Robert Pattinson Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | British GQ

hey i'm robert pattinson and i'm going to talk about some of my iconic performances harry potter and the goblet of fire cedric giggery the head of the hufflepuff clan and he's the first um death in harry potter which is my claim to fame it was definitely my concept to jump out of the tree like at the beginning of my intro which i then kind of repeated later on in twilight for some reason i always have the suggestion to be like why doesn't he disappear just like jumping out of a tree i'd sort of fallen into it i mean it was so terrifying i remember the first scene i ever shot on that was in the magical maze at the end and i'd never done anything with special effects and stunts and it was a big deal at the time it felt like very very intimidating i think i'd read a book on method acting the only thing i really got out of that was just beating yourself up before every single scene that was basically my only concept of how to how to prepare for a scene i was psyching myself up as if i was getting into a fight or something before these scenes and just screaming into a pillow and like fighting punching myself and like kind of ripping my clothing and stuff but i had all these prosthetic wounds on and all of the prosthetics would melt off my face and i'd have to have all my makeup done again but i had i had no concept of how to kind of get into a psyched up physical state i remember holding a wand and thinking that it felt so dorky to hold it like a magic wand so i'm holding it like a gun with two hands thinking i'm in like a die hard movie i think i even have one eye closed when i'm like looking down like it's got a it's got a viewfinder i spent a lot of time living off the harry potter money i moved to an apartment in soho and london i really thought i was going to do music at that point i don't know where i had the kind of belief in that because there was absolutely no one saying that there's a kind of music career on the table but i was doing a lot of gigs all the time i was constantly doing open mics all the time and then uh i ran out of money basically it was definitely going the wrong direction in terms of a career up until twilight twilight i'd started to develop the to develop this absolute terror of uh auditions which i'm sure a lot of actors have and i'd kind of could be so enthusiastic about something and then the day of the audition just my confidence would just entirely collapse the same thing happened the morning of the twilight audition i used to live on my agent's couch at the time in her apartment and she sent me the email exchange i'm freaking out i i don't want to go to audition anymore ever underneath it saying well uh find fight valium in my in my bathroom but i've never taken a valium before i was i just remember just feeling so glorious in the in the back of the taxi with the window open and just being like wow this is what i've been missing and so i kind of i think i had this sort of quite spacey detached kind of thing in the audition which must have kind of worked for the character that's edward cohen i do think there's something in that first movie you can see that people do it like we're taking it seriously and it kind of has this has a it has a passion to it everything about me invites you in my voice my face even my smell you know i was 21 and kind of wanted to make it as arty as possible and so i was kind of we had this strange tension where the studio was kind of a little bit scared to make things a little bit too emo and stuff and i thought that was the only way to play it it just seems so ridiculous talking about it now because i was literally in i i spent so much time just infuriated like the whole i it's definitely something about being 21 as well because i was i can't believe like the way i was acting is half the time like when i think back on it the scene when edward introduces bella to his family the first time i remember that being the day because my agent my manager like came up as a surprise visit and i was like oh hey i just thought everything was fine and then at lunch they were like okay so whatever you're doing right now you need after lunch just do the opposite or you'll be fired by the end of the day and i was like okay and so uh that was the only thing that got me to sort of smile a little bit if i tried to play it light-hearted the way i would do it would end up looking so wrong and like that i'd probably end up looking even more like a psychopath there was this big like tons of people signing this petition to have me not cast but nothing about my life really changed until the weekend or maybe like a week before the movie came out so when the signatures came it just felt such an abstract uh like i just didn't really care and i was very excited about doing the movie but yeah then when it came out it just changed everything so fast i mean it was it was overnight but batman that was no hesitation yes even my agents and stuff were just thought like oh this is interesting i mean i thought you only wanted to play like just total freaks all the time like he is a free because it's another freak you look for things that kind of scare you look for things that feel incredibly out of reach it's such the kind of the jewel and the crown of characters you know you really could be doing more for this city your family has a history of philanthropy but as far as i can tell you're not doing anything it's just a totally different vibe i mean it's sad it's something which i always thought about batman i thought it's really really sad it's a tragedy that's one of the reasons it feels kind of different because it's kind of it's like it's year two we're not gonna do the origin story again instead of him getting over his his parents his parents dying at the beginning and then just becoming batman and saving gotham now he really hasn't gotten over them at all and it's kind of and i basically i'm playing the parents death constantly through that the whole time there's latest it's all about the wings if we don't stand up no one will i always like approaching the kind of major character like that and if you look at it very literally or like in a from an emotional context it does end up coming becoming kind of something kind of strange and and it's always kind of shocks you what comes out of it i mean i didn't really realize how how sad it would make me feel there's something about his relationship with selena kyle as well and it's it's very present in the graphic novels and i think a lot of those writers really touched on that there's ways to reinterpret that character in an infinite number of ways this is the maybe ninth or tenth batman movie and it does feel incredibly different it's funny i was talking to the other actors who are in the movie and everyone else said like no and even matt was saying like don't watch the other ones don't watch any of the other movies don't be thinking about that kind of stuff too much but i was like i've already seen all the other movies and they're incredibly familiar to me and i like all the other movies it's not like you're trying to rescue like a dead character i mean they're all like really really good portrayals and i kind of really watched a lot of them on the the run-up up to it to just see where where's the gap um and something that hasn't really been explored yet i think it's also really fun as well doing that because it's like every single person who's played batman is a pretty um heavyweight actor and they all had great interpretations of it and and very very different so it was fun watching them all i definitely don't have a favorite no no i mean i think christian bale did like just such a i mean it's so kind of iconic like as the the voice that he was doing in it but it's almost impossible to not to not it's really hard to get into a artificially lower register i mean and it was to and to do it a long time because i mean there's a lot of scenes in this as well where you're kind of long dialogue scenes as batman which is quite unique out of um a lot of the other movies in the series and trying to kind of stay really really low and have kind of nuanced in the lines and stuff i mean it's really hard it's really really hard when that light hits the sky [Music] it's not just a call it's a warning i think i was doing vocal exercises without actually knowing their vocal exercises i think your larynx or something just got strengthened when i was i was doing the movie when i was doing adr for it i mean i couldn't even do the voice again i mean it had to kind of it had completely reverted back to normal there's a kind of understanding which i think every actor who goes into it there's some way of playing batman that just feels right as batman and like if you try and do something too different it sometimes feels really off but it's funny it's like as soon as you put on the suit it sort of does something to you you start behaving in this quite particular way and it might be about the kind of restriction and the movement and stuff where there's definitely elements of just the kind of um practical aspect of it you don't know how you're going to feel until you put on the suit and then just because this suit was a little bit more articulated because i done the audition in i think it was george clooney's one and it was incredibly difficult to move in well i'm totally over all right positively me too definitely you had to choose the suit by the size of your head and i think my my head was about was the closest to clooney's head was your head like locked it's locked and you're boiling hot like absolutely boiling if you have any lights on you or you're just pouring sweat and then as i was doing it and you're also doing an audition so i'm kind of terrified anyway and people are saying what can we do about this sweat i mean you're thinking like if i don't stop sweating i'm not gonna get the part and so you're trying to you're trying to shut down your body a little bit if i'm not mistaken that's the one with the nipples isn't it it is but then me i i keep getting confused with because i think there might be two nipple suits i think i think one has just more one has more prominent nipples i think on the val kilmer suit as well there's i think there's some nipples on that there might just be one nipple [Music] good time was uh another wonderful experience and also a totally unexpected reaction to it as well i remember talking to josh and bernie at some hotel in l.a and i said i want to do whatever you guys are doing next i want to do it and i remember josh saying do you mean that because i'll have a script in six weeks and uh and and like we'll do it and then the first iteration of good time came after six weeks and it was unbelievable i mean they're great directors but i love the way they write so much excuse me you're peter yes i am we're in the middle of saying hello nick what are you doing we're in the middle of something here with him he's asking me about the stuff in the how would you like it if i made you cry how would you like that benny is also just a phenomenal actor as well i mean he just stayed in the character like all day and would kind of slightly change his voice when he had to kind of suggest something to josh it really felt like a character talking benny would be doing a scene with me he was also operating the boom at the same time so he's like holding he's holding the boom between us it's definitely the definition of run and gun filmmaking nick come here stay with me where'd he go where are you is he has a bag you're circling around i'm on the corner i'm on the corner you drop me off you're gonna get back here right now i wasn't really like trying to perfect an accent it's just something that felt right it's just all just trying to do everything in an intuitive way and it's weird because like even it does sound like a queen's specific queen's accent but it was kind of uh it wasn't i wasn't really doing it in a very academic way it was much more just like just feeling your way through it i think well there's two lines it was probably my two favorite lines i think i've ever said in the movie which is the one is um when i was saying to talia don't be confused it's just gonna make it worse for me i don't know anyone else apart from josh who would ever come up with that line and then the line i'm talking about the kind of metaphysical connection with with taliram and at the end of it just undercuts it saying like all right i'm just going to take a [ __ ] in that guy's house okay i'm gonna go and take a [ __ ] in that guy's house i'm gonna try the hospital again in a minute just wait here for me okay it's just a very very specific feeling which i the only other person i've ever seen that in a script with is is the lighthouse um with uh robert eggers [Music] the lighthouse i play a character called thomas winslow um uh no that's not even his name jesus [ __ ] christ thomas howard yeah he's a little bit confused about his identity he's he's kind of he's a little bit of frame ephraim winslow and uh thomas howard that's i loved the witch um uh robert's previous movie i really wanted to find something with him i thought he's a very very special director i had such a good time on good time and i wanted to swing wildly the other direction but i wanted everything to be strange and i kind of said to robert i only want to do strange things and robert came back with the lighthouse and said if this isn't strange enough for you then um i don't think i'm capable of anything stranger than this [Music] really trying to convince everyone that the lighthouse was a comedy and trying to convince i think it was the god the the hfpa like i'm really really trying to try to convince like relatively elderly people no it is a comedy it's it's 100 comedy it should qualify for the musical comedy section and everyone had watched this incredibly dark movie and thinking like i don't know how much for comedy it is but then i see an audience watching it and and people do like people laugh so much more than i ever would have thought i mean i thought it was hilarious when i read the script but yeah i'm always quite stunned about the the reaction to it and also how much people like sea shanties i mean i like that as i had absolutely no idea i remember seeing the first screening and everyone's like bobbing their heads like they're at a concert whenever a sea shanty came on i'm like wow like how did eggers know that that was going to be a trend in 2018 i mean it's like that is out of the blue on the floor and it's funny because everyone's like oh what accent are you doing blah blah blah i always get these strange unfounded criticisms about my accents but there's this area in maine which i guess of how the immigration worked there it was a kind of like devon or dorset accents in england and then mixed with a bit of like certain types of american accents and then there was like kind of weird elements of like liverpudlian and all i guess all the different sailors that have come there but you kind of listen to this really tiny area in maine and it's been the same accent for hundreds of years and it doesn't sound anything like a normal um american accent but it's very very fun it's also very addictive to do a lot of this a lot of the crew started uh speaking to me like thanky and like all these different things i don't have to say nothing daddy that neptune stretchy dead winslow agar said when i asked him how the movie was um [Music] he he said like well it's basically willem going and you're going and i'm like oh great sounds sounds great only when he crowned in cockle shells his coral time trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunge us right through your gullet it was absolutely great working with one we rehearsed uh for about a week before we started shooting and he has so much energy it's just unreal it's like almost like working with like a six-year-old like this have kind of there's nothing that fatigues him and uh and so i was kind of a little bit terrified because he would literally we'd rehearse the entire movie and then the second we got to the end he's like again that just started doing it again and and he hasn't his energy hadn't even been dented he's the best what what the scene where we're saying what to each other i'm just going i just remember seeing that in the script it was over three pages where everyone's lying was just it was just saying what what what what what what and you're looking at going like this can't be actually in a script it's one of those things where you go i'm not going to see this again ever in my entire life and i want to be the person to say this because i'll be really really annoyed if someone else gets to do it what what what [Music] it [Applause] [Music] it's the most apocalyptic spy movie that's ever been made they're really really big concepts but it's kind of it's it's like all the christmas movies you can kind of interpret them you can either like really really dig into it and find so many different threads to to pull or you can kind of appreciate it it's like a big massive adventure action movie and you don't really need to know what's happening like that much [Music] it's so complicated to make the story work you just thought this this is it's so insane this is even happening i mean we're in estonia they've made a car where they'd switch the the engine rather there's a driver driving it with the back wheels at the front for him and me and john david are pretending to drive it backwards but with about 700 cars all driving in reverse around us i mean it was like one of the most exciting theme park rides you've ever been on in your life and then you're trying to trying to do a uh a scene at the same time i mean it was i i don't think they're gonna be making movies like that ever again [Music] cosmopolis cosmopolis is about a 28 year old asset manager called eric packer he gets a kind of obscure death threat and he starts to kind of intentionally unravel his own life i remember doing it and thinking the audience i want for this is for someone in 10 years time to be watching tv at 3 o'clock in the morning and this comes on and then you have no idea if you're asleep or not this is loss of faith it will force the orange drop dollar will settle up the yuan will drop where's chin working on visual patterns we're shooting inside a limo that was the same size as normal limo it was kind of and the cameras on the techno cranes i've never done a movie like it where you just you're doing entire movie inside like um a kind of vocal recording booth almost like it was very very strange and it just got to the point by the end of the shoot i never even left the limo i just stayed in it all day i love that movie i've seen it so many times and i think it's really i think it's one of my favorite things i've ever done highlight realize nothing break the laws of nature you'll pay for it [Music] claire denim who directed that is just one of my favorite people in the entire world if anyone can experience what it's like to do a clergy movie i would definitely say you've got you have to do it but it's completely different to anything else you just suddenly realize you can you can approach filmmaking and acting in in totally different ways every single movie um and directors like that really allow you the freedom to do it it's the first strawberry so fun i mean with my friend's kit um it's my god daughter we'd cast because they normally cast identical twin babies for that kind of situation and uh and the night before the shoot started i went to meet the babies and the babies wouldn't have anything to do with me at all and would just scream whenever i came anywhere near them and i tried to kind of bond with them for about four hours and it was just nothing but terror coming out of them and it was supposed to be this kind of like you know quite sweet relationship they had with my daughter in it and i got my friend sam and i was like what are you doing for the next two weeks like can a scarlet just play my daughter in a movie and they flew out the next morning and uh and i think i'd only ever met scarlett like once or twice when she was a young young baby but it worked out perfectly my old man could see me now break the laws of nature and you'll pay for it gq this is my fortress of solitude and on a scout anonymous room anonymous hotel a quadratic trolls [Music] [Laughter] classic performances i love that thing i think it's really funny that's like i think that was the entire thing from conception to completion was about an hour and a half like just there or maybe maybe two hours at the max i remember my manager saying i was like you should do a tv series of this i'm like of what there is like so you want me to end my career um but yeah it was really fun i know what i should do to promote this movie just do a thing about eating a hot dog and losing your mind you can call me wrong i eat hot dogs [Music] the rover [Music] what you doing with this car it's my brother's car there's your brother [Music] where is he it's funny with acting stuff the director who's just to see something new that you don't really know you have and kind of shows trust and belief in you and can take a risk and it just um and people trust you for a bit and it just it felt like a very important move just like really just sort of sink into a character it really felt like that i could stay in it all day like i really really felt there's something about the environment of where we're shooting at the outback it just felt like there was almost no sign of a film crew anywhere i mean it was just one of the most immersive experiences also beautifully written as well i can't tell you nothing more naruto don't you think you've already told me start [ __ ] talking to me the fact that i'm still getting jobs like i think that's just kind of blows my mind like every every single day i don't quite understand i think i by accident sold my soul but i get so excited about it there's not even a single element of me which is like jaded about it at all it's a great thing about acting as a job as well but you always think there is all the insecurity about not having you know being unemployed like 90 of the time but it has the potential to completely change your life like every single time it's very exciting no matter how small the movie is i mean it can kind of you can have this kind it can be the certain kind of explosion in your reality

Channel: British GQ

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Id: -arWTxJsIus

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022