way I walk and stuff. 'You walk exactly the same as me. And you look like me and you sound like me.' I was looking at the pictures of him when he was younger, and he really does ... we're really similar body shapes. It's really odd. I wouldn't mind ending up like Hal Holbrook." {sbox}

Water for Elephants (R) opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.

To see a trailer for the film, go to www.waterforelephants.com.

Robert Pattinson

Born: May 13, 1986, in London
Don't call him "Spunk Ransom": Despite persistent reports, a confounded-sounding Pattinson asserts that is not one of his nicknames. "That was like a joke I said in some interview years ago, and for some reason it just didn't go away. So many things I've said, they just never disappear."

Resume builders: Made his debut - sort of - in "Vanity Fair" (see main article). First set hearts aflutter in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (2005) as the noble Cedric Diggory. Apart from those vampire movies and "Remember Me," was also in the smaller films "How to Be" (2008), in which he plays guitar as the doll-faced Art and "Little Ashes" (2008), in which he plays the artist Salvador Dali. Seriously.

And he's a musician too: He appears on the soundtracks for "Twilight" and "How to Be." "Three of my best friends are musicians, really good ones," he says. "They're always playing gigs all the time; that's what got me into it. We all used to compete with each other at open-mike nights. Try to sing the highest notes, look the most impassioned, give the most Van Morrisony performance."

Why we care: The "Twilight" movies have been sort of popular (nearly $800 million in domestic box office, about $1.8 billion worldwide), making the 24-year-old the highest-paid British actor in 2010, according to Vanity Fair. That's the magazine, not the movie that dissed him in his screen almost-debut. The two-part sexy-vampire finale kicks off with "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part One)" in November. Says Pattinson, "It's a horror movie. (laughs) Incredibly strange, it's a totally different genre. The first part of it is really a straight-up horror movie. The second one is more similar - well, there are a couple of weird bits in the second. The first one is like, 'Huh?' (laughs) It's really left the box behind. But it's fine - it's such a long shoot, there's no consistency to which movie we're shooting at any time. I just know there's no way to avoid the freakishness of the story. The key story points are the weirdest parts of the story. It might end up being a cult movie."

Quotable: Pattinson admits that fame has gotten into his head a little bit, but what he misses are normal things for a guy his age. "I wish I weren't so paranoid about things. I'm always certain that the main thing about young actors' careers now is being overexposed because people just seem to want to do it so much - [hard American accent] 'Just stick his face on this piece of crap' - I wish I could avoid that, get it out of my brain. But when you're working you can't do anything anyway; I go straight to bed. I wish I could go to the cinema more often. As soon as people know you're in the cinema, there's this horrible energy - no one's concentrating on the movie. That's the biggest downside. And not being able to be incredibly drunk in public."

Michael Ordoña is a freelance writer. E-mail him at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page P - 20 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Thanks victoria1985