The performance that gave Robert Pattinson a panic attack
In the early days of his career, Robert Pattinson mainly stuck to very frivolous roles. Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter, Tyler Hawkins in Remember Me, and who could forget his turn as the shiniest man to ever live, Twilight’s Edward Cullen. However, as the actor matured, so did his work. With new responsibilities came new problems to overcome, including the time he almost broke down on set in front of a very famous director.
2012 saw the release of David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, a drama about a young billionaire (Pattinson) who encounters many strange individuals while travelling across New York City for a haircut. This was one of the young star’s first “serious” roles, and he would share screen time with legends like Paul Giamatti and Samantha Morton. He was clearly keen to impress the body horror maestro, but, as he told That Shelf while promoting the film, the pressure got to him.
“He told me to stop worrying,” Pattinson said of Cronenberg, who was seated next to him in the interview. He then turned to the Videodrome director and said, “You hired me basically in the throes of a panic attack.” The Englishman professed not to be that familiar with the movie’s source material (based on a book by Don DeLillo) and that he was nervous about how people would react to his performance. “The problem with acting now is that people all interpret it to be something that you have to analyse or psychoanalyse everything.”
To Cronenberg’s credit, he handled the then-25-year-old heartthrob’s nerves very well. He told Pattison, “What will be will be”, which is obviously easier said than done. This must have been especially true for R-Patz, one of the world’s most scrutinised actors at the time for his role in the Twilight franchise. The pressure and criticism could have easily buckled the young actor. Still, he found his resolve and delivered an excellent performance, one of the few consistent points of praise about a film that divided critical opinion.
Cosmopolis also notably marked Cronenberg’s return to screenwriting and gave Pattison a leg-up in more “legitimate” forms of acting. The icon hadn’t penned a script since his 1999 film eXistenZ, and he wanted his actors to follow his words to the letter. “I don’t want the actors to be screenwriters,” he said, dismissing the idea of improvisation in his films. “They’re not designed to work like that… I want them to stick to the script, but within that, there’s tonnes of things that an actor can bring.”
The man behind Scanners, The Fly, and Crimes of the Future is no stranger to polarising reviews, and that’s exactly what he got with Cosmopolis. Some critics revelled in Cronenberg’s sterile and inhuman portrayal of the wealthy, lingering on the surgical precision with which he deconstructed their lives. Others were less keen on his efforts, calling it cold and uncinematic, a poor treatment of DeLillo’s dynamic writing.
Since Cosmopolis, Pattinson has gone from strength to strength as a performer, and you’re just as likely to find him starring in a low-budget indie as an all-out blockbuster. While he gave audiences nuanced roles in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse and Claire Denis’ High Life, Pattinson decided that he needed to balance this out because, in 2022, he took on one of cinema’s biggest roles: Bruce Wayne in The Batman.
