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Η συνέχεια της διάσημης σειράς βιβλίων έρχεται στα βιβλιοπωλεία στις 4 Αυγούστου με τίτλο «Midnight Sun» και αφηγείται την ιστορία του «Λυκόφωτος» από την πλευρά του Edward Cullen.
"Bella is with Edward. She's a part of this family, and we protect our family."
Carlisle Cullen, Twilight
Character of the Week
Rosalie Lillian Hale
(born 1915 in Rochester, New York) is a member of the Olympic coven.
She is the wife of Emmett Cullen and the adoptive daughter of Carlisle and Esme Cullen, as well as the adoptive sister of Jasper Hale (in Forks, she and Jasper pretend to be twins), Alice, and Edward Cullen.
Rosalie is the adoptive sister-in-law of Bella Swan and adoptive aunt of Renesmee Cullen, as well as the ex-fiancée of Royce King II.
Στο κατώφλι µιας νέας εποχής για τη Ροδεσία, η Μάντριγκαλ, έχοντας χάσει τον άντρα της λίγες µονάχα ώρες µετά τον γάµο τους, θρήνησε βαθιά την απώλειά του και αποφάσισε να ζήσει µε τη θύµησή του. Όµως δεν φαντάστηκε ποτέ πως θα της ζητούσαν να πάρει τη θέση της συζύγου του βασιλιά.
Ο βασιλιάς Έντουαρντ, αφού γνώρισε την απόλυτη ευτυχία δίπλα στη γυναίκα που λάτρεψε όσο καµία, την Άµπερλιν, δέχτηκε το σκληρότερο χτύπηµα της µοίρας όταν εκείνη πέθανε πριν προλάβει να φέρει στον κόσµο το παιδί τους. Ωστόσο, προκειµένου ν' ανταποκριθεί στα βασιλικά του καθήκοντα και να χαρίσει έναν διάδοχο στη Ροδεσία, είναι υποχρεωµένος να παντρευτεί ξανά και απ' όλες τις υποψήφιες επιλέγει τη Μάντριγκαλ.
Μήπως όµως το όνοµα της νέας του συζύγου κουβαλά µια σκοτεινή µοίρα; Άραγε υπάρχει ελπίδα να αλλάξει το πεπρωµένο; Θα καταφέρει η Μάντριγκαλ να ξυπνήσει την αγάπη στην καρδιά του άντρα και βασιλιά της; Κι εκείνος θα είναι σε θέση να αναγνωρίσει και να αποδεχτεί τα αισθήµατά του πριν χάσει τα πάντα για άλλη µια φορά;
The five blockbuster “Twilight” films aren’t fondly remembered as an actor’s showcase, but since saying goodbye to the franchise that made them into overnight superstars, both Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have proved their worth as performers by taking on challenging fare not tailored for the Twihards of the world.
This was especially obvious at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where the duo were both on hand in support of what many deemed the best performances of their respective careers. For Stewart, that was as an assistant to an actress in Olivier Assayas’ “Clouds of Sils Maria.” For Pattinson, it was as Rey, a socially awkward American struggling to stay alive in the Australian outback in David Michôd’s grim follow-up to “Animal Kingdom.”
With “The Rover” opening in select theaters on June 13, Indiewire spoke with Pattinson about this challenging post-apocalyptic role.
David said he put you through the “wringer” during your three hour audition for the part. What did he make you do?
I mean, he did it at his house in LA. I don’t know, it was kind of, it was slightly nerve-wracking. I always get incredible anxiety attacks when I audition. I try to avoid them at all costs. But I loved the script so much. I had an idea of how to do it as soon as I read it.
[The audition] was just long. Normally you do two takes in an audition and that’s that. I think that’s why I’ve always messed them up over the years… I also had a really good actor reading with me as well, which helps. But yeah, I mean, it wasn’t like it was grueling or anything. It was quite exhilarating. You could tell that David was great even in the audition. I would have almost been happy not getting it. It was a great experience just doing the audition.
You obviously sold him on your interpretation of the character. What specifically was it about Rey that clicked with you?
I really like the structure of the character. There’s basically only two long dialogue scenes where he reveals anything about himself, when he’s not under total duress. But I really like having these incredibly dense dialogue scenes that are filled with subtext. Even the rhythm and the cadence of his speech reveals a lot, and it’s put in the context of a sort of stark story, where people don’t really speak in any other scene. It just allowed you to do tons with the character. It was so loose. That really appealed to me.
Rey speaks in a really specific halting manner. Was that all in the script, or was that something you brought to the character?
Sort of [laughs]. I remember reading it the first few times… It didn’t even say which state he was from. It just said the South in America. I kept saying to David, “I think there are some Australian accents in the Southern.” Australian speech is very staccato and clipped. And Southern is kind of lilting and wistful traditionally. I think that’s what created the halting thing. But that’s just how it read in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of repetition in the script — just to make repetition engaging, you have to figure out something weird to do with it instead of just repeating yourself.
My favorite scene in the film is also its most unexpected, when you break out into song, singing along to Keri Hilson’s feel-good “Pretty Girl Rock.” Did you have any say in the choice of song?
I think it was originally the Pussycat Dolls song, “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?” I remember reading that in the script and thinking, “That’s incredible.” Then they found the Keri Hilson thing and it was the absolute perfect choice of song for it. I sing basically the whole song. I thought it was kind of genius.
You sing the track with complete conviction, which I found oddly touching in a way.
I liked the idea of this guy who’s just about to make probably the biggest decision of his life, as a normal film moment. He’s deep in concentration but there’s nothing going on. I kept thinking about that moment in “The Simpsons,” where you see what’s going on inside Homer’s head — the organ grinding monkey [laughs]. I kept thinking it was kind of that moment.
The film is so bleak and unforgiving. It looks like it must have been hell to shoot. Was it?
Oh, no! It was literally one of the most fun shoots I’ve ever done. That always seems to happen when you’re doing something that’s incredibly depressing. It was one of the most fun characters to play as well. You’re so free to do almost anything that you don’t even know what you’re doing to do when you turn up to work. It was quite exciting. Also I hadn’t done a movie in a long time where the whole crew is there with you. It’s such a different environment when you’re working like that. It’s like camping. I thought it was really fun.
You’ve worked with David Cronenberg twice now, and have upcoming projects with Werner Herzog and Oliver Assayas. Are you drawn more to the director rather than the character you’ll be playing?
It’s a bit of both. It also kind of depends on the size of the part. Most of the parts I’m playing in the last few things are supporting roles. In the Herzog movie I was just working for ten days or something. When you’re doing a lead in something, you obviously have to think about if you can do it, for one thing, or if you can add something to it. But I think it was just that after working with Cronenberg, it’s working with really ambitious, confident filmmakers. I’ve got a checklist of directors I want to work with and a lot of the time I’ll do anything in their movies. But it’s not just kind of willy-nilly, I’ll do any movie. I do think about it a little bit. [Laughs]
On the list of life’s great pleasures, walking down a grim street in a one-horse Australian town probably doesn’t rank very high.
Yet if you’re one of the world most recognized — and harangued — faces, it can have a remarkable effect on your psyche and work.
So it went, at least, for former “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson. The actor made the new post-apocalyptic Western “The Rover” in the otherworldly solitude of remotest Australia — veritable ghost towns with names such as Leigh Creek and Quorn — allowing him to escape the maddening swarms and focus on his acting as never before.
“It was great, just being able to be out there with no one around,” the British heartthrob recalled of making David Michod’s Aussie indie, which opens Friday, before giving his trademark laugh: a nervous chuckle that can seem to go on a half-beat too long and is decidedly at odds with the suave sullenness of the vampire role that made him famous.
Added Michod: “I don’t think I ever saw an actor so happy as when I saw Rob coming down the street toward me all by himself. He was practically bouncing.”
Maybe big stars should shoot in a down-under desert more often. In the waning years of his “Twilight” period and in the two years since, Pattinson, now 28, tried to redefine himself several times. He made a romantic melodrama, a period circus piece and a tale of the French nobility adapted from a Guy de Maupassant novel.
Yet though there have been shards of promise — his oddly introspective Wall Street tycoon in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis” in 2012 — Pattinson has never shown the range he does here.
The tabloid fixture plays a vulnerable-yet-resolute man left for dead by a cruel older brother (Scoot McNairy) in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (10 years after “the revolution,” in the movie’s cryptic title card). He’s able to tap into new acting depths opposite Guy Pearce, the veteran Aussie actor who also does some of his most notable work in years.
Set in a futuristic world that resembles the violent desolation of the Old West as much as anything in “Blade Runner” (though “Mad Max” comparisons are inevitable), “The Rover” centers on Eric (Pearce), a stoic survivor type who seems to have lost any ability for human connection. When his car is stolen by a gang led by McNairy’s Henry, Eric sets out on an unexpectedly zealous quest to find them, and it.
Soon he comes across the apparently slow-witted Ray (Pattinson), left for dead by the side of the road after an altercation with Henry. Eric and Ray then become an unlikely pair, each haunted by their particular circumstances but united in their desire to track down the man who wronged them.
Though some viewers have objected to Michod’s deliberative narrative pacing, the director is after something different than a conventional road movie, an exploration of theme and character as much as where its heroes are literally going. Pearce and Pattinson exchange few words in the film, but “The Rover’s” ultimate takeaway is of the bonds of human connection that persist (sometimes) despite the lack of civil society. These relationships, the actors say, came naturally to them.
“We didn’t have to go out of our way to connect,” Pearce said. “When you’re living like that in a small town and doing nothing else besides the movie, a relationship can’t help but develop.”
As he speaks, he and Pattinson find themselves in the opposite of an apocalypse, hanging on a couch together on the rooftop deck of a Cannes Film Festival hotel, the Riviera coastline stretching out glitteringly below them. “This isn’t terrible,” Pearce said, grinning. Pattinson is wearing the kind of moth-eaten clothes that look trendy only on famous people.
But the actors went the extra mile for the movie, shooting in southern Australian towns that time forgot to serve the vision of Michod, the indie darling who returned to difficult terrain after his debut crime drama “Animal Kingdom,” also starring Pearce, garnered him Hollywood attention.
Pearce bicycled and jogged early in the morning before shooting, or late in the evening after hours of takes, trying to keep focus in the sweltering heat for a role that often required him to convey complicated emotions without speaking a word.
Pattinson too spent long hours hammering out an accent — it’s somewhere between an exaggerated Southern drawl, an Australian outback dialect and Lennie Smalls — that even he assumes (not incorrectly) can’t always be understood. He also arrived in Australia two weeks early to work on the character and, while shooting, demonstrated a curiosity about the role that his colleagues describe as surprisingly diligent.
“I think Rob was really inspired that people were so into it,” said the Australian actress Susan Prior, who has a key scene opposite the film’s two stars. “In a way, maybe he hadn’t experienced that before because on the bigger ones an actor isn’t really part of that process of exploring.”
She cited one scene in which Pattinson gamely agreed to lie motionless on a tabletop while Prior’s character, a doctor, sutured him up, even though he had a body double and could have left at any point. (The film’s producer, David Linde, called Pattinson “really intellectually curious.”)
Still, working on an indie requires a certain adjustment for a star such as Pattinson. When his agent first called with news of a conversation with Michod, Pattinson believed he had been offered the part. “’No, no,’ he said,” Pattinson recalled, quoting his agent, “‘it’s just an audition.’ I had to stop celebrating.”
The actor wound up going for an audition at Michod’s house in which he became so hesitant to do a scene he hadn’t prepared that he nearly walked out. “Rob said he hadn’t prepared it but I think he just didn’t want to do it,” Michod said. “But we started working on the scene in the audition, and then it became play, he swam to it like a little fish.”
Pattinson said that despite having to audition, he was grateful for the shot at the “Rover” role. “I was quite conscious that I was not part of a group that gets roles like this,” he said. “In my experience, a part like this goes to the skinny little weirdo.”
He added, “The one for us and one for them doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no guarantee of getting a cool indie after a big studio movie.”
For all the perceptions that he can write his own ticket, Pattinson said that assumptions about his career — including the one that he’s routinely offered big studio parts — are mistaken too. “I’ve never really been part of that group either,” he said. “Maybe because I don’t work out enough,” he added, giving the nervous laugh again.
Pearce said he didn’t give Pattinson acting or career advice but did find himself wondering about aspects of the actor’s fame. “There was this curiosity about how Rob does his job with all the attention he’s gotten, just how he copes with it.”
He said he did tell Pattinson to avoid the kind of movies, especially bigger ones, that he might cringe at later, no matter the money or advice of his representatives. The “humiliation,” as Pearce called it, isn’t worth it, and if you don’t feel it, chances are the audience won’t either. (The veteran added that this philosophy has motivated him to work more with directors such as Michod, or a then-green Christopher Nolan in “Memento,” rather than take the mostly villainous supporting parts in studio blockbusters. Incidentally, and perhaps tellingly of this post-”Twilight” moment, as this story went to bed, Pearce was being cast in another indie, the sci-fi love story “Equals” — opposite Kristen Stewart.)
Not that Pattinson entirely has a problem with embarrassment.
He was so taken with the solitude of the “Rover” set and the absence of paparazzi that came with it that one day before shooting he decided to shock the crew — a Pattinson specialty — by relieving himself on the set just outside of camera range.
“’Rob, we’re ready,’” he said, mimicking the voice of an assistant director. “And I walked onto set and I could almost hear them saying, ‘This guy is weird.’”
Pattinson said he believes that some of the real value of doing an indie like this is on the marketing side, because it will help new audiences discover the movie.
“That would be amazing,” he said, when asked if some of his teenage-girl devotees might now see a violent Western they never would otherwise come out to. Then he gave the nervous laugh again. “I don’t know. I might end up losing a bunch of fans.”
The Twilight movies were clearly a huge blessing for Robert Pattinson, but also somewhat of a curse: The 28-year-old Brit has been working overtime to break out of the pin-up mold, gravitating toward edgy indies like David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis and this week’s The Rover, directed by Animal Kingdom filmmaker David Michôd. The sometimes brutally violent film features Pattinson as a left-for-dead “half-wit” who joins a vengeful Guy Pearce’s as they travel across a rural, post-apocalyptic Australia. The very candid Pattinson talked to us about getting down-and-dirty for the role, his strategy for keeping photographers away, and what artist has reignited his love for hip-hop.
Let’s talk about your look in this film. People have said you “uglified” yourself for the role. The one weird thing [I had] was the teeth. I thought everyone was going to have s—-ty teeth in it. Then I end up being the only person in it with s—-ty teeth in it [laughs]. But I kind of liked the idea of it, because I went to school with people who didn’t brush their teeth when they were kids, and they always ended up being weirdos.
What did you do to get those nasty teeth? It’s like paint, and whenever there was a long scene, it would wipe off my teeth. So I would end up with white teeth at the end of the scene, which eventually became a massive hassle. But it was still kind of cool. It was such an odd look when you turn around and see yourself [in the mirror] and there’s this weird thing coming out of your face.
Did you go out in public much to get reactions, or even just to get in character? Yeah, [but] there was nowhere to go, really. It’s funny: Whenever you have your head shaved, less people come up to you and ask for pictures [laughs]. That’s why I always try to keep my hair really short.
They’re like, “No, no, I don’t want that Robert Pattinson.” Exactly. “I want the sexy one!”
You very memorable sing along to the Keri Hilson song "Pretty Girls Rock" in this film. Did you have any hand in picking that track? I do kind of really like that song. I didn’t realize how massive a song it was. I had never heard it before. David emailed it to me and I was like, “Wow, where did you find this?” I thought it was an original track, or a really small thing that he’d found somewhere. But I thought it was kind of perfect for it. As soon as he played it, I was like, “That’s hilarious.”
What’s your relationship with pop music? Are you a fan? I guess I don’t listen to that much pop music. I listen to almost exclusively hip-hop, especially in L.A. I listen to Shade 45 on Sirius.
What are your jams? I’m kind of obsessed with Tyga at the moment. I don’t know why, I’ve suddenly had this resurgence of hip-hop. I didn’t listen to it for years, and now I’m obsessed. When I was in school, from like 1997 to 2003, I was really, really into hip-hop. All of my favorite songs are from then. But there’s a couple of new people; I actually really like Chris Brown’s stuff [laughs].
Amy Nicholson, the critic from LA Weekly, wrote of The Rover, “Pattinson appears to have picked this role precisely because it will send his Twilight fans screaming out of the theater.” Any truth to that? No, I don’t want anyone running out of the theater! I want everyone coming into the theater [laughs]. It’s kind of curious how people interpret it. There’s an element of wanting to see [my Rover character] in a sympathetic way, because of Twilight. But I wasn’t trying to play it sympathetically at all. [laughs] I mean, he kills people. And he’s not quite there.
So clearly critics as well as your fans are making this connection from “A” to “B” but that’s not something you ever think about? Yeah. I mean a lot of people take away completely different things. I never really try to predict how people are going to react to something. Because I have no idea. I’ve approached every movie thinking like, “I’m going to do the best thing ever.” [laughs] And then regardless of what critics or an audience or anybody says afterwards, I either like it or I don’t —that’s the only thing I care about.
Is there any part of you that misses the sheer madness that accompanied the Twilight series? Um….when you’re doing the movies, it’s the same thing. I’ve realized how much I loved shooting way outside of the city, because I just can’t stand people taking photos. Even when I was just doing this movie Life in Toronto, we were still out in the middle of nowhere, but it was only about an hour from Toronto. And just everyday, there’s [paparazzi] taking photos with long lenses. And then you can’t talk to anybody on the crew unless you want to have a million photographs. And I feel like I’m putting money into those guys’ pockets by just standing outside. So I’ll constantly hide to make their life as difficult as possible. But then it makes your life difficult as well.
Has it become kind of a game ducking them, or is it just pure annoyance? It’s literally just [that] I don’t want them to have anything for free. And people who see the pictures, they just assume if you’re getting photographed a lot, it’s because you want to. So if you try to claim privacy afterwards, they’ll be like, “Well what you didn’t care that time.” So you have to be pretty consistent, and say like, “I never want to get photographed, ever.”
Do you ever have to go out in disguise? It never really works. But I do have a lot of little tricks, like car switches and stuff. You end up being like a bit of a spy. [laughs] Very covert.
Young-adult blockbusters deal in uncomplicated emotions that make them a poor actors’ showcase. Robert Pattinson’s career-launching five-year tour on the “Twilight” series gave him worldwide stardom and wealth, but not the thing he wanted most: respectability.
Even before the “Twilight” series concluded, Pattinson was stretching his range in smaller films. He played the 18-year-old but fully eccentric Salvador Dali in the Spanish-British gay love drama “Little Ashes,” and a scandal-mongering Parisian journalist in “Bel Ami.” He also took romantic leading roles in Hollywood’s “Remember Me” and “Water for Elephants,” but his mind was on more ambitious fare.
Which is why he’s starring as a grubby, violent, mental defective in the Australian suspense thriller “The Rover.” It’s an in-your-face change of pace that puts the British-born actor alongside the intense Guy Pearce. The pair play reluctant allies chasing cutthroats across the desolate Outback. Pattinson has won the best reviews of his career as a fidgeting misfit with a stuttering Florida twang.
The film was shot literally at the end of the road, he explained in a recent phone conversation. “It was where the tarmac ended. Then it was dirt road for another 2,000 miles to the other end of Australia.” The main location, a squalid village, has a population of “40 or 50, in the middle of nowhere.”
Though the conditions were rough, “there’s something really fun about having everyone together,” he said. “There’s a holiday element of it, as well. I enjoyed it.” But it wasn’t the stripped-down production that appealed as much as the lightly written role, offering wide latitude for a performer to make it his own. The screenplay is by director David Michôd and Joel Edgerton, both of whom are also actors.
“There’s something so special in the dialogue,” so terse it makes David Mamet sound gabby. “There’s just these two dialogue scenes that reveal things in an obtuse way about the character in the midst of these massive silences. I knew I’d have to bring tons to the table.”
“I thought it was funny when I first read it,” Pattinson said. Still, his audition meeting with the filmmakers was an endurance test. “I’m not the kind of actor who can just walk in and hang it out immediately. There’s just like a whole bunch of different neuroses I have to deal with first,” he said with a laugh. “The audition was like four hours long. The first 30 minutes I was in total panic mode, not able to really do anything. As soon as we got through that initial barrier, it was a lot easier. David definitely understands that.”
Pattinson had lots of leeway in creating his character’s stumbling speech patterns and desert derelict look. His hair is buzzed short and cropped high in the back, revealing a length of neck that looks vulnerable and ax-ready. “I liked the idea of seeing that bone at the bottom of your skull,” he said. I realized that when you’ve just got a fuzzy hairball, like a Q-Tip head, and you’re doing an over-the-shoulder shot, you can see the tendons in the back of your neck and stuff. You can still kind of do things, even when the camera’s not on your face. You’re still part of the scene.”
Alongside “The Rover’s” premiere at Cannes, Pattinson also presented his second collaboration with David Cronenberg, the blistering film-industry satire “Maps to the Stars.” If that nose-thumbing bruises any egos in the movie establishment, it won’t slow Pattinson’s indie-oriented momentum a bit. He has projects lined up with Harmony Korine (“Spring Breakers”), James Gray (“The Immigrant”) and Werner Herzog, whose “Rescue Dawn” gave Christian Bale a change of pace from his run as Batman.
Vanina Midnight Sun Vampire
Αριθμός μηνυμάτων : 6067 Registration date : 16/05/2011
After winning over critics with the complex, dark family drama "Animal Kingdom" for his directorial debut, director David Michod wanted to pare things back to tell a simpler story about survival in his next film.
"The Rover," out in U.S. theaters on Friday, follows a lone character, Eric, who has his car stolen and embarks on a journey to recover it, handling threats and obstacles along the way.
Australian director Michod created a stark, stripped down, decaying setting in the outback of his native country and said he was inspired by his "despair" at the world today.
"I felt like I was literally making a movie that was set in a strange, dangerous and inhospitable version of the present day," the director said.
And yet, Michod said he still wanted to feature some hope for Eric, played by Guy Pearce, who finds it in an unlikely friendship with Rey, played by Robert Pattinson. Rey, an American petty criminal left for dead, is rescued by Eric and forms a bond with the introverted man, who takes him on a journey to recover his car and reunite Rey with his brother.
Pattinson delivers a performance in "The Rover" that takes him a world away from the brooding teenage vampire that rocketed him to fame in the "Twilight" film franchise.
The British actor transformed himself to play the dim-witted young Rey by adopting a jolted southern accent accompanied by twitches, tics and blank stares.
"It was quite interesting playing someone who has basically zero faith in himself," the actor said. "As soon as he starts opening his mouth, he'll either start almost questioning his own sentence as it's coming out of his mouth, and then trying to hide away from it."
The talkative Rey poses a sharp contrast to Eric, whom Pearce described as "a wounded animal," a product of surviving the harsh landscape of a decaying world, who spends much of the film in silence.
"I really enjoy working without necessarily relying on words and talking," the actor said. "The story you're to be telling is totally possible without actually having to say anything and then when you do speak, it really is more effective."
Michod said the biggest challenges he faced on "The Rover," made for about $12 million and distributed by A24 films, were related to the isolated, hot outback they filmed in, and in particular, a car chase sequence that he called "draining."
Despite the dark nature of the film that Michod compares to a dark fable, he hoped the end result is more optimistic for audiences.
"This movie is about how even in incredibly violent and challenging circumstances, people still have a basic need to try and find intimate connection with other human beings, so I like to think about this movie as a movie about love," he said.
His name is Rey and he does not look, talk or act like anybody’s idea of a teen heartthrob.
His teeth are crooked and foul. His hair is a bad bowl-buzzcut. He’s dirty from head to toe, and when he manages to speak, he mumbles disjointed sentences, often repeating them for no good reason.
He certainly bears little resemblance to the world’s most handsome vampire, the perfectly coiffed, sparkly skinned Edward Cullen, hero of the “Twilight” franchise. And yet Rey, the train-wreck at the center of the post-apocalyptic manhunt “The Rover,” is indeed played by the usually dashing Robert Pattinson.
“I generally don’t get picked for these parts,” Pattinson admits on the phone from L.A. “There’s about five actors who seem to have a lock on the weirdos. I’ve never really been perceived to be one of them — up until now maybe.”
How badly did Pattinson want the part? He auditioned for it. Twice.
Understand, this is a guy whose last movie, “Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” earned $829 million worldwide.
But he understood the need for an audition.
“Well, it’s very different from who I am, personally. There’s no way of really proving that I could have done it by just talking about it,” he says. “It would have been a giant leap of faith.”
Pattinson, 28, saw the jittery, perpetually insecure Rey as a literal underdog.
“In a pack of dogs there’s always one who will completely accept the beta position,” he says.
To help him find the right mindset, director David Michod had Pattinson watch the documentary “Bully,” which follows the lives of kids who are constantly picked on. The actor understood right away.
“People have been accusing you of having something wrong with you for so long that you believe it,” he says. “No one’s expecting anything from you, you stop thinking, you’re a dependent. You don’t have any choice. Really, the only thing he feels is fear of everything.”
It helped that co-star Guy Pearce happens to be a fairly imposing presence.
“Guy’s just got this constant pressure on you in a scene. And he’s got such a singular focus that you kind of end up just falling to pieces,” Pattinson says. “It’s like you’ve got a laser beam on you.”
Pattinson certainly has experience with bright lights. Born and raised in London, he started working in amateur theater at age 15. An agent spotted him there and by 2005 he had landed a small part in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
By 2008 he’d been chosen to play Edward Cullen in the “Twilight” series. Five movies and countless magazine and tabloid covers later, the franchise concluded last year with “Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” having earned more than $3.3 billion.
Pattinson has learned to adapt to the spotlight over the years, and he even ventures out into public on occasion these days.
“You sort of weigh up what you want your day to be. If you say my friends are going to a movie or whatever and if you go you’re probably going to get a bunch of photographs taken of you,” he says. “Sometimes you’re cool with it, other times I don’t want to be bothered to deal with the stress of it. But I’ve definitely figured out a more balanced way to live than four years ago.”
Along with celebrity, “Twilight” brought Pattinson high visibility within the film world, and he’s been working with some of the most respected people around. He did “Cosmopolis” with director David Cronenberg in 2012 and stars in Cronenberg’s upcoming “Maps to the Stars.” He’s playing T.E. Lawrence in director Werner Herzog’s “Queen of the Desert,” alongside Nicole Kidman and James Franco, and has “Idol’s Eye,” with Robert De Niro and Rachel Weisz, coming up.
Pattinson says “Twilight” probably gave him a boost with his peers, but he’s not sure how much of one. “Within the industry, lots of people I work with, none of them have seen ‘Twilight’ — but then Werner Herzog loves ‘Twilight’!” he says. “I think it’s helped me out in a lot of ways. You have to kind of figure out how to ride the wave afterward.”
And he wants to keep riding that wave, chasing the acting high.
“I guess I was a relatively shy person when I was younger. I still am kind of. It’s nice to challenge yourself, especially in big emotional scenes with a part you’re not capable of doing. To be able to challenge yourself in that way, it’s quite exhilarating,” Pattinson says.
“Especially when it goes right,” he adds. “It could be the worst thing ever.”
Filming The Rover in a remote part of south Australia with cast and crew all staying in a local pub was just about perfect, says Robert Pattinson. The filmmakers all mucked in together, braved filming in soaring temperatures, and at night bonded over a drink or two. Pattinson wouldn’t have had it any other way and says that it helped director David Michôd and his cast and crew build an unbreakable bond.
“It was amazing,” he says. “Because the whole crew was staying in the same place and there was nothing else to do, we were living in a pub. It’s annoying if you’re in an unfamiliar city and all the people you work with are from that city, they all go home, so you’re just stuck in your hotel.
“When you can hang out with a bunch of new people, you get close to them really quickly, especially when there’s literally nothing else to do. It’s really fun. I hadn’t done that for a long time. I had a fantastic experience making this film.”
Pattinson was born and raised in London and started his professional career as a 16 year old in the TV film Ring of the Nibelungs. A year later, he played Cedric DIggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He starred in five, hugely successful Twilight films and his other film credits include Bel Ami and Cosmopolis.
Q: How’s it going? “I always forget in the evening that I’ve got to do a bunch of interviews in the morning, so I stay out all night (laughs). It’s horrible!”
Q: How was shooting in rural Australia? “For me it was really fun. It was kind of relaxing. I loved shooting out there. There was no pressure, and no one around.”
Q: Was it a relief getting away from people? “Yeah, just in terms of performance. I like doing little things before a take, sort of staying in character a little bit, and if you’ve got a bunch of people trying to take pictures of you doing a stupid face or something, then you’ve just constantly got it in your head, and you’re never really quite in what you want to do. Out there you can kind of do anything you want. They might think you’re a weirdo, this guy doing all this weird stuff (laughs), but it was quite freeing.”
Q: Did you enjoy playing a less beautiful character? “Yeah, I mean it takes away constraints. If someone’s saying, ‘You’ve got to look pretty!’ for one thing you feel like a bit of an idiot, because you’re a guy, and then you’re kind of thinking about stuff that really doesn’t mean anything – you’re just posing. As soon as you take away the allowance for your own vanity, then it’s kind of a relief.”
Q: How would you describe the themes of The Rover? “I think it’s just a story about survivors. I think they’re quite simple people in extraordinary circumstances. They’re trying to figure out how to live when it seems like there’s not a lot of hope. It seems like there’s nothing to do tomorrow, so what are you supposed to do at any point during your day? Even the gang I’m in, they’re stealing money and there’s nothing to use the money for at all (laughs). Eric [Guy Pearce] says, ‘It’s worthless, it’s just paper.’ It’s very difficult to know why to keep living if everything seems totally worthless, and yet people do.”
Q: Are you happy at the place you’re at in your career? “Definitely. I’m really happy these two films got into Cannes, it’s kind of exactly what I wanted. I am really happy with both the films as well. But it’s nice – I just get to work with people I’ve wanted to work with for years and years, and just been really lucky in the last year, with this really cool stuff”
Q: What’s happening with Life? ”I don’t know when it’s going to be finished. I just saw a trailer, which they’re playing here. Other than that, I haven’t seen anything from it. It was fun to do, though, and Anton [Corbijn]’s really cool. It’s about the famous photographs of James Dean in Times Square; it’s about James Dean and the photographer’s relationship. Joel Edgerton’s in it, weirdly because he’s a co-writer on The Rover, and Ben Kingsley. It’s cool. It’s interesting doing a movie about photography with Anton Corbijn, a master photographer. He taught me how to take photos a little bit, with an old Leica. They’re not very good. I thought they were all going to be absolutely amazing. I developed them all at the end of the movie and I did like 25 rolls of film, and on about four I hadn’t even realised that you need to pull the lens out (laughs) – so they’re all blank. Four films. It was a fun movie to do.”
Q: People called you the new James Dean. Now you’re doing a movie about James Dean, but not playing him. Weren’t you interested in that role? “No, not really. Dane [DeHaan] is so brave doing it. It’s one of the hardest parts ever. Try and play any iconic person. Dane’s got a wig, fake earlobes, and contact lenses – the whole deal. And James Dean’s mannerisms are so recognisable, so you’ve got to play the part and all this other stuff. It’s like playing Harry Potter – everyone’s got expectations – whereas I’m just the observer”
Q: Are you enjoying the travelling? “I’ve always kind of liked it: three months and then you can just move on, you don’t have any responsibility. I had a house for a bit, and then I literally just sold it recently. You’re never there, and it’s just a bit of a hassle. Unless you’ve got kids or something, it’s nice to be able to experience this stuff. I realised that I haven’t been anywhere, other than for work, in about ten years – no vacation or anything. You don’t really need to. By the end of the job I’m just constantly looking for the next one, but also I live in LA so it’s kind of just like you’re on holiday all the time (laughs).”
Q: When you have time for yourself, what do you do? “When I’m not working I try to get another job (laughs), constantly. You start to realise there’s a finite amount of time to get stuff done, and there’s a lot of different things that I want to achieve, also I like working pretty much more than anything else in my life. My job is my hobby.”
Q: Do you still write songs? What’s your process? “Yeah. I just started again recently. I generally just do stuff that sounds nice. I don’t really write songs in a conventional way. I don’t write lyrics separately, it’s quite instinctive.”
Q: Do you intend to release any music to the public? “I wouldn’t mind doing scores, or something, but I’m quite sensitive to criticism, and I’ve got a lot of criticism coming from one aspect of my life (laughs) so I don’t really want anyone’s opinion on it.”
Q: Did you enjoy working with Guy on this? “Yeah it was amazing. Because the whole crew was staying in the same place and there was nothing else to do, we were living in a pub (laughs). It’s annoying – If you’re in an unfamiliar city and all the people you work with are from that city, they all go home, so you’re just stuck in your hotel. When you can hang out with a bunch of new people, you get close to them really quickly, especially when there’s literally nothing else to do. It’s really fun. I hadn’t done that for a long time. I had a fantastic experience making this film.”
Q: Some actors who start very young stray from the path in various ways. Is that something you understand? “I was never young young. I got my first role when I was 16. A lot of people are three, or something. I also didn’t really realise I wanted to do it for another five years after that, or four years, and I never took it that seriously. When I got jobs, I guess I did, but I thought I was going to go to university and do something else. It was kind of a gradual process.”
Q: When did you start wanting it? “Probably after Harry Potter, because that was right around the same period where I could have gone to university or I could have done that, and I really made a decision to do it then, and then didn’t get a job for a year afterwards (laughs).”
Q: What would you have studied? “I think I wanted to do Politics, or something. I still kind of want to, as do all actors. But American politics, I’m not really interested in English politics (laughs).”
Q: Is that something you would still consider pursuing? “Probably not now. I didn’t want to be a politician. I wanted to work in the mechanics of it. I like speech writing. I’m quite apolitical, weirdly. I like the game.”
Q: Would you say that the film has a political subtext? It’s set after an economic collapse… “Yeah, I mean there’s definitely a message shooting out of the film. There were weird physical manifestations of it when we were shooting it. If you look at some of the shots, there were these weird massive mines, which they’re still digging, but they’ve basically just devastated the landscape. You stand there and look at it and there’s absolutely no wildlife anymore – nothing’s going to be able to grow in these places for hundreds of years. And it’s not just that bit of land: it’s wrecked absolutely everything around it, even if it doesn’t look like it has. You kind of think, ‘For what? – so we can sit around and play video games?”
Q: How do you deal with appearing so frequently in the tabloids? “I don’t read them. I think I’m slowly trying my best to get out of all that kind of media, just being in gossip magazines and stuff. I don’t quite know how to do it, but I’m trying my best.”
Q: Maps to the Stars is going well at Cannes. Is that a relief after Cosmopolis? “I think Cosmopolis is really underrated; I think that’s a great movie (laughs). I loved it. I’d do anything with [David Cronenberg]. I remember with Cosmopolis, when it came out, it’s the first time I’d really been in a movie where if someone said they didn’t like it, it was because they’re an idiot (laughs). I felt very strongly about it.”
Q: You have a tattoo. Was that for the film? “It’s of a sculpture by an artist called Julien Dillens. I just thought it would look like it would really suit the character.”
There is a moment in The Rover, David Michôd’s futuristic western set in the Australian outback, in which Robert Pattinson’s character sits in the cab of a truck at night listening to the radio play Keri Hilson’s hit Pretty Girl Rock. The night is black and the radio tinny, and softly Pattinson begins to sing along. “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful,” he sings, his voice high and whiny, the lyrics muffled by lips that cling to dirty teeth. “Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful.”
It’s a pivotal moment for Rey, the slow, needy, uncertain young man Pattinson plays, but it also feels like something of a reference point in the career of the actor himself; a small reminder for the audience of just how far he has run from his days as the pretty-boy Hollywood pin-up.
The Pattinson who walks into our interview this morning seems to play a similar trick, pointing out, two steps into the room, that the hotel carpet “looks like a Magic Eye picture”. And indeed it does – a bold, blurry pattern in stripes of cream and black. But Pattinson’s remark also serves to shifts attention neatly away from himself, as if he is weary of being the centre of it, the face that everyone stares at.
Pattinson was 22 when he was first cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight Saga, the five-part movie adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling teen vampire novels. Overnight he became one of Hollywood’s most adored young stars, pursued wherever he went by paparazzi and screaming fans. He was named “the most handsome man in the world” by Vanity Fair, and one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time. Amid all the fuss and the madness he embarked upon a tortuous relationship with his co-star, Kristen Stewart, that meant the young couple were rarely out of the gossip pages.
He is 28 now. The final Twilight instalment done, the Stewart romance finished, he is finally cutting a dash as a serious actor.
Early leading-man roles (Remember Me; Water for Elephants) have given way to more challenging characters – he earned impressive reviews for his portrayal of a young billionaire in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, and will soon be seen in another Cronenberg project, Maps to the Stars – as well as starring alongside Nicole Kidman in the Gertrude Bell biopic Queen of the Desert.
But for now he is rooted in Michôd’s The Rover, a brilliantly dark story of a loner (Guy Pearce) in pursuit of a gang of ramshackle crooks who have stolen his car. En route, he acquires Rey (Pattinson), the brother of one of the thieves, whom they had left for dead at the scene of a botched robbery, and together they chug through the Australian desert, now a glowering, lawless land 10 years after a global economic collapse.
“I just thought it was strikingly original,” Pattinson says of first reading Michôd’s script. “Even in the way it looked on the page.
“David’s got a very specific way of writing dialogue. It’s very functional, the writing’s very harsh, it’s savage, but it didn’t feel just stylised writing – it was emotional as well. It just seemed so natural compared to something like No Country for Old Men. I always felt that was more like film writing. And this didn’t really feel like a film script – it felt like a dream.”
Pattinson has a very particular way of speaking: he will talk softly, intently about subjects you sense mean a great deal to him – Michôd’s writing, for instance, or the craft of acting – only to then sweep it to one side with a flourishing “It was crazy!” or a burst of wheezy, slightly wild laughter. It gives the impression of someone who has not quite yet settled into his skin.
He had to audition for The Rover – a process he loathes. “I’m quite good at doing meetings,” he says. “If I’m just meeting someone about a job I’m like a dog, especially if my agent’s said to me: ‘A lot of people want this job.’ Then I’m like: ‘Oh yeah? Then I will do anything to get it!’” What’s his technique? “I don’t know, I just become a bullshit artist!” he laughs. “That’s when I start acting! I’m really much better at doing it when the cameras aren’t rolling …”
But auditions petrify him. He has spoken of the good 45 minutes of “neuroses” he has to suffer before any audition can ever really begin. “I just can’t … I literally can’t do it,” he tries to explain. “It’s just me looking uncomfortable, trying to put on an American accent … or sitting in the corner, making myself throw up and punching myself in the face.” What helps get him past the neuroses, what happens after those excruciating 45 minutes that helps him perform. “Just that you think that someone actually believes you can do something,” he says. “That makes me sound like such an idiot. It’s crazy.”
But the joys of acting still outweigh these moments.
“For whatever reason, I think there’s something profoundly satisfying about being able to watch something you’ve done afterwards, or to just do a scene and feel like: ‘Oh, I just had an out-of-body experience for a second!’”
He pauses. “Just for one second,” he says gently. “And generally people don’t even notice. It feels literally like you’ve been asleep for a second.” He recalls such a moment while shooting this film. “It’s not the biggest scene, it’s not even in the movie, it was the rehearsal. And me and Guy had just been going so nuts – we’d been out in the desert and we’d become like crazy homeless people. And I turned around and looked at him and just realised actually, we’re not acting any more.” He laughs. “And why did that feel so good? It’s so weird.”
It’s easy to assume that being tethered to the long-running Twilight Saga held him back from experiencing such moments, from growing as an actor, but he argues that the role required more resources than most. “I think Twilight’s probably the hardest part I’ve done,” he says, “because to do it for five movies, it’s really hard to think of stuff that’s maybe not boring. Especially if you don’t die. Because what’s the drama? You’re not scared of anything! And that’s the whole essence of drama: life and death.”
Pattinson was born and raised in London, but many of his film roles have required an US accent. In The Rover, Rey is from the American South, and like many has relocated to Australia in search of work in the mines. It was the voice, he says, that led him into the character.
He recalls “losing my mind” during his first day on set. “It just didn’t feel right for ages,” he says. “And then there was this one little thing – I had this makeup on my teeth, and it kept rubbing off all the time. It was really putting me off – it meant I had to keep redoing scenes. So I started trying to do this thing where I covered my teeth with my lips. And it changes your voice a little bit, but I thought: ‘Oh, that’s really cool!’ And after that I started speaking like that ‘ouhhggghhh …’” he replicates the style, and then laughs. “It’s so silly, it’s so stupid! I was just kind of making the accent up, I don’t even know what state it is really.”
But for Pattinson, having the opportunity to play a grubby-toothed mumbler from an unidentified corner of the American South proved liberating, as did the fact that his character plays second fiddle to that of Pearce. “There’s something about Rey, and there’s something about not having to drive the story forward,” he explains. “You can just be the condiment. It’s really kind of freeing just being the sidekick weirdo.”
He is full of praise for Pearce, for his physicality and his ability to transform himself for the role. He speaks of how, for much of their time on set, he thought Pearce to be physically bigger, and of his strange surprise when filming ended to find him not only clean-shaven but also somehow reduced in stature.
“And I liked seeing that Guy, even after having done tons and tons of movies is still scared,” he adds. “I’ve worked with some actors who, having done so many movies, they just know what they’re gonna do. No matter what I would be doing in a scene they would have practised their part in a mirror already and that was it, whereas Guy is really trying to find it still. So that was why it was more fun – because neither of us really knew what the movie was about when we started. But he’s not afraid to let it happen. And there’s very few actors who’ve been doing it as long as he has that still approach it like that, that still have that element of danger.”
How did they find out what the movie was about? “I think it’s about the feel,” Pattinson says. “I think after I did Cosmopolis I realised that trying to psychoanalyse parts and trying to be all clever about it … well, it only really started with actors in the 50s, and for thousands of years before that it was just about voice and using your body as a performance instrument …” he gives a faintly embarrassed laugh. “So I generally think whatever feels nice, it’s probably right.”
What felt nice in this role was the language, he says. “It was all the little speech patterns. It was like a song — if you’re singing a song in a certain way you’re not trying to make it sound sad or something, it just is.” He frowns. “I keep trying to do that in movies, but it’s really difficult trying to find scripts that allow for it, that mean you don’t have to hit specific thematic beats.”
Occasionally he tries to write something himself. “I was trying to write a play the other day and I showed it to my assistant and didn’t quite realise how bad it was.” He laughs and laughs. “I was writing it totally by myself in the middle of the night thinking: ‘This is how you do it! You just stay up all night and keep writing!’ She came in the next morning, and I’d been up all night writing. I said to her: ‘You have to read this! It’s amazing!’” He could tell it was perhaps not, he says, from her facial expressions as she read. “And then she said: ‘It’s not in English … and half the time you haven’t even put the character names in so it’s just a stream of consciousness …’”
But he would like to be in a play, he says. “Something in a really small theatre. I don’t think I could do something on Broadway … But I’d quite like to do something kind of shocking.”
He likes being shocking, he says, and his next role is satisfyingly so. Starring alongside Robert De Niro in Olivier Assayas’s Idol’s Eye, he will play a small-time criminal caught up with the Chicago mafia. “My character is this slightly delusional lost child,” he says. “Everyone always glamorises criminals – it feels inevitable in movies – but in this it’s really not glamorised. It is quite dense. It’s really serious. Very political.”
I think of something he told me earlier, about the ways in which he believes Twilight has influenced his career, and of how he wagers that most cinema audiences have judged him before he has uttered a single line on the screen. I pictured his frustration, the effort of forever trying to shake off that famous role, but on the contrary, he explained, he enjoys the possibilities that tension brings.
“It’s kind of fun,” he said. “Because people have preconceived ideas about you, and sometimes it affords you the opportunity to shock people more.”
Παρ 17 Μαρ 2023 - 15:11 από Marzaki Cullen
Ημερολόγιο
Θέμα: Απ: The Rover (2014) 
