Robert Pattinson: On his career, future and Twilight

In yesterdays press interviews, Robert talked about the past year where we saw a meteoric rise to his career. The actor has enjoyed success like no one else – from being mobbed by female fans to being invited to different award shows – if he is available that is. One year on, he is still as popular as ever and with the release of New Moon just a week away, he is set to conquer more.

Rob did many interviews yesterday and here are excerpts from his interview with IESB.net and Hitfix. Rob discussed New Moon, being in the spotlight, the paparazzis and the his projects pre- Breaking Dawn.

Q: What has this past year been like for you? How are you dealing with things? Are you more comfortable with everything now?

Rob: I guess it’s inevitable that you become more comfortable. You still fight against some things. There’s nothing really scary about the franchise itself. I like all the people I work with. I generally have very few disagreements about the script or anything while we’re doing it, especially on New Moon. It just seemed so relaxed and easy. I’ve been on three different sets, since January 14^th. I’ve had like three days off. I’m going to be on set all next year as well. I don’t know what doing errands and things is really like ’cause I haven’t had a sustained period of time where I’ve been off. I don’t know how it’s really changed. I still feel like I’m pretty much exactly the same, which is maybe not a good thing.

Q: Can you talk about working with Chris Weitz, and how the syllabus he gave the cast helped you?

Rob: I’ve never had that, from any director. It was 40 or 50 pages long, in addition to a bunch of letters and emails, trying to show that he was on the same page as us and was completely with us, in making the film. And, he didn’t falter from that attitude, throughout the whole movie. It probably sounds ridiculous how much praise he gets. I was just with him and his wife in Japan, and she was even kind of sick of it. But, he is like a saint. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, let alone directors. In a lot of ways, it shows in the movie. It’s got a lot of heart, especially for a sequel in a franchise. He’s just a great person to work with.

Q: Appearing in most of the movie as only a series of visions, did you feel disjointed from your cast mates at all? Did you wish you were in more of the film?

Rob: Those scenes were the hardest scenes. They weren’t really, at the time, but after I saw the first cut of the movie, they changed them quite a bit in the edit and ADR. It’s not Edward. It’s a manifestation of Bella’s loneliness and desperation. It was always very difficult. I asked Kristen, “How would you play it?” It’s her opinion, so that was hard. As for being alone, I’ve always felt a little bit aloof as the character, throughout the whole series. I think that’s how he is, so I didn’t feel any different.

Q: What was it like to film that break-up scene between Edward and Bella?

Rob: There’s something weird about it. One of the main things I felt doing that and what really helped was people’s anticipation of the movie, and the fans of the series’ idea about what Bella and Edward’s relationship is and what it represents to them. It’s some kind of ideal for a relationship. And so, just playing a scene where you’re breaking up the ideal relationship, I felt a lot of the weight behind that. Also, it took away a fear of melodrama. It felt seismic, even when we were doing it. It was very much like the stepping out into the sunlight scene, at the end. You could really feel the audience watching, as you’re doing it. It was a strange one to do.

Q: Have you ever had your heart broken, like Edward does when he leaves Bella?

Rob: No, I don’t think so.

Q: With all of the fan encounters that you’ve had, has there been anything that’s just made you laugh?

Rob: Yeah, a lot of the time. Recently, I have less direct interaction with people because there’s way more security and stuff on set. But, I always find it funny when older people come up. There was a woman who came up to me the other day who must have been in her 90′s. It’s very unusual. And, they say exactly the same things as 12-year-old girls. That is kind of bizarre.

Q: When you are shooting the more romantic things, what goes through your head?

Rob: It’s weird. I keep getting told by people, “Pump up all the stuff about the action, so the guys will go and see it,” but it’s ridiculous. It’s like saying that guys can’t appreciate romance. I don’t think you can say that about Gone with the Wind. I’ve watched Titanic and I didn’t think, “Oh, this is a girl’s film.”

Especially in New Moon, and actually in the whole series, I’ve never played it thinking, “Oh, I’m in a series of girls’ films and I’m doing something just for girls.” I don’t feel like I’m doing an animated Tiger Beat, every week. I like doing romantic scenes. I felt like a lot of the storyline in New Moon is very heartbreaking and true. I didn’t think I was doing something, just for the sake of romance. I thought, in a lot of ways, that it was a really sad story.

Q: Are you a romantic person, in real life? What is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done?

Rob: I haven’t done that many romantic things, in my life.

Q: Have you been told a tentative time that you might film Breaking Dawn?

Rob: I think the tentative for Breaking Dawn is Fall of next year. I think. They may well change that.

Q: What movies have you committed to in 2010?

Rob: Depending on how things go, I’m doing a movie called Bel Ami in February, which is an adaptation of a Guy de Maupassant novel. And, I hope I’m doing a Western with Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman, called Unbound Captives, sometime around there as well. They’ve got to try to work around everybody’s schedules and stuff.

Q: Who do you play in Unbound Captives?

Rob: I’m playing a kid who is kidnapped by the Comanches, when he was four years old, and he’s brought up by them. His mother spends her entire life trying to find me and my sister, and when she finds us, we can’t remember who she is or anything about the Western culture that we grew up in. They speak Comanche, the whole movie. You can’t really be more different from Edward.

Q: Is that why you responded to it?

Rob: No. I actually sign on to that after I had done Twilight, in the summer, just a couple of months after I finished. It was really before anything had happened, so I wasn’t really thinking about it. It was just a cool script and it reminded me, in a lot of ways, of Giant, which is one of my favorite movies. I think that’s why I responded to it.

Hitfix Interview:

Pattinson knows that he’s in a very particular place in his career. Since doing “Twilight” and becoming a worldwide star, he’s only shot one film outside of the franchise, 2010′s “Remember Me,” while the release of “Little Ashes,” shot pre-”Twilight,” stirred up negligible box office buzz.

“I’m still a little bit blind as to what my actual economic viability is outside of the series,” Pattinson admits.

Suddenly, he’s a big enough star that parts are getting thrown at him, but that’s produced a new level of wariness.

“It’s definitely different, because you get offered stuff that you’d never dreamed of getting offered before, but that’s scary as well, because you don’t have to audition for anything, so you’re like, ‘Well I don’t want to do a movie just because it gets made,’” he says.

Pattinson adds, “Before ‘Twilight,’ I did any movie I got and you try to do the best of it, but now you’re expected to go come into the movie and provide not only economic viability, but performance as well because people are like ‘You can’t just mess around. We’re employing you to be a star and an actor.’ It’s difficult and it’s scary.”