The “most influential” actor of the last 50 years, according to Robert Pattinson
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened that the handsome bit lanky kid from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire became a generational acting talent, but now we are at the point where each movie Robert Pattinson takes on becomes one you’re probably going to have to watch immediately.
A clue as to the trajectory Pattinson’s career would follow came in 2010 when in the midst of the Twilight bedroom poster insanity he not only starred in but acted as executive producer on Remember Me, an independent drama that got very mixed reviews but has since gained a fair bit of notoriety, including on social media recently, for the mega-twist ending, which we won’t spoil for you, but let’s just say: talk about being in the wrong tower at the wrong time.
Then, as soon as the teen vampire shackles were off after the fifth Twilight film, Pattinson was able to really lock in and show what he could do. If you’re an actor and you’re looking to go a bit ‘out there’, a David Cronenberg movie is probably your best bet, and in the bizarre 2012 film Cosmopolis, Pattinson showed that he was far, far more of a talent than people had envisaged.
He teamed up with Cronenberg again in 2014 for the drama Maps to the Stars, the director describing him as “extremely inventive”, before starring in a Werner Herzog project called Queen of the Desert with Nicole Kidman. By now Pattinson was seriously in demand, and the following year he signed on to appear in Life, a movie based on the life of 1950s icon James Dean, an actor who had a big impression on him, with Pattinson revealing: “I think he was like the most influential person for young guys, especially actors, in the last 50 years. So yeah, I mean, I’m not ashamed to say I am very much influenced by him.”
Surprisingly, Pattinson didn’t portray Dean in the movie, the honour of which went to American actor Dean Dehane, with the former playing Dean’s friend, the Life magazine photographer Dennis Stock, who took the famous photo of the actor huddled against the elements in Times Square in 1955.
Pattinson also said, “I tried copying James Dean’s accent just because I’ve always wanted James Dean’s voice. I think that is why it has worked. Everyone loves a bit of James Dean”. Other than that, both have had to deal with the pressures that being uniquely handsome and in globally successful movies brought, and Dean was also in no way cowed by the idea of taking on controversial films and coming-of-age dramas. Rebel Without a Cause and its portrayal of knife-toting teens caused pearls to be clutched around the world, and was censored heavily for one thing.
However, Dean’s life was cut short tragically quickly, just eight months after his debut in East of Eden, and Pattinson has now had two decades to get used to the attention, which has thankfully calmed down since the era of Twilight.
After Life, he took things up a notch in the fantastic Safdie brothers venture Good Time in 2017, putting in probably the best performance of his career as a petty criminal in New York trying to get his mentally ill brother out of Rikers Island jail. Pattinson, by now, was earning comparisons to the greats, the likes of Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman, no small feat for a private schoolboy from Barnes in South West London.
Excitingly, the once glittering bloodsucker now has several huge projects on the way that reflect his standing. There’s another link up with Nolan, post the ‘didn’t really work’ mind-bender Tenet, in The Odyssey, plus the final part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune franchise. Aside from those, he’s currently in New York filming the Netflix heist movie Here Comes the Flood alongside Denzel Washington.
