Robert Pattinson has been honing his craft as an actor since he chose to pursue a career in the film industry. He later saw massive success in his field doing Twilight, which would also have a massive impact on Pattinson’s acting.
Robert Pattinson once shared he had no intention on being an actor
Pattinson once confided that his goal in his younger years wasn’t to become a professional actor. He was actually even dissuaded from taking a drama GCSE, which was an exam acting students took before university.
“In fact, my drama teacher told me not to do it,” Pattinson once said in an interview with On Demand Entertainment.
He got into acting in the first place in an attempt to impress a crush he’d had in his adolescent years. But after doing theater for the first time, Pattinson developed a new passion for the craft of acting. He did a couple of more plays afterwards.
“I have no idea why, to this day. I did that, and another play afterwards, then randomly got an agent. But I think it was just the first time you do something—performance—it’s incredibly addictive,” Pattinson said in a 2014 interview with Daily Beast.
Pattinson grew even fonder of acting as he matured.
“It’s a strange feel. And then you start to feel it for yourself as you get older. You realize that you can get lost. It’s like doing music—you can do a scene and be like, ‘I don’t feel like myself at all.’ And you don’t know where it came from. It’s kind of nice,” he said.
Robert Pattinson once shared he forgot how to act after every ‘Twilight’ film
Pattinson took his career to new heights after being cast in the Twilight series. Becoming the face of an entire franchise definitely had its perks, but it also had its setbacks as well. The latter Twilight films experienced a lot of criticism that Pattinson felt was being unfairly passed on to the actors.
“In a lot of ways, people have decided what Twilight is about before they’ve even thought about it, and then they’ve labeled us, the actors, as part of whatever that may be. Even the sparkling thing. I get so many sparkly criticisms! But I don’t actually remember a moment of in any of the movies where I sparkle,” he said.
The series even had a little bit of an impact on his acting. Pattinson asserted that he became a better actor thanks to the series. But he was still in the process of shaping who he was as a performer while doing the movies.
“I don’t know who I am as an actor. I’ve found that the Twilight movies were probably the hardest jobs I’ve done. You have so many parameters to play the character within, and also you’re doing five movies where you have to play the same point every time and figure out different variations on it,” he said.
Being a part of a series of films also made Pattinson feel as though he had to relearn how to act within each Twilight movie.
“I never even thought of all the Twilights as a single entity. They were all separate movies for me. I mean, I forget how to act in between every single movie,” Pattinson added.
Robert Pattinson on the two actors whose careers he wanted
There were two actors who Pattinson admired, not just because of their performances, but because of the kinds of careers they had. Joaquin Phoenix and Guy Pearce were both actors with solid reputations in the film industry. They had the kind of filmography that Pattinson hoped to be able to emulate himself in his career.
“I like what Joaquin has done. I’m always looking at his stuff—he’s been the most influential actor on me. And in a lot of ways I like Guy’s career as well. But he also does Australian stuff all the time, and I feel weird doing English things. I feel like I’m really naked,” he said.
