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The Twilight novels have enraptured a generation of girls—and their moms. This month, the movie arrives. This week’s Entertainment Weekly brings you the wild interview with the vampire, a candid talk with his mortal love—and the inside story of bringing the phenom to the screen (out Nov. 21).
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Less than a year ago, Robert Pattinson, a British actor known only for a small part in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was picked to play Edward, the brooding, beautiful vampire at the center of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling Twilight saga.
Fans were furious over the surprise casting of a relative unknown who failed to live up to their idea of the immaculate demigod. But teenage girls have mood swings and it wasn’t long before the 17 million worldwide readers addicted to the tortured romance between Edward and a mortal schoolgirl named Bella embraced the 22-year-old actor.
“There is going to be a group of girls who will follow his actions from now on,” says Meyer. “I asked the producer, ‘Is Rob ready for this? Have you guys prepped him? Is he ready to be the It Guy?’ I don’t think he really is. I don’t think he sees himself that way. And I think the transition is going to be a little rocky.”
In between Potter and Twilight, Pattinson landed a lead as a troubled young man in the London stage production of The Woman Before. “At the time I really thought ‘Wow, I must be great, I’m like f—ing Brando!’” he says. “I had this specific idea where ‘I’m going to be a weirdo, this is how I’m going to promote myself.’ And then of course I ended up getting fired.” There followed a couple of years where Pattinson lived off his Harry Potter paycheck, drifting between obscure parts.
During a two-week run of auditions in Hollywood, he tried out for the role of Edward in Twilight. “I’d read the book and liked the book, but it made me really uncomfortable trying to picture myself in this part,” he says. “Here’s this guy who seems to be the embodiment of every single perfect guy. Okay, I’m going to look like a complete idiot if I just try to do that—like give a half–Fonz, half–George Clooney impression. I went in thinking I would just break into hysterical laughter. But then I did it with Kristen and it was completely different. We had this chemistry that just worked.”
Pattinson’s costar Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella, felt the same way. After being cast, Stewart performed a pivotal love scene on director Catherine Hardwicke’s bed with four leading contenders for the role of Edward, including Pattinson. “Catherine liked a couple of the guys, and I was like, ‘Are you joking? I can’t do the movie unless Rob does it,’” Stewart says. “He got it, and we could, like, see each other.” Meyer herself was also very supportive of the casting decision. “The one guy that kids were always saying they wanted for Edward was Tom Welling from Smallville. He’s beautiful! But could you ever imagine being afraid of him? We did not have a good option until Rob came along. And the movie rests entirely on his shoulders.”
Pattinson and Stewart’s onscreen chemistry is crucial to the movie’s success, so the actor can be forgiven if he acted smitten with his costar when the cameras weren’t rolling. “In the beginning I thought to myself, Because she’s so serious, I’ve got to be really serious,” he says. “I didn’t speak for about two months so I would seem really intense. I would only ever talk about the movie. And I kept recommending all these books. It didn’t really work, though …I felt like an idiot just following her around, saying, ‘You really should read some Zola—and there’s this amazing Truffaut movie.’ And she started calling me on things: Have you actually watched this movie? Yeah? What’s it about? ‘It’s about a guy on a train.’ Did you just look at the photo on the cover of the DVD?!’” On more than one occasion, Pattinson was overheard asking Stewart to marry him—proposals that the actress, who’s had the same boyfriend since she was 16, got used to shrugging off.
If the shoot had him in knots, Pattinson is determined not to be psyched out by the rigors of promoting a budding franchise. Before this year’s Comic-Con panel, the cast was given prepared answers but Pattinson refused to stick to the script. “Even little kids don’t want to hear you say the same pat stuff,” he insists. “It’s boring! I’m thinking about my career in long terms, rather than just trying to milk one thing for whatever it’s worth. You either have to be off book from the beginning or be on book forever. And I’ve never really seen the point of being on book …Watch, though. I’m going to be completely destroyed.”
Since moving to LA, Pattinson has made only a few friends in town, most of them through industry events. “So the only people who I hang out with seem to be club promoters and PR people,” he says. “I keep getting photographed coming out of these lame clubs. It’s so embarrassing. There was a week where every single night I was going out and getting photographed by the paparazzi or TMZ and I realized ‘Oh, my God, I look like a complete alcoholic!’”
While Pattinson is on deck for any Twilight sequels, he’s also trying to take advantage of Hollywood’s new interest in his career. He stars as Salvador Dalí in 2009’s independent film Little Ashes, and is sifting through higher-profile scripts, amused to find himself in the same conversation as stars like Shia LaBeouf for a role in a Gladiator-style period movie. “It’s funny how quick everything changes,” says Pattinson. “Literally, the trailer came out and people who’ve met me, like, six times are suddenly like, ‘Hey! It’s really nice to meet you.’” Still, it’s hard for a boy on the brink of stardom to answer just what he wants out of sudden fame. Despite his appearances now in two wildly popular franchises, Pattinson says he’s not interested in grabbing at big-money roles. “My only real answer, to be completely honest, is I don’t want to be completely f—ed after this,” he says. “I don’t want to be an idiot, and that’s always a distinct possibility.”
Casting the schoolgirl was every bit as perilous as casting the vampire. Fortunately, Hardwicke was roundly cheered when she zeroed in on Stewart to play Bella, a shy, ordinary 17-year-old every-mortal. Stewart wasn’t sure how she felt about being at the center of a cultural tsunami. “It’s just surreal to be a crucial part of a machine like this,” says Stewart. “I’m sort of the vessel. The book is what it is because of these girls’ obsession with [Edward] through me. If I wasn’t right, I’d be persecuted, and put on a cross.”
Stewart, who was just 17 when she shot the movie, was uncompromising about what she’d allow her character to do and say. “We had to rewrite and improvise a lot of the most intense scenes, because Kristen will not say something if she doesn’t feel good about it,” recalls Hardwicke. “Kristen is very tough and she does not tolerate bulls—.” Stewart just feels like she was doing her job. “I had some of the corniest lines I’ve ever had in this film,” says the actress, who was keen to tone down some of the over-the-top declarations of “I will die for you!” love. “We were so awkward saying those lines. Catherine was like, ‘Just feel it and say what comes to you.’”
“I just want to make sure Twilight’s worth the ginormous attention it receives,” says Stewart. “Everyone said this is a big-deal movie. But I hate when people celebrate before you have something to celebrate about.” Like her costar Pattinson, making money isn’t a priority for Stewart either. “I don’t want to do something that’s just a big moneymaker,” says the actress. “I told my agent, ‘I’m not doing a big movie after Twilight.’”
Early tracking of the movie suggests that tween boys like the Cullen vampires almost as much as girls do. That should help Twilight reach at least a $20 million opening weekend. However, Hardwicke guesstimates Twilight must gross $150 million for the studio to approve a sequel. “This has to be a crazy hit,” she says. “Nobody can say that it can do that well right now.” Except, maybe, Meyer. The author loves the movie, though she had her disagreements with Hardwicke. “I mostly stepped in on the script level,” she says. “You know the line ‘So the lion fell in love with the lamb’? It’s a bit of a cheesy line, I have to say. They had changed the wording on that, to downplay it a little. And I said, ‘I really like how you’ve changed this, but this line is tattooed on people’s ankles. I think you’re going to have a problem if you don’t do it exactly right.’ And they listened to me—and saved themselves the outrage of the people who know these books.” After seeing the first cut, the author’s only real concern was that Edward and Bella’s kissing scene was too hot for the beginning of a relationship. “You’re not going to have anything to work with as the series continues,” Meyer told Hardwicke, who cut the sexy wide shots in exchange for more chaste close-ups. “In a weird way I think it’s better,” says Hardwicke. “It’s less like other movies.” Even if they’re nervous about admitting it publicly, the studio thinks they’ve got a hit on their hands. They’ve already got Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg at work on the sequel. Expect to see a New Moon rising.
