The most “unreal” actor Robert Pattinson ever worked with: “He’s the best”
Robert Pattinson has always been one to think outside the box.
There was no point in him trying to chase after the same kind of franchises everyone else did, and he seemed to almost spit in the face of what everyone thought was the “traditional” route for what an actor was supposed to do. He wanted to do everything he could that wasn’t typical for Hollywood, and the best that he could hope for was the kind of co-star that could match his brand of weirdness every single time he got on a film set.
Then again, part of that weirdness was also trying to outrun the spectre of Twilight that was hanging over his head. There are far too many people who end up getting typecast after appearing in a movie like that, but Pattinson has seemed to scrub every piece of that film from his DNA over the years. That said, Edward Cullen could be a weirdo at times, and every single one of the movies that Pattinson made afterwards was still done in service to create even stranger characters.
Good Time is one of the most frantic movies that he has ever made, and yet his performance is absolutely electric throughout every single frame. There are things that he does with his eyes that no one else would be able to do, and when you think about it, that’s probably why he was cast as Bruce Wayne in the past few years. He can tell the entire story of a superhero with just his eyes, but if you want to play Batman, you also need to know how to bring darkness across onscreen.
And there aren’t many films that seem to encapsulate that strange kind of darkness as well as The Lighthouse. There might not be much going on in every single frame of the movie, but when you have someone like Willem Dafoe to play off of in every scene, there’s hardly any real time to take a breath throughout production.
Dafoe is still one of the most agile actors of his time, and his energy that he brought to the set was enough to knock out Pattinson. Dafoe still has one of the most expressive faces in the business, and whether he’s giving a massive monologue or singing sea shanties alongside Pattinson throughout the movie, he refuses to stand still for more than a few seconds whenever he works.
There are plenty of actors who have turned in their best performances alongside Dafoe, but Pattinson felt that he was just trying to keep up with what he was doing, saying, “It was absolutely great to work with Willem. We rehearsed for about a week before we shot the movie. He has so much energy it’s just unreal. It’s almost like working with a six-year-old. There’s nothing that fatigues him. I was kind of terrified. The second we got to the end, he just said, ‘AGAIN’, and his energy hadn’t even dented. He’s the best.”
And for a movie that was all about Pattinson trying to figure out his own problems, you kind of need that kind of scene partner with you. Anyone else would have crumbled under the pressure, but Pattinson has never been one to back down from a challenge, either, even if it means acting out an entire scene entirely made up of the word ‘what’ being shouted at Dafoe for minutes on end.
It’s not the most normal movie in the world, and it can be a little bit of a stretch for people who only watch blockbusters, but if you want to see what acting can look like when it’s pushed to its limit, pay attention to The Lighthouse. It’s not always an easy gig, but the fact that Dafoe made the whole thing look easy is really a testament to the kind of actor that he has always been over the years.
