The role Robert Pattinson has spent his career avoiding: “That is the box you’re put in”
Robert Pattinson is a very adventurous actor, but there’s one type of performance that even he doesn’t want to give.
Twilight may have turned him into a global superstar, but Robert Pattinson has spent the rest of his career proving that he’s far more than a generic teenage heartthrob. By working with unique, auteur filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho, David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, and the Safdie brothers, Pattinson has been able to take the type of risky, experimental roles that allow him to showcase his range.
Even if Pattinson is now playing Bruce Wayne for the near future, as production had begun on the sequel to 2022’s The Batman, he’s also made time to pop up in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, co-star with Zendaya in the arthouse film The Drama, and earn the role of the main antagonist in the highly anticipated Dune: Part Three. While Pattinson seems to be open to taking any type of part, he told NPR that he had consciously been trying to avoid being cast as an English prince.
“I think when you first start, if you’re tall and English and have kind of floppy hair, in England that is the box that you’re put in,” Pattinson said. “I like movies because of Pacino, basically. I didn’t grow up watching period dramas and being like, ‘That’s what I want to do!'”
While Pattinson may have made a joke of it, he also raises an interesting point about the different standards that actors have been forced to meet throughout the decades. Playing a member of the British royalty may have once been considered to be the peak of what someone could achieve as an actor, but in modern times, it’s no longer in style to lionise those with inherited power and class.
Pattinson’s note that he didn’t want to play an “English” prince is particularly amusing when considering that he did play the French character Louis, Duke of Guyenne, in the 2019 Netflix film The King, which served as a loose reimagining of aspects of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V. His character, also known as “the Dauphin”, is one of the chief rivals who faces off with the young Prince Hal, who Timothee Chalamet played.
While Pattinson may have characterised playing an “English prince” as being a sort of stodgy, uncomfortably old-fashioned type of role, his performance in The King was anything but that. By adopting a strange French accent and chewing the scenery by making fun of the aristocracy, Pattinson created a unique version of royalty that was far more satirical than it was scary.
Pattinson’s citing of Al Pacino as one of his acting inspirations is also interesting, given that there have been many comparisons drawn between the two men. Pacino’s early performances showed a degree of commitment and realism that made him stand out among his peers, and Pattinson has begun to adopt similar traits.
Pacino has a damn-near incomparable list of classic roles on his resumé, but he is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Michael Corleone. Although his performance in the first The Godfather film was goddamn tremendous, Pacino was able to get deeper and darker when he returned for the next one. Hopefully, Pattinson will show the same degree of maturation in The Batman sequel.
