Robert Pattinson... "Best Dressed Celebrities" (this week)... according to Harpers Bazaar...

...

from Harpers Bazaar

 

  

thanks to Tumblr: pattinson360 

*INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson... for "The Guardian (uk)"... for "The Rover" uk promo...

...

from The Guardian

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.

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 realized 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 realized 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.”

source: Tumblr: pattinson360

[PRESS SCAN] Time Out (uk) - August 2014

...

source: Imgbox via Tumblr: pattinson360

*NEW INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson for the "Esquire UK Magazine"...

...

I honestly love this new Rob's interview...
thank you Sanjiv Bhattacharya 

from Esquire

He's the 28-year-old British actor who has survived trial by fire – the Twilight phenomenon, tabloid hysteria – to become one of our most promising leading men. Over the next few months, you’ll see him deliver top-drawer performances in movies by David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog and Anton Corbijn. First, The Rover, this summer’s must-see film. To celebrate, Esquire’s man in LA invited September's cover star over for beers and a barbecue


He doesn’t seem the nervous type, Robert Pattinson. He always looks so calm, in the face of all those screaming girls. But there are times when he gets very anxious indeed, and the heart quickens and the behaviour changes. And when he does, he lies, he just makes stuff up. Or at least that’s what he told US late-night chat-show host Jimmy Kimmel recently, when he was a guest on the show to promote his latest movie, The Rover. 

Given that he was clearly quite nervous for the interview itself, perhaps he was lying all along, which would mean he wasn’t, which would mean he was and so on forever. But then he proved it. As he squirmed and fidgeted in his seat, he told Kimmel, apropos of nothing, that he had “extraordinarily heavy saliva”, which was why he couldn’t spit very far, no more than a foot. He also said that he quite enjoyed being spat on in an erotic way. The audience loved it, and it was quite funny. But it was also quite weird. 

“OK, I can explain,” he says. “On all those talk shows you have to do a pre-interview with some producer the day before. And then a second before you go on, they tell you what you said in the pre-interview to prep you for it – and then you have to go and say it all again. So, I was sitting there with Jimmy, and that story I said the day before suddenly seemed not funny at all. I mean it wasn’t that funny in the first place and now I’ve got to perform this unfunny story which Jimmy’s going to fake laugh at it, and… I just can’t take it. So I started panicking. I was literally pouring with sweat. And I felt myself drooling. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m starting to drool.’ So, I made up this stupid story about having heavy saliva, and Jimmy’s face just went, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’” 

He laughs. It’s a mumbled kind of laugh, full of self-deprecation and restraint. “As soon as I saw his face, I felt much better!” he grins. “I was back in my comfort zone!”
He’s telling me all this while sitting in my backyard in Eagle Rock, Northeast Los Angeles. Yes, Robert Pattinson is in my house, having a beer while I putz around with the grill, a scenario that probably ought to feel weirder than it does. He’s never come over before. It’s not like we’re mates or anything. We only met the one time, three years ago, an occasion he’s long forgotten. 

It was some cattle call press junket for the last Twilight movie. He was holed up in a sterile hotel suite in Beverly Hills, and I was one of a trillion journalists he met that day. I remember he showed up with a T-shirt that flapped open at the side and he hadn’t noticed – it wasn’t a fashion thing, the stitching had just gone. He mentioned his nerves then, too, saying he got so jumpy before auditions that he took a Xanax before the final Twilight one, only he overdid it, and showed up all drowsy. “Oh that interview! I had to live that down. People were like, ‘Drug addict!’ My fault. I brought it up about 50 times in the interviews, too.” 

This time, I suggested we try something a bit more congenial. Maybe hang out like regular people for a change? After all, he’s a bloke from Barnes, south-west London, at the end of the day, 28 years old. Perhaps we could go down the pub? His people said it was too public: Barnes or not, he’s still Robert Pattinson. 

What if he wore a disguise, I said? Isn’t that what celebrities do, wear ski masks to Starbucks and so on? They baulked: Robert really doesn’t go out much, and when he does, he just goes to other people’s houses. 

And that’s how it happened. I said, come to my house, I’ll put the beers on ice and grill up some lunch. It’s LA in the summertime, it’s what people do. And now here he is, this tall and entirely affable Englishman in a white T-shirt and black jeans, petting my dogs and making pleasant remarks about the neighbourhood. There’s no publicist in tow, no minder at the gate. You have to hand it to him: not a lot of movie stars would pitch up at a reporter’s house like this, and subject themselves to questioning. 

And yet today he seems relaxed, quite happy to just chill and natter as I get the food going. No sign of those nerves he was talking about. The goal is cedar plank salmon, grilled vegetables and no explosions. I thought keep it light because you never know with actors. Pick a recipe that looks harder than it is. And get loads of sides, just in case. I got a bit carried away at the Wholefoods deli this morning. Potato salad, orzo with feta, some kale thingy with raisins... Does R-Patz like raisins? Can I Google it? 

“Sorry, I’d help but I’m useless with all that,” he says, pointing at the grill.
But grilling’s manly, that’s what they say. 

“I know, but my ideal of manliness is to be incapable of doing anything,” he grins.
What, like changing a tyre? 

“No, just anything. Be proud of your ignorance. ‘Don’t ask me, I’m a man! Get someone else to do it!’” He laughs and drinks his beer. “It’s funny, the less and less you do, the more the mountain of doing something grows. These days, just making a phone call is exhausting.” 

He’s not the practical type, let’s say. The other day, he tried opening a bottle with his iPhone; now he can’t turn off its speakerphone. He loves Game of Thrones, but he doesn’t know how to record it on his TV, so he watches it live every Sunday. There’s something of the eccentric about him, the scatterbrained professor, away in his thoughts. At least this time his T-shirt is intact. 

The one thing he might have done himself was drive here. He likes driving in LA, even with the traffic jams. He says he’s “a relatively solitary person”, so driving is perfect: he listens to stand-up comedy on Sirius satellite radio and the jams just melt away. But today, his assistant had to drop him off. Apparently, the paparazzi have got the scent again. A couple of days ago, they showed up outside Pattinson’s gym class and when his personal trainer told them the actor was not there and tried to move them on, a fight ensued which ended up all over TMZ. 

This morning, there were six cars outside his house. 

“I don’t understand why,” he says, looking puzzled. “I think it goes through periods where you’re assigned ‘this is the guy to follow’. But whenever I see a bunch of paparazzi hanging out, I always think, ‘Oh God, what have they found out!’” He laughs. “Oh, THAT love child! I totally forgot!” 

It’s not scandal that has put him in the cross hairs. He’s just not the scandal type. The only real gossip he’s been involved in was his split with Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart in 2012, from which he came out smelling of roses – it was Stewart who cheated on him, and with a married man, too. No, the reason the paps are in pursuit is more prosaic: he’s just busy, that’s all. Over the last year, he has been diligently making movie after independent movie, in what has been his first stretch of work post-Twilight. And so far, his direction seems clear – he’s working exclusively with auteurs, on films that are not obviously commercial, and in roles that are uniquely challenging and wildly different, one to the next.
Last summer, he finished The Rover in Australia, a dystopian western from David Michôd, who made 2010’s brilliant Animal Kingdom. Pattinson’s performance is already receiving rave reviews. He then spent 10 days on Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s merciless satire about Hollywood, followed by Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert in which he plays Lawrence of Arabia. This spring, he made Anton Corbijn’s Life, in which he plays the photographer Dennis Stock, who took iconic photos of celebrities in the Fifties. And later, there’s a crime drama by the French director Olivier Assayas, co-starring Robert De Niro.

These are just the confirmed productions. There’s a long list of other compelling indie projects in the pipeline. A film with James Gray (The Immigrant) based on David Grann’s book The Lost City of Z, and a couple of films that are actually being written for him – Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers), is writing him a gangster movie, set in Miami, and Brady Corbet, one of the killers in Michael Haneke’s blood-chilling Funny Games, is developing a script called Childhood of a Leader. “It’s about the youth of a future dictator in the Thirties,” he says. “Like an amalgamation of Hitler, Mussolini and some others. I don’t want to jinx it, but Brady is like a savant of film. I’ve known him for like eight years, and he’s only 25 now.” 

This is an extraordinary résumé he’s building. And he’s doing it with purpose, actively seeking out the filmmakers he admires. He cold-called Harmony Korine and met him for dinner, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “it took me a long time to realise I could do that”. 

If it looks like he’s picking projects that are everything that Twilight isn’t – intelligent, adult, independent – who can blame him? Twilight may have made $3.3bn worldwide, and earned Pattinson $20m for the last instalment alone, but much of it was extracted from the piggy banks of young tween girls, the One Direction demographic, not an audience known for its taste in movies. The series was critically panned, gleefully so, and neither Pattinson nor Stewart were spared. It fared poorly in comparisons with other huge franchises of the era like Harry Potter or Hunger Games. Even Pattinson expressed his reservations, while the series was underway. He told Vanity Fair, “It’s weird... kind of representing something you don’t particularly like.” 

But auteur-led films are exactly who he is. He’s not just trying to wash off the stink, he’s revealing himself. Pattinson was always an indie guy, a classicist, a fan of Godard, a true cinephile. He would show up on the Twilight set, reading Molière. Corbet describes him as being “uncommonly knowledgeable about cinema”. Even between Twilights, he would skip out to make ambitious dramas like Bel Ami and Cosmopolis, both in 2012. In May, David Cronenberg said, “He could grab that brass ring and keep doing big-budget studio movies, but it’s not his desire to be a big Hollywood star.” 

“I’ve literally only done jobs which interest me,” Pattinson says. “There have been two which I auditioned for and didn’t get, but other than that…” 

No franchises? 

“A couple of offers, but with those things, if you express any interest, you have to do a screen test or whatever, and they make you sign a six-picture deal before you even know what the part is. It’s crazy. And I didn’t grow up reading comic books and stuff, so…”
It’s risky what he’s doing. He has a long way to fall, and yet he’s chancing failure at every turn. It’s not easy to work with the best directors in the business, on increasingly ambitious roles. Especially when the critics have already drawn blood: during his career they’ve called him a minimalist who lacks passion and emotion. With Bel Ami, it’s a fair criticism, but not for Twilight – his character Edward Cullen is a vampire who isn’t expressive by nature. 

That’s why Twilight was, he says, “one of the hardest acting jobs I’ve ever done”. But fundamentally, he doesn’t care. He feels critics give indie movies an inordinately hard time anyway: “you’re judged so much more harshly if you step outside the norms of mass entertainment.” And anyway, he’s not doing it for the critics. Not even the audience.
“From my cod-psychoanalysis of myself, I think I do it for myself,” he says. “I like to see if I’m capable of something, and I don’t really care what people think, even though I read all the reviews. If it really mattered, it would have destroyed me years ago.”
So he’ll continue “going to school”, which is how he describes the path he has chosen. “I never went to acting school, so this is just me trying to get better.” And presumably, the filmmakers get a boost, too, from having such a big star attached – a boost in raising money, attracting an audience, generating publicity – all the things independent movies need? 

“Mmm…” Pattinson looks skeptical. “I don’t know. These films could all get made without me. It’s not like I even promote them that well.” Evidently his own narrative, about fame and paparazzi, tends to overwhelm whatever project he’s trying to push. “I tell every production company I work for, I’m probably going to fuck up your entire marketing campaign.” 

And as for this idea that the Twilight audience will follow him, Pattinson doesn’t buy it for a second. “They won’t go. I’ve said that from the beginning. Also, I’m trying to do stuff that will confuse an audience. When you watch a Joaquin Phoenix movie, his performance doesn’t remind you of his other performances. That element of being an actor is almost completely gone.” 

A nice thought, though – the Twilight demographic subjecting itself to the twisted visions of David Cronenberg. He beams. “We’ll see. I think Maps to the Stars is probably more accessible than The Rover…” 

*** 

'Maps…' is Pattinson’s second collaboration with the Canadian director, the first was Cosmopolis two years ago. And like so many of Cronenberg’s films, it’s unsettling, nightmarish even. Pattinson insists that he’s “the sweetest guy in the world, like a really kind university lecturer”. But Maps isn’t sweet or kind. If the Twihards come, they’d better be ready. 

Hollywood has long been satirised by filmmakers, but 'Map's goes further than anything previously – there’s incest, pyromania and murder, the deaths of both children and animals. The characters are so grotesque they’re often hard to watch, and yet since it’s Cronenberg, they’re also quite funny; it’s that queasy experience of being amused and deeply disturbed at the same time. 

Pattinson’s role is small but memorable. He’s a limo driver and one of the only sane characters on the screen, albeit an opportunistic and amoral one. He starts a relationship with a personal assistant (Mia Wasikowska), and then in full view of her, has sex with her boss, Julianne Moore. They do it in the back of his limo. It’s a scene he remembers well. “It was the first time I met Julianne,” he says. “And that was the first scene I shot. It was that part of the scene, too, the sex part.” 

This wasn’t some directorial manipulation to elicit a certain performance – it was just pragmatism, an efficient schedule. But for Pattinson it presented some unique challenges. Not only did he have to plunge into sex with a perfect stranger – and it wasn’t pretty sex, but grunting doggie style, neither side particularly enjoying themselves – but he had one of his nervous episodes in the process. Call it performance anxiety, just not that kind.
“I noticed I was sweating,” he says. “Like really heavy sweat.” Already there’s a theme here, just like the saliva story, Pattinson is a man who has sweaty adventures. When the going gets tough, his glands get going. In this case, we’re not talking a damp film of sweat across the brow, but big bulbous droplets, like he’s got malaria, or he’s a footballer in Manaus. “I remember trying to catch the drops as they fell onto her back. It was weird. Huge splashing drops. At one point she turned around and said, ‘Are you all right?’” (There may be no connection, but Pattinson took up meditation on the 'Maps' set.)
Moore won best actress at Cannes this year for her performance as Havana Segrand, a fading star who’s so damaged that she literally dances with joy when she hears that a rival actress’s son has drowned. In another scene, she invites her assistant, or “chore whore”, to watch as she tries to take a shit. “I’ve definitely met people like Julianne’s character,” he says. “I just don’t think she’s a bad person. I see her as desperate and sad. But maybe my moral compass is just all over the place!” 

What’s the worst behaviour you’ve seen? 

“There’s so much I… it’s amazing how quickly people change in this business. There was one guy who’d never been on a movie set before. And after just three days, he was holding out his water bottle and waiting for someone to take it. Three days. Some people just have it in them.” 

And people just accept it?  

“Well, yes, but it’s not like you get away with it. This actress was doing a scene in the bath and she kept complaining about the temperature, how it was too hot or too cold. So everyone pissed in it and put a bunch of bubble bath in afterwards so you couldn’t smell it! This stuff happens. That’s why I avoid asking for anything. I don’t want to get anyone’s piss on me.” 

*** 

There was no chance of having lunch at Robert’s house (we asked). It’s just not his style. “People have journalists over because it’s part of the whole ‘show’,” he says. “But my house doesn’t reflect my personality. There’s, like, no furniture! It looks a bit psychotic.” He’s renting a house on Mulholland Drive, which he describes as “weird and a bit cabin-fevery”. He’s been there a year. “But I spend most of my time in one room anyway.” 

Before that, though, he owned a mansion in Griffith Park, a gorgeous neighbourhood of canyons, hikes and all kinds of trendiness in central LA. Not that Pattinson could enjoy much of that stuff: he hiked the canyon maybe twice, and as always, avoided all the cool bars. “I can’t go to hip places,” he shrugs. “I have to find weird little restaurants on the fringes. But they’re so much nicer. I love empty bars. Any empty bar, actually.”
He adored his house. Soon as he saw it, he fell for it. “The garden was so huge there were people working on it every day, and you forget,” he says. “So you’d be naked in the pool, and there’s the guy for the koi pond. Hi!” 

He’d still be there, if he wasn’t so popular with the paparazzi – that is, if he wasn’t Robert Pattinson. The snappers were everywhere. “They photographed anyone who came up to the gate, anyone who rang the bell, and they followed any car that came in and out,” he says. “I used to dress up my assistant as me, and get him to drive off with like five cars following him around for hours.” 

So he sold it for $6.37m earlier this year, and for a while, he might have gone in any direction. He thought about Toronto but “the winters are ridiculous”. New York was a possibility, but “everyone honks their horns all the time, which drives me absolutely insane!” And London just didn’t feel right anymore, not after seven years in LA.
“My friends are all having kids and stuff, it’s a totally different life,” he says. “And I like people who want to actually make things and do stuff. In England, it’s so difficult that most people just give up.” 

So LA won out. “Just waking up when it’s sunny every day means so much to me,” he says. “I like the levity here.” But this time, it had to be a gated community, and there aren’t that many of them in LA, oddly enough. “All the houses are like $25m, these enormous castles,” he says. It’s not the money that’s the issue, it’s the size. His last place, he says, was like Versailles, but he leads a somewhat ascetic lifestyle now, immersed in his interests. His only real extravagance is his collection of 17 guitars. 

So he rented the place he’s in now. And gates give him great comfort. Besides, his next door neighbour is Suge Knight, the former CEO of Death Row Records. The same Knight who was entrenched in the Bloods gang of Compton, who would carry out his own beatings, and who has done his share of prison. “He’s really nice!” Robert says. “I see him playing catch with his kid and stuff. And he lives in this nice little cottage, it’s really tasteful!” 

*** 

It’s easy to forget that Pattinson didn’t arrive at his extreme celebrity in increments – he was plunged in. Imagine what that’s like. 

You’re a 15-year-old in south-west London, acting in the local theatre company because that’s where the cute girls hang out. Your mum’s a model booker, your dad sells vintage cars, and you’d like to be a singer, deep down, so you do so in a band called Bad Girls. Even after you score a part in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), you’re still not sold on acting. Maybe political speechwriting is more your thing? But your agent persuades you to go to LA to read for some romcom called Post Grad (2009), so you go and stay at her house, try for the part, and when you don’t get it, you’re crushed. You’re 21 and it feels like your career is over already.

When your agent brings up this other audition, you say fine, whatever, no one else is hiring you. It’s some vampire movie and the director has already seen 5,000 boys. Also: you’re too old. But who knows, maybe it’ll be like the director’s other movie, Thirteen, which was a pretty cool indie. 

And that was it – last chance saloon one minute, Bieber fever the next. You stayed more or less the same, but the world around you changed forever. 

“I remember when it happened,” he says. “I was going to clubs in LA and you had to call the promoters ahead of time to get on the guest list. But one time I forgot to call, and I was on the list anyway. That’s when I knew. I showed up with mustard down my T-shirt and they’re like giving me the wink, ‘Yeah, man, you’re on the list.’” 

And from there the madness began – the constant screaming, the hounding by the press, the dramatic loss of privacy. Dating Kristen Stewart didn’t exactly help. The Twilight audience was already having issues separating fantasy from fact, and here was a real-life soap opera to confuse them further. You know the juicy part, how Stewart had an affair (with the director Rupert Sanders in July 2012), how the tabloids went bananas. On Conan, Will Ferrell broke down and expressed the feelings of a million Twihards: “She’s a trampire!” 

Like all things Twilight, the whole K-Stew / R-Patz saga was horribly overcooked. It’s not unusual for co-stars to date – they were both living and working in a strange bubble for many years, both of them under intense and obsessive scrutiny. And then it ended in betrayal. 

“Shit happens, you know?” he laughs. “It’s just young people… it’s normal! And honestly, who gives a shit?” 

Well, a lot of people, that’s what’s weird. 

“The hardest part was talking about it afterwards. Because when you talk about other people, it affects them in ways you can’t predict,” he says. “It’s like that scene in Doubt[2008, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a priest suspected of inappropriate behaviour], where he’s talking about how to take back gossip? They throw all those feathers from a pillow into the sky and you’ve got to go and collect all the feathers.” 

*** 

Some pity Pattinson for the way celebrity has deformed his life. We assume fame damages people, especially the young, so Pattinson must surely be hurting. 

But he isn’t. Not really. He always saw his experience as surreal and not about him at all. There’s a toughness about him, that’s not immediately apparent, his nervous episodes notwithstanding. He emerged from the Twilight zone, as an amused observer of his own experience, equally practised at deflecting adoration and its opposite. While it wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t that hard either. “There was a time, three years ago, when I didn’t know where to live where I wouldn’t be trapped in my home, you know? But I worked it out. It’s not that big a deal in the end. Half of it is in your head.” 

He has a very English, roll-up-your-sleeves resilience. He didn’t reach for rehab or therapists to help him on his way. His own grip is pretty sure. “I know what makes me happy, if I’m feeling down,” he grins. “Doing things that make your friends jealous. It really works!” He laughs. “I just say, ‘I’m working with David Cronenberg,’ and they go, ‘Oh really?’ I love that.” 

His friends might well be jealous of the notice he’s getting for The Rover right now. It’s arguably his best performance, and it responds to critics who would call him unexpressive. He might be a minimalist in real life – living in a single room in an unfurnished house, meditating and relishing his time alone – but as an actor, he’s opening up. 

Pattinson plays a man who’s been left to die by his brother in post-apocalypse Australia. The brother steals Guy Pearce’s car, and Pattinson and Pearce team up to find him – Pearce to recover his car, Pattinson to find out why he’d been abandoned. His character is clearly impaired somehow. In the film, Pearce asks him, “What are you, a halfwit?” Pattinson is all tics and stumbling speech, a weak, confused look in his eyes. He may not have gone full retard, but he’s on the way, surely? 

“That’s not how I thought about him,” he says. He saw his character as someone who’d been severely bullied, like a battered wife who kept going back to her abuser. “He has zero self-esteem, he’s just been criticised so much, that every time he starts speaking, he’s scared that someone will shut him down.” 

The location was epic: nine hours north of Adelaide, in the middle of nowhere, 150 miles from the next town. The two actors lived in old shipping containers fitted with windows and swarming with flies, in a village of only 50 people. Temperatures routinely rose to 49ºC. And the kangaroos were so unaccustomed to seeing vehicles that they’d often just jump out in front of them. “Half the crew would have, like, blood splattered all over their cars,” he says. “It’s dangerous. If they jump into your windscreen, they’ll freak out and just kick you to death inside your car.” 

He loved it there. David Michôd told The LA Times, “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.” No one knew him there. He could go anywhere he wanted. The outback suited him perfectly, and he still misses the isolation. “I forget what the aboriginal language is, but there’s no word for ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’. And there was this guy, who’d just sit, covered in flies, the entire day, waiting to be called onto set. No comment, nothing. There’s a Zen you get out there. I mean there’s nothing to do anyway. It’s not like you have to get across town for a meeting!” 

We sit for a moment and listen to the birds. It’s been a good lunch. He polished off the fish and helped himself to beers – three each, which isn’t bad going, especially in this city. It’s not the outback, but it’s quiet here. And he likes a bit of silence. Pattinson the minimalist. I ask him whether he had any nervous episodes on The Rover, his most open and vulnerable performance yet. Clearly it wasn’t short of sweat, it was 49ºC. He thinks for a minute. “Nope.” 

And his phone goes off. “Sorry, this might be my…” And a voice says out loud, “OK, buddy, time to go.” And he laughs. “I’ve got to go across town for a meeting.”

The Rover is released on August 15. Maps to the Stars is out in the autumn.

source: Tumblr: katy677

[PRESS SCAN] Total Film Magazine (Uk) - July 2014

On sold this friday...

Maps to the Stars is featured in the latest issue of Total Film magazine in thier '10 Coolest Movies Coming Your Way' section... and also feature interviews with David, Rob & cie.
the itvs were done at Cannes earlier last month...

click to read...

source: MapsToTheStarsFilm.com

Robert Pattinson on the cover of "LittleWhite Lies #54"...

On sale 3d July 2014...

from Little White Lies

Which A-list British star features on our July/August cover? Read on to find out... 

This summer let LWLies take you Down Under with our special tribute to David Michôd's scorched-earth crime drama, The Rover. Set in Australia in a dystopic near-future, the film stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson as you've never seen him before, and hits UK cinemas 15 August. 

Inside Timba Smits striking cover art, LWLies goes face-to-face with Robert Pattinson in one of his most candid and revealing interviews, while David Michôd and Guy Pearce reflect on the shared cultural motifs that informed both The Rover and his astonishing debut, Animal Kingdom. 

There's also a bumper feature on Aussie cinema, featuring the remarkable stories of Australia’s first movie icon, Ned Kelly, and original screen prankster, Yahoo Serious, plus a celebration of forgotten Ozploitation essentials. Director Rolf De Heer reveals the cultural significance of Indigenous icon David Gulpilil, Ivan Sen identifies the different ways of examining Australia’s cultural melting pot, and John Hillcoat, director of The Proposition and The Road, explains his obsession with the end of the world. 

.... 

LWLies 54 is on general sale 3 July and available for pre-order now from our online shop.
Subscribers will start receiving their copies from Saturday 28 June.

you can check on their FB: littlewhiteliesmagazine ou on their official website Little White Lies


source: Tumblr: dazzledbyrob

New *STILL* of Robert Pattinson and Guy Pearce ... in "The Rover"...

aka Rey and Eric...

from LATimes

“The Rover” is a bleak work, and an uncompromisingly violent one, but it’s been made with so much skill that it’s hard to get it out of your mind. The second feature film by Australian writer-director David Michod, responsible for the surprise 2010 critical success “Animal Kingdom,” it confirms him as an impressive filmmaker with a talent for creating distinctive worlds and depositing us right in the heart of them. 

Set in an economically impoverished future, “The Rover” stars Guy Pearce in a performance of pure controlled ferocity. He plays a man on an implacable, obsessive stop-at-nothing quest to recover his stolen car, with an unrecognizable Robert Pattinson equally strong as a weaker man who gets pulled along in his wake. Tense and remorseless and shot in 100-degrees-plus heat, this is a film that chills the blood as well as the soul.

source: ToR

- Buzzfeed - *INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson... at "The Rover" Los Angeles Press Junket...

...

from Buzzfeed

Robert Pattinson Is Putting “Twilight” Behind Him 

In The Rover’s bleak universe, there is virtually no backstory — illustrative of a world in which nothing really matters — and we know little about Robert Pattinson’s Rey other than that he and his older brother (Scoot McNairy) are in a small band of thugs who were violently thwarted during a criminal act we don’t see. An injured Rey has been abandoned for expedience’s sake, which is how he becomes a hostage to Eric (Guy Pearce), whose car has been stolen by Rey’s former friends. (Eric really wants that car back, for a reason that is revealed only in the movie’s final moments.) As Rey, Pattinson plays a “half-wit,” as Eric calls him, a far cry from Twilight’s Edward Cullen, the emo vampire who served as a tweenage fantasy. 

The Rover is David Michôd’s second feature as a director, following up on 2010’s lauded, provocative Animal Kingdom. And though it takes place in Australia, where Michôd is from, Rey and his brother inexplicably have American Southern accents. It’s good for Pattinson to sound nothing like Edward, the character that made him famous. Rey starts out fearful — in one scene he folds himself into a fetal position. But he also changes as the movie goes on (to describe would be to spoil). In Variety, Scott Foundas called it a “career-redefining performance” for Pattinson. 

In an interview with BuzzFeed this week in Beverly Hills, Pattinson discussed The Rover (which premiered at Cannes last month and comes out in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, and will be released nationally next Friday), and his post-Twilight career. And he has been working a lot: In addition to David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, which also premiered at Cannes, he will soon appear in Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert, Anton Corbijn’s Life, and Olivier Assayas’ Idol’s Eye with Robert De Niro, which has not yet begun filming. As someone who tripped into huge stardom after he was cast in Twilight, and then fell into a viper’s nest of paparazzi as one-half of a tabloid couple while he dated his co-star Kristen Stewart, Pattinson, now 28, described life after Edward as a “process.” 

He has now lived a good portion of his life hunted, both by paps and fans, but in person, he is neither brooding nor tortured. Actually, he was quick to laugh. And he seems to have figured out how to live a sane life, if not a normal one. 

You do a Southern accent for this movie, as well as a number of vocal and facial tics. Were those as written or did you develop them with David Michôd?Robert Pattinson: It said he was from the South, but not a specific place. I guess all those sorts of tics and things — it was just quite jerkily written? So when you start saying it out loud, it just ends up coming out in your body. 

The Rover seems like it was grueling to make. It looks hot, and there are all those flies. Was it? And was that helpful for the role? 

RP: I thought it was really easy. I think the most stressful thing in movies is when the weather is really random. Then everyone is just panicking all the time. But it was just sort of hot all the time. If you were trying to play someone who was clean, then it would be incredibly stressful. To have someone coming in and touching up your makeup every 10 seconds — but you were just sitting in a pile of mud, it doesn’t really make a difference. You could just play in the dirt. 

You were wearing the same thing the entire time. 

RP: I don’t even think they had doubles of the clothes. It took a long time. We went through hundreds of pairs of jeans. It was mainly about the feel — the way the costume department distressed them. We literally put glue in it to make them sit a certain way. They were, like, thick. But I just kind of knew how I wanted to feel. Also, the T-shirt, I knew from the audition exactly what T-shirt I wanted to wear. The colors and everything. 

I want to ask about the scene when you sing along with “Pretty Girl Rock.” It’s out of nowhere, and lovely. 

RP: When I got to that part in the script, that was one of the main turning points: Wow, this is completely on another level to most things I’m reading. And so brave as well — doing something that could be completely baffling to people. I thought it was going to be a tiny insert, and when I walked in to do the scene, David’s got this massive push-in on a track that’s like a 100-foot-long track. And just pushing in for almost the entire song. It was kind of great. 

It was a sweet moment — you really feel for the character who’s never lived a different kind of life. 

RP: He’s never really learned how to think like a normal person. He has no concept of what his decisions will affect, because no decision he’s ever made has ever affected anything before. 

Twilight made you a rich movie star and paparazzi target. Now that it’s been almost two years since Breaking Dawn Part 2 came out, how do you look back on the experience? 

RP: I knew when I signed up after the first one came out, I knew it was going to be about a 10-year process to really — I’m not sure what! To get to the next plateau. I’ve been extremely lucky as well, but it kind of does seem like there’s little gradations — every year, every job, something happens, and people’s perception changes a little bit. I don’t look back on it being a different part of my life. It’s all one road, really. 

A lot of are actors go back and forth between big studio movies and smaller indies. But since Twilight, you seem like you’ve avoided studio films. Is that deliberate? 

RP: It hasn’t really come up. Maybe there was a little period after the first Twilight where just because you’re the new thing, you get offered a bunch of big budget things. And nothing really connected with me. But I think my energy and also how people perceive me — I don’t fit too many roles like that. I never played team sports in school, and I think people can tell! As I get older, the parts become a little bit more open. But the young guy parts in big budget movies, you can always tell the guy has played team sports. I hated them. 

I was going to ask you whether you feel Twilight has held you back, but now I think I should ask whether or not playing team sports has. 

RP: It’s just weird. I think I just gravitate toward loner parts. I feel my emotional reactions to things are quite off a little bit. I remember doing Twilight and Catherine Hardwicke just being, like, “Why are you looking at her like that? You look like you want to kill her.” I’m, like, “I do? That’s, like, a love look!” I try to do things with Cosmopolis and this — it’s an emotional spectrum that’s slightly off. I feel like I can commit to that a little bit more than hit the traditional beats. 

You seem very director-focused in your choices. 

RP: You try and limit the margin for error as much as you can. Even if you end up doing a shitty movie, but you’ve been working with Herzog or something, you’re not doing a superhero movie that’s supposed to be something completely different. And then if you make a shitty superhero movie, it’s like, what do you expect? 

Did you just say that the Werner Herzog movie you’re in, playing T.E. Lawrence, is shitty? 

RP: No, not at all! I’m hardly in it anyway. 

Oh, is that right? I couldn’t tell. 

RP: I was only there for like 10 days. No, I think it’s going to be cool. I saw some of the stuff with Franco and Nicole Kidman that looked really good. It’s insurance. With Michôd, I wanted to work with him for ages. I thought Animal Kingdom was one of the best debuts in the last 10 years. 

You have a bunch of movies coming up, but one that jumped out at me was Life, the story of James Dean and Dennis Stock, the photographer. A lot of the parts you’ve taken since Twilight seem to have nothing to do with your life experience — but the idea of photography and a young star does intersect. 

RP: It’s funny, I didn’t think about that. What I liked about it was that it was about professional jealousy. It was before James Dean was famous, but obviously he loved having his photo taken. Both of them were super arrogant, and they both think they’re the artist. Dennis was so filled with neuroses and jealous of everything. I didn’t really think about the celebrity aspect of it. I don’t think Dennis ever thought about it. Also, I think afterward, he was pissed that that was his legacy. 

I read an interview with you recently in which you said you weren’t sure whether you’ve found your feet yet as an actor. Do you think you ever will? 

RP: I don’t know. In some ways, hopefully not. The only thing I deal with every single job is trying to overcome confidence issues. I think in some ways, it’s helped me just having fallen into it, and not really being, like, I need this. That’s when you go crazy and you lose control of your personal life. In some ways, it is very frustrating when I’ll know how to do something in my head, and something inhibits it. It just drives me nuts. I think it’s good when there’s no expectations of the character. And then I’m fine. 

What do you do when you find you can’t do something? 

RP: It’s just, like, horrible. There was one moment when I was doing Life. I knew exactly how to do this scene. I’d been planning the whole scene for the whole movie. And it just, for whatever reason, it was just not happening. And no one else knows. I’m just, like, losing my mind on the set. Everyone’s so uncomfortable. Also, with a little bit of experience you realize, OK, I’m just going to not let anyone else speak, and deliver each line in about 10 different ways. And hopefully they’ll fix it in the edit! Can you just make my performance for me? 

Is it frustrating? 

RP: It’s the most horrible thing ever. Especially because most of the time, especially in big emotional scenes, it’s just because you feel like you’re faking it. And you know how not to fake it, but it’s not happening in your body. And there’s nothing you can do. At the end of the day, people watching it half the time can’t tell at all. Or 90% of the time, you can watch a scene you think is the worst scene ever and you’re completely faking it — and no one knows. 

I recently reread that Vanity Fair cover story about you from 2011 during which your life seemed pretty unlivable because of the paparazzi. Have things improved at all? 

RP: I remember doing that interview, and I thought I was, like, telling jokes. Then the interview comes out and it sounds like I’m about to kill myself. 

Oh! Part of it was her commenting on what she observed about what your life was like. 

RP: I was, like, How have you observed this? We just sat in someone’s house. Whatever. I guess from an outside perspective, there’s a period of contraction in your life where you have to get used to what feels like your life becoming impossibly smaller. But that was about four years ago. I felt a little funny then. But you realize what you like doing, and suddenly it becomes easier. Some people get OK getting photographed doing their groceries or going out of whatever. I realized I cannot handle that at all. And so, I just don’t go to places where I get photographed. And as soon as I made that decision — don’t worry about it, stop complaining about it — it was a massive weight taken off. 

So, there are ways to live your life not being photographed? 

RP: Yeah. 100%. 

Even here in L.A.? 

RP: There are a very limited amount of places you can go. If you go to The Grove, you’ve got to accept something is going to happen. 

You can’t go to the Apple Store at The Grove. 

RP: I miss that place. Watching the fountains! 

So, you like living in Los Angeles? I mean, you could live wherever you want. 

RP: I always thought I was going to move back to London, but London’s changed so much since I left. A lot of my friends have left and stuff, or they have families. It’s different. Also, my main interest in my life at the moment is film, and this is the best place to be for film. Also, I like the kind of levity of living here as well. People want to get stuff done — they’re not downers all the time. In a lot of big cities, most people are just, like, Oh, god, it’s impossible. People aren’t like that in L.A. And I really like it. 

In that Vanity Fair interview, you said you admired Charlie Sheen. 

RP: I did? 

I’m sure it was very of the moment! You said you liked that he was a crazy person who doesn’t give a fuck. And in The Hollywood Reporter recently, you talked about being a fan of Harmony Korine’s for what I imagine are the same reasons. Could you not give a fuck if you tried? 

RP: I do, in a way. But I don’t want people to hate me. I basically do whatever I want. But one of the aspects of what I want is, I want people to like me!

source: Cersei via ROBsessed

Robert Pattinson on the covers of "The Courier Mail" (Australia)...

...

 


source: ROBsessed

New *INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson with "The Courier Mail' (Australia) ...

+ David Michôd about Rob...

from The Courier Mail

Seven weeks in the baking heat of the South Australian Outback has accomplished something even an army of vengeful Volturi couldn’t. 

Described by one influential industry magazine as “career redefining”, Robert Pattinson’s against-type performance as a slow-witted drifter in desert Noir thriller The Rover has enabled him to emerge from the long shadow cast by the Twilight franchise. 

That might explain the 28-year-old English actor’s relaxed and charming demeanour during interviews for David Michod’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to Animal Kingdom — the film that reinvented both Jacki Weaver’s and Ben Mendelsohn’s careers — which stands in marked contrast to his polite and unassuming but slightly-guarded approach to the media at the height of the Twilight phenomenon. 

Pattinson says the glowing reviews that came out of the Cannes Film Festival last month, where The Rover screened in a prestigious midnight slot, felt like a validation “for about five seconds”. 

But his next film is almost more important. 

“With all that Twilight stuff, I know that if I was not me, I would be judging me,’’ he says. 

“It’s almost like setting up a brand. If you get enough good reviews so that people go in expecting a good movie, then half your job is done.” 

Guy Pearce, Pattinson’s co-star in The Rover, made the transition from soapie heart-throb to serious actor two decades ago with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, which was also selected for a midnight screening slot at Cannes. 

“Basically, he is a leading man but he consistently does character parts,’’ says Pattinson. 

“I always kind of admired how he did that and it is basically the same career path that I would like to have.” 

The actor has just finished filming his own Queen of the Desert, helmed by veteran German director Werner Herzog and starring Nicole Kidman as archaeologist Gertrude Bell, in Morocco. 

The role of T.E. Lawrence, he says, was his most challenging thus far. 

“Even though it’s only a few scenes, it was definitely the scariest thing I have done. I am playing Lawrence of Arabia. Those are huge shoes to fill. It was just crazy walking in with the outfit on.”
Even when Edward Cullen was dominating his life, Pattinson still made time for other projects, such as Remember Me with Australia’s Emilie de Ravin, Water for Elephants, with Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz, and the period drama Bel Ami, with Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci. 

His collaborations with veteran Canadian director David Cronenberg, on Cosmopolis and Map to the Stars, for which co-star Julianne Moore won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival this year, gained art house respect. 

But it’s the character of Rey, a slow-witted misfit needy almost to the point of self-annihilation, that has drawn a firm post-Twilight line in the sand. 

Michod put Pattinson through two rigorous three-hour audition sessions before casting him in the role. 

“I had always thought he was some angular, super good-looking brooding guy,’’ says the director. 

“Then I met him and he was way more interesting than that. He wasn’t just a pretty boy. He had a really interesting face. He was interestingly awkward. And clearly very bright. 

“And the fact that he was willing to come back two days later (for a second audition) said to me quite definitively that he really wanted to do this movie and he really wanted to work hard. 

“It also said that he was humble enough to not think it should be handed to him on a platter.” 

Since The Rover had a budget of $12 million, and required a challenging, seven-week shoot in the South Australian Outback in February and March, it’s clear that neither money nor glamour were driving factors in Pattinson’s desire to land the role. 

But the remoteness of the locations might actually have been a bonus for Pattinson, who would have been keen to escape the media attention that followed his split with long-time girlfriend Kristen Stewart in the wake of her affair with Snow White and The Huntsman director Rupert Sanders. 

“The environment doesn’t really let you go outside,’’ he said during a break from filming in the one-pub town of Marree, at the intersection of the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks. The mercury on set that day hovered around the early 40s. 

Time and distance have changed his perspective. 

“I am constantly being prompted to say how awful it was,’’ Pattinson said during a press conference last week ahead of the film’s Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival. 

But I really liked it. I just found it incredibly serene being able to look to the horizon. I liked the hardness of the landscape as well. There’s something strangely mystical about it.”
The external transformation of Pattinson from handsome heart-throb to brutalised victim took some doing. 

The hair and make-up department sprayed him with a combination of olive oil, fly spray and sunscreen to achieve Rey’s sallow, unhealthy-looking complexion. The actor’s arms were shaved to make him look thinner, even whiter, and more vulnerable. And his hair was shorn crudely to help give the impression that he was suffering from a nasty case of mange. It was a daily process that took almost two hours to complete. 

Pattinson’s internal shift is even more startling. 

Ironically, the actor credits his experience on the Twilight films as a major factor in helping him find that character that allowed him move on. 

“I never really had anyone pick on me at school. I think I just managed to skirt the edge of every different little group imaginable,’’ says Pattinson. 

“But for some reason, I just got Rey, who has been bullied his whole life. 

“I think it’s about fear as well. And I guess maybe the last few years, being a little scared of crowds, being a little bit paranoid when you are walking down the street, that fed into it a little bit. 

“(That sense of) being extremely wary and also not knowing how people will react. There are trust issues there. Being a little more isolated, you get bit dislocated from normal behaviour. 

“Rey is looking at people not knowing whether they are going to slap him or laugh.” 

The Rover opens in Australia on June 12.

source: RPL

*REVIEWS* "The Rover" at the Sidney Film Festival 2014.... with Robert Pattinson and Guy Pearce...

...

 

 

 

from Graffiti with Punctuation

Pattinson is nothing short of unbelievable. Forget anything that you’ve ever seen him in before, this is a towering, career defining performance. Like Leo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Ryan Gosling’s Half Nelson or Al Pacino’s Dog Day Afternoon – this is the one that sees the young actor nurtured to his full potential.Every single stammering unenunciated southern turn of phrase disguises the erudite Brit made famous by being the prettiest, sparkliest vampire ever. Watching his impressionable nature absorb the bleak philosophy of our man with no name (Pearce) creates a tragic Stockholm syndrome, which also affects his companion.

from Matt's Movie Reviews 

David Michod’s The Rover is a brooding and intense journey into a graceless world, with Robert Pattinson delivering a fascinating, career defining performance in the process. 

... 

The two man show of Pearce and Pattinson is outstanding. Pearce delivers one of his strongest turns in his portrayal of a man wounded, scarred and hardened by an uncompromising land, while also deploying a stare that can burn a hole through a brick wall.
Yet it’s Pattinson who fascinates with his turn as Rey, taking pains to shed that teen heartthrob image with a grubby and dirty look, complete with thick southern accent. Portraying a man of limited mental capacity, Pattinson is almost childlike in a performance sprinkled with jitters, hesitations and ramblings, yet never resulting in caricature, a wholly sympathetic character in an unsympathetic world.It is indeed proving to be an interesting post-Twilight career for Pattinson, who is wisely choosing projects directed by filmmakers of integrity (two films by David Cronenberg proceeded this, and films by Werner Herzog and Anton Corbijn will come after).

from SciFiNow

Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson are superb in bleak near-future chase film The Rover. 

... 

It’s a tremendous performance from Pattinson, who avoids easy choices and cliches to make Rey a sympathetic and ultimately moving figure. Eric’s looking for what’s his, and Rey is looking for family. It’s this relationship that provides The Rover with much of its power. Pearce seethes with searing, desperate energy that’s beautifully matched by Pattinson’s mumbling, cautious attempts at optimism. Some of the film’s most affecting moments come when Michôd’s camera lingers on the characters when they’re alone: Pearce staring at a room full of silent caged dogs, or Pattinson quietly singing “Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful,” along to Keri Hilson’s ‘Pretty Girl Rock’ on the car radio. 

... 

The Rover is brutal and gripping, and its profound sense of loss gives it impressive emotional depth; it will stay with you long after the credits roll.

from The L Magazine

It’s not hard to guess whether the “halfwit” Rey has something to teach the far-gone loner Eric about the value of fellow feeling, but Pattinson is enough of a revelation to hold you through these more straight-ahead passages. Speaking with a Southern drawl and struggling through something of a stammer, the actor turns in a heavily (but not distractingly) mannered performance, portraying Rey as shell-shocked, chronically nervous about where his allegiances should lie.

from Sydney Morning Herald 

If there is less spontaneity, there is more to think about, which can have its attractions. Pattinson, almost unrecognizable as a dim-witted boy from the American south, renovates his screen image with this performance, but the film offers meagre emotional rewards, given that the two leading men barely speak.

from 2ser

The film follows Guy Pearce's unnamed character as he seeks to get back something that was taken from him. For most of his journey he's stuck with Rey, played by Robert Pattinson in astounding form. Their relationship is an awkward one, which quickly switches between death threats and saving each others lives, more than once. I loved this film. The cinematography is stunning, the sound design sets the perfect mood and the acting is brilliant. The breathtaking shots of deserts, mountains and towns make the setting as important a character as any of the actors.

from Director's Cut Movies

Robert Pattinson steals the show with his groundbreaking performance, Guy Pearce now trailing too far behind. Robert Pattinson's not too bad an actor, it's just the material that's bringing his credibility down such as the Twilight Saga. The Rover will literally change everybody's perspective on him. Pattinson gives one of the best male performances of the year and it's certainly his best performance to date 

...... 

To sum up, The Rover is a triumphant return of David Michôd with a fantastic screenplay, brilliant direction, successful cinematography, shocking and gruesome violence and some of the best performances of the year.

from Spotlight Report 

To say this feature is as bleak as the terrain it is set in would be an understatement. Bleak but beautiful as is the harsh world that sets the backdrop for the picture. There are three undeniable stars of The Rover – Pearce, Pattinson and the Australian landscape that is equal measures stunning, dangerous and unyielding. 

..... 

Whilst Pearce appears to be dead inside, Pattinson’s sweet naivety and loyalty is endearing. He has misplaced hope in a world where there is no place for such luxuries. He plays the role perfectly and flexes acting muscles that have previously lain dormant in the less challenging roles he is known for, capturing the stunning simplicity of his character. 

source: thanks to ROBsessed for compiling them...
gifs: Tumblr: sarark

[PRESS SCAN] VSD #1919 (France)

...

translation...

A Hardworking Pupil
The former vampire of The Twilight Saga was one the starS in Cannes where he presented The Rover, a radical road movie.

"I'm starting to like it". Outside, a huge wind is sweepinp across La Croisette. But this time, Robert Pattinson is not responsible. They are real blast of winds that are trying to destroy the tent that has been set up on the terrace in the Palais des Festivals. The actor will trigger off a tornado in the evening while he was going up the stairs for the midnight screening of The Rover. Since the selection of Cosmopolis last year [in 2012], Pattinson feels at home in Cannes "When I saw the reactions to the film, I thought I was on the right path. I started to be recognized as a true actor, not as the Twilight hearthrob anymore." 

However we won't see The Rover as a mere excuse to achieve it. The movie made by the Asutralian director, David Michôd, known for Animal Kingdom, should stay as one of the striking alien movie this year. We discover an Australia burdened by an economic apocalypse, a guy (Guy Pearce who is aweseome) angered by the robbery of the only thing he had: his car. The quest to get it back becomes an obsession. And the corpses are going to add up. We think a lot to Mad Max, another post apocalyptic australian delirium and we are admirative in front of the project's radicalism. (A few words but a lot of driving). Nihilism to which Pattinson, with rotten teeth, contributes. We'll soon find him with another crazy director, Werner Herzog "I will never deny the Twilight era. But I love the cinema. I'm currently buying tons and tons of DVDs, in order to improve my movie culture. In front of Herzog, I behaved like a fan. I still have a lot to learn."

Scan and translation: Le Rpattz Club

[PRESS SCAN] Empire Magazine (Australia) - July 2014

...

  

  

transcript from the main article...

Rob's quotes and Guy and producer Liz Watts' comments about Rob...

Both of his stars took a while to get it. In the beegarden of the Marree Hotel, which the production has made its common area, the then-26-year-old Twilight star is relaxed, his scenes now completed. He explains what the trouble with Rey was."I think David likes to look at him like he's actually a child, 'cos there's something kind of off about Reynolds. The first thing I thought when I read the script was, 'Is he mentally handicapped or something?' Because the pieces don't add up like a normal character, but in a very subtle way. He's just extremely naive and innocent, but to the point where it's not normal, like he's actually got a problem with it". 

... 

Pearce is also quick to heap praise on his co-star Pattinson, who has stepped outside any perceived comfort zone, covered in filth and a prosthetic mouthful of rotting teeth. No glittering in the sunshine here. "Rob is a really bright guy and he was keen to do whatever was necessary, whether it was to talk for three hours or get up and do stuff," Pearce says of the week spent rehearsing in Adelaide prior to shooting. "We're playing strangers in the film, so it's not lie we're bonding like we're playing brothers, but it was a great period. I had moments early on of watching him going 'Jesus, he's great.' Firstly the character he's playing is really messed up and secondly he is pulling it off with such extraordinary conviction. I was really impressed, and not that I shouldn't have been, but I haven't seen a lot of Rob's work." 

Not a Twi-hard then? "No, I can't say I'm a, er, Twilighter. I had seen him in Water for Elephants, and I thought he was great, and obviously he's got that incredible head, but to play this little fucked up dude in The Rover, I just applauded him every day basically, quietly to myself." 

The praise for Pattinson's southern-US ingénue is universal. He has to audition for the part, something the actor hadn't needed to do in years. Pattinson: "There's very few scripts that have any kind of originality in them, and this was just like 'Whoa, this is being made?!' I mean it's so sparse... the writing, it's got very few characters, and their relationships are extremely odd. David's got a very specific style, and you can see it in Animal Kingdon and the shorts he's done, but with this one it's almost... like sci-fi.
"I don't really like scripts that have beats to hit in them," he continues as David Field walks past shirtless, cracking wise. 

"Normally if you've got to hit a certain emotional point at page 22 and blah, blah, blah -- that's what is in almosst every single script you find. I don't even know if I can do that as an actor. I get really afraid of any kind of pressure that there's a certain expectation. And just after Cosmopolis, where the structure was so different, it was kind of quite freeing -- you could turn up to work and actually find what happens, and this is like that." 

... 

It may not have been an ideal second run, but it's been a shoot where much more has gone right than wrong. Even Pattinson's giddy fame has only drawn a single paparazzo. "The security guards on the film were happy they had something to do," quips Pearce. 

"It's been an amazing shoot," confirms Liz Watts, over dinner at the pub. "We've got a top of the range crew in this film. And the cast has been fantastic. Scoot McNairy's brilliant. Rob's brilliant, Guy's amazing. It's that thing when you're away, everyone bands together and it becomes this school camp. And it's been working It could have been a nightmare." 

 Rob's Interview...

Rey is naive almost to the point of disability. How did you get inside him?
“A friend of mine has a brother who is never allowed to be by himself. And I always found that quite interesting as he gets older – how you develop when people view you as someone who can’t be independent. I was thinking about that a lot, and also about abusive relationships. Why a wife will stay with her husband who beats her all the time – how can you interpret ‘passionate attention’ as love. If you’ve had the shit beaten out of you your whole life by your dad, then when some other guy comes along and starts beating the shit out of you, you think, ‘Oh wow, that’s ‘cos he loves me, it’s my fault’. I think a lot of what Reynolds has with Eric is that – constantly trying to please someone, when Eric is just furious at Reynolds the entire time for totally inexplicable reasons. I mean he just projects onto Reynolds all of those anger issues. I thought that was interesting.” 

You auditioned for this role?
“I auditioned for this twice, which is only the second one since Twilight. It really helped, just to have a foundation. Getting ‘chosen’ for one thing is great: ‘Cool, well I’m going to go as far as I can with it’. Just by the fact that you’ve gotten approval to begin with, gives you a little bit of security. Whereas most of the time, in the first couple of weeks of the shoot, you’re like ‘Shit, am I even right for this part? I have no idea.” 

How was it working with Guy?
“I get along with him really well. At the beginning when we were rehearsing, I was like, ‘Oh shit, we’re gonna bust up’, because he’ll be stubborn about everything. But he cares about it a lot. He occasionally works with people he’s been acting with for like 25 years, but he’s still really trying to find our different things that he can do. Guy’s so weird in this movie – even just the way he moves his head, he looks like an alien [laughs] - maybe that’s just his face.” 

What has been the hardest part?
“Ah, just the flies!” 

You have those in England, don’t you?
“You’re attacked by them here! Trying to do the scenes when you’ve got 50 flies trying to get inside your eyeballs… I think it added to it after a while – the heat, and just fly, fly, fly…”

source: Robert Pattinson au