IndieLondon’s Interview With Robert Pattinson

ROBERT Pat­tin­son talks about his new film, Remem­ber Me, what appealed about the char­ac­ter of Tyler, the themes of the movie and work­ing with Pierce Bros­nan as his father.

He also talks about how he chooses projects out­side of the Twi­light movies and why brood­ing is a new term for him…

Q. What did you like about the script when you were approached?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I’d read tons of scripts over the sum­mer, after I didTwi­light – I mean hun­dreds… and every­thing just seemed exactly the same. This one ini­tially stood out in the way the dia­logue was writ­ten – it just seemed much more nat­u­ral­is­tic than most things. Tyler as a char­ac­ter – it seems that most movies which have a young male pro­tag­o­nist as the lead have to be either a vir­gin, or have to learn every­thing dur­ing the movie, or they always go through the tri­als of the movie and end up a dif­fer­ent per­son and they’re com­pletely fine after­wards. But Tyler starts off with a lot of bag­gage and a very full and devel­oped char­ac­ter, and ends up being devel­oped in a slightly dif­fer­ent way, rather than: “Oh I’m fine now!” You just never see that in films very much, espe­cially for young people’s parts.

Q. How was work­ing with Pierce Bros­nan as your father?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I never ever would have thought ini­tially it would have been some­one like Pierce play­ing Charles. I think he has an innate like­abil­ity to him, as soon as you meet him he’s very, very charis­matic. Charles, on the page, was some­one who’s very dom­i­neer­ing and quite a neg­a­tive char­ac­ter, and Pierce just by being Pierce can change the whole dynamic of it, which made for a much for inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship. He’s a really nice guy.

Q. You’re very sweet with the young girl play­ing your sis­ter. It seems like a very nat­ural rela­tion­ship. Tell us about how you made it seem that way?
Robert Pat­tin­son: It’s all down to Ruby Jerins, who plays her. I don’t have any younger broth­ers or sis­ters… I’ve got two older sis­ters. I kind of think I always wanted a younger sib­ling – not that I have any­thing against my sis­ters [laughs]. But she’s just one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with. She’s sur­pris­ingly artic­u­late about her char­ac­ter. When I first met her, she seemed like a very, very nor­mal kid, and then the more she talked about her character’s devel­op­ment, she could talk about it for hours. And she could also impro­vise for hours and was so com­fort­able in front of a cam­era and work­ing with adults. It was very easy to do any­thing with her. You could just look at her and know what to do immediately.

Q. At what point did you realise you could use your pow­ers for good and through your suc­cess help finance movies like this? And what pres­sures are there on you to make other stuff that might earn more money but be less sat­is­fy­ing?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I never like any­thing, so it’s quite easy to decide what to do – even movies I’m not in [laughs]! I’ve never felt any pres­sure to do any­thing, par­tic­u­larly. Even when we were shoot­ing it, I never thought about the box office… it’s only when it came to pro­mot­ing it that you’re asked about that stuff. Obvi­ously, it’s not like a Twi­light movie, it’s an orig­i­nal screen­play, and it doesn’t fit into any genre… it’s not really that much of a feel-good movie. They don’t make movies like it any­more. I think that’s how I kind of choose stuff. That’s the only cri­te­ria I really have. If there seems to be a gap in the mar­ket for some­thing, then I try and do that. I’m try­ing to do that with all the other things I’m doing afterwards.

Q. How were you with the New York accent?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I think it just came out of the script. I pretty much had the same voice from the first time I read the script to the whole way through the movie. Some­times when you’re lucky, you just read a script and the voice comes out right. I wasn’t even con­scious of doing a New York accent – I don’t even know what bor­ough or any­thing! I’ve spent a bit of time in New York, and just tried to pick up on how peo­ple speak. But I don’t know where my accent is now – I wouldn’t say I’ve specif­i­cally got a Lon­don accent anymore.

Q. Your char­ac­ter has a buddy, Aiden, who becomes increas­ingly impor­tant to him. Do you have a real-life equiv­a­lent – a male buddy? And your sis­ter in the movie regards your char­ac­ter as a hero to pro­tect her – do you have a hero?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I’ve grown up with the same friends since I was 12. I have a very, very close-knit set of them. As for the hero – I think I’m always kind envi­ous of that. I grew up with peo­ple that a lot of other peo­ple regarded as heroes, but no-one ever kind to me for advice or pro­tec­tion – so I think I’ve been left out as a hero! As regards my own heroes, out­side of my fam­ily I don’t really know… they are great peo­ple, my par­ents are great par­ents and they brought me up very well. I think that’s about all the heroes I have.

Q. How impor­tant is the reac­tion of your fans to this, being such a dif­fer­ent, more low-key project to Twi­light?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I always felt it’s the most impor­tant thing you can do, doing films like this, which are quite dif­fi­cult, I would have thought, to just gener­i­cally adver­tise and get out to peo­ple. Hav­ing some­thing like Twi­lightand Lost gives it pub­lic­ity imme­di­ately. So, if peo­ple go to see it… once you’ve got them into the cin­ema, then it’s almost inevitable that they’ll get drawn into it, hope­fully. Obvi­ously, you hope peo­ple like things, but if you start doing stuff to please a cer­tain audi­ence then you’re going in the wrong direc­tion – because you can never please peo­ple by decid­ing for them, you don’t even know the peo­ple you’re try­ing to please… espe­cially when you’re try­ing to please huge swathes of people!

Q. What is it that attracts you to deep and brood­ing types like Tyler and Edward, and might you do a com­edy?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I did do lighter stuff before Twi­light came out. It just so hap­pened that Twi­light has become so much about this arche­typal, brood­ing per­son. I never thought Tyler was that brood­ing, to be hon­est! I never even heard the word before Twi­light. I guess you like to play bro­ken, trou­bled char­ac­ters because that’s more inter­est­ing, espe­cially because I’m not par­tic­u­larly bro­ken or trou­bled myself. I’m doing some­thing now which is still quite dark but the char­ac­ter isn’t so frac­tured… it’s some­one who is incred­i­bly focused and has a lot of con­fi­dence in him­self. Noth­ing can shake his con­fi­dence. After that, I think there’s a lighter thing as well. It’s not really that they’re angsty… joy seems to be a uni­ver­sal emo­tion but in scripts, it’s quite dif­fi­cult – if you’re happy, you’re happy.

Q. Can you talk about the pro­gres­sion of your char­ac­ter – did you always have a clear view of how you were going to play him?
Robert Pat­tin­son: Well, the script changed so much over seven months, and had lots of re-writes. I spoke a lot to Nick and Alan [Coul­ter], the direc­tor, and the writ­ers, Will and Jenny. I tried to tai­lor things to what I was inter­ested in. The rela­tion­ship with the Dad changed quite a lot… because I thought, when you’re a young guy, one of your biggest fears, is an irra­tional fear of walk­ing in your dad’s foot­steps and liv­ing the same life as him.

Even if your dad’s a good guy, you just want to assert your inde­pen­dence on every­thing and that causes irra­tional rages. It devel­oped into some­thing quite dif­fer­ent and spe­cific from the first read­ing. But I always feel pretty con­nected to it. I thought it was a great tem­plate from the begin­ning. The other thing that was inter­est­ing about it was how it dealt with grief. Tyler doesn’t deal with grief in the typ­i­cal way. Deal­ing with sor­row is a noble emo­tion and grief when your young can be very cheap in a lot of ways… and I thought that was quite inter­est­ing how Tyler does want to for­get about his past.

Q. Tyler is quite an angry, punchy young man. How did you psy­che your­self up for the fight scenes, and have you ever been in a fight?
Robert Pat­tin­son: I haven’t been in a fight for quite a long time. I’m too scared now. I think if I got into a fight now, I’d go: “Just kill me!” I liked a lot of Tyler’s char­ac­ter, the rebel­lious­ness and the auda­cious­ness of it, because it’s kind of like a fan­tasy of myself. Like: “I’m the type of guy who just ran­domly gets into fights… get­ting into them all the time.” I’m not really.

Q. How was fight­ing Chris Cooper?
Robert Pat­tin­son: Chris Cooper is unbe­liev­ably strong… he’s ter­ri­fy­ing! Also, the fight I had at the begin­ning, I was doing it with the big stunt guy and I was hit­ting a thing next to his head, and hit him with what I thought was my full strength, I hit his face about four times, and every time I was going: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” And he said, “It’s fine, it doesn’t really hurt.” That was kind of an ego-deflater.

Q. When an Aus­tralian and a Brit work­ing together did it pro­vide the back­drop for a shared sense of humour?
Robert Pat­tin­son: On the day of the audi­tion, when Emi­lie got the part, we went to a bar after­wards, and I swear Emily, who’s the tini­est girl, drank about 24 beers and was stone-cold sober after­wards! I thought… this is dif­fer­ent, this is some­thing for the character!

SOURCE