ראבערט פּאַטטינסאָן: "מייַן רום קומט פון בושה"

He clearly wants you to be comfortable in his presence. He refills your tea, pulls out a napkin for you from the napkin holder, asks permission to smoke. The actor of the film «High Society», which is released in Russian cinemas on April 11, has a strange and touching way of constantly ruffling his hair. It has insecurity, anxiety, boyishness.

He often and in many ways laughs — giggles, smiles, sometimes laughs — usually at himself, at his failures, ridiculous actions or words. But his whole appearance, his gentle manner, is the very negation of anxiety. It seems that Robert Pattinson simply does not face the questions that always worry all of us, the rest, — am I smart enough, did I say this right now, how do I generally look …

I ask how to address him — Robert or Rob, he answers: yes, as you like. Is he comfortable sitting by the window? There is no one in the New York cafe after lunch, we can move to a place where there will definitely not be a draft. He replies, they say, it is important that it is convenient for me, because I am here at work. Is he here for pleasure? I yell, unable to resist. Rob, without a shadow of a doubt, replies that he once decided: everything in his life will be fun — and work too. And this harmony marks his whole appearance.

He simply exudes the calmness of a person who knows what reasons to worry about, and which ones are not worth a damn, what to spend experiences on, and what simply requires decision-making. «Strictly businesslike,» as he puts it. I envy him — not his universal fame, not his appearance, not even his wealth, although the fees of each of the three main stars of the Twilight movie saga are in the tens of millions.

I envy his imperviousness to anxiety, his desire to be an unfailingly pleasant conversationalist even for a journalist, although he, perhaps, has suffered more than anyone from the tabloids. I do not understand how he was able to achieve this enlightened serenity, although the stormy expressions that his early «twilight» fame had contributed to the development of exactly the opposite properties. And I decide to start with this topic.

Psychologies: Rob, how old were you when you became the idol of every teenage girl on Earth?

Robert Pattison: When did Twilight come out? 11 years ago. I was 22.

Worldwide fame has covered you. And this storm of adoration continued for five years, no less …

And now sometimes it overwhelms.

So how did this all affect you? Where did you become after «Twilight»? What changed your early fame? Maybe injured? It is logical to assume that…

Oh, both before Twilight and after, every time I see this question being asked to someone, I think: now another jerk will tell how the paparazzi got him, what incredible tabloid rumors are spreading about him, how is it all does not match his pure and rich personality and what a terrible thing it is to be famous! In general, my goal was not to be one of these jerks. But this is really inconvenient — when you can’t go out into the street, and if you already went out, then with five bodyguards who protect you from a crowd of girls …

And besides, ha, I look funny among them guarding my, so to speak, body. They’re big guys, and I’m a vegetarian vampire. Do not laugh, the truth is an unfavorable background. But I’m not looking for a favorable background, but in such fame I see … well, something socially useful. Like: you touched some tender string in the souls, you helped to pour out the feelings that were hidden, this is not your merit, maybe, but you became an image of something sublime, which these girls lacked so much. Is it bad? And in combination with fees, it’s generally wonderful … Do you think it’s cynical?

Not at all. I just don’t believe that when three thousand teenagers follow you day and night, you can remain calm. And it is understandable: such fame limits you, deprives you of the usual comfort. How can one treat this philosophically and not change, not believe in one’s exclusivity?

Look, I’m from Britain. I am from a wealthy, complete family. I studied at a private school. Dad traded autovintage — vintage cars, this is a VIP business. Mom worked in a modeling agency and somehow pushed me, then a younger teenager, into the modeling business. I advertised something like that there, but, by the way, I was a terrible model — already at that time over a meter and eighty, but with a face of a six-year-old, horror.

I had a prosperous childhood, enough money, relationships in our family … you know, I didn’t understand what it was all about when I read about psychological abuse — about all this gaslighting and something like that. I didn’t even have a hint of such an experience — parental pressure, competition with sisters (I have two of them, by the way). The past was quite cloudless, I always did what I wanted.

I didn’t study well, of course. But the parents believed that the lack of some abilities was compensated for by another kind of talent — that’s what dad always said. You just need to find them. My parents helped me with this: I started studying music early, playing the piano and guitar. I didn’t have to assert myself, win back my territory.

So where do I get obsessed with the inviolability of my personal life? I am very lucky, so I can quite share myself if someone needs it. I recently read that in Russia, in the Gulag, the highest percentage of survivors was among former aristocrats. In my opinion, this is because they had a past that did not allow them to develop a sense of inferiority, to aggravate the trouble with self-pity. They were more resilient because they knew what they were worth. It’s from childhood.

I do not compare the circumstances of my «twilight» fame with the Gulag, but a sober attitude towards my own person in me was definitely laid down by my family. Glory is a kind of test. Of course, it’s frustrating that the crew of a small art film is forced to dine in a hotel room because of you, and not in a restaurant, and screams like «Rob, I want you!» and stones fly, wrapped in notes of approximately the same content … Well, ashamed in front of colleagues. This notoriety of mine is associated for me more with this kind of shame than with real inconvenience. Well, with sympathy. And I love this business.

When do you sympathize?!

Well, yes. There are few real reasons, but everyone wants personal attention. Fans are not personal attention to me. They adore that beautiful vampire who was above sex with his beloved.

You will also have to ask about that beloved. Do you mind? This is pretty…

Delicate topic? No, ask.

You and Kristen Stewart were connected by shooting in Twilight. You played lovers and turned out to be a couple in reality. The project is over, and with it the relationship. Don’t you think that the novel was forced, and therefore ended?

Our relationship fell apart because we were in our early 20s when we got together. It was a rush, a lightness, almost a joke. Well, really, I had this way of meeting girls back then: go up to the one you like and ask if she will ever marry me, well, in time. Somehow it worked.

Sillyness is sometimes charming, yes. My love with Kristen was like that joke. We are together because it is easy and right under these circumstances. It was friendship-love, not love-friendship. And I was even outraged when Chris had to apologize for the story with Sanders! (Stuart’s short romance with Rupert Sanders, the director of the film Snow White and the Huntsman, in which she starred, became public. Stewart had to make a public apology «to those whom she unwittingly hurt», meaning Sanders’ wife and Pattinson. — Note ed.) She had nothing to apologize for!

Love ends, it can happen to anyone, and it happens all the time. And then … All this noise around our novel. These pictures. These congratulations. This anguish is the romantic heroes of a romantic film in a romantic relationship in our unromantic reality… We have long felt like a part of the marketing campaign of the project.

One of the producers then said something like: how difficult it will be to make a new film about the eternal love of the characters now that their love turned out to be not eternal. Well damn! We both became hostages of Twilight, tools of the public entertainment business. And this took me by surprise. I’m confused.

And did they do something?

Well… I remembered something about myself. You know, I don’t have a specialized education — only classes in the school drama circle and occasional trainings. I just wanted to be an artist. After one theatrical production, I got an agent and she got me a role in Vanity Fair, I was 15 playing Reese Witherspoon’s son.

My best friend Tom Sturridge was also filming there, our scenes were one after the other. And here we are sitting at the premiere, Tom’s scene passes. We are even somehow surprised: everything seemed to us a game, but here it seems to be yes, it turned out, he is an actor. Well, my scene is next… But she’s gone. No, that’s it. She was not included in the film. Oh, it was ra-zo-cha-ro-va-nie! Disappointment number one.

True, then the casting director suffered, because she did not warn me that the scene was not included in the final editing of «Fair …». And as a result, out of guilt, I convinced the creators of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that I should be the one to play Cedric Diggory. And this, you know, was supposed to be a pass to the big film industry. But it didn’t.

Later, a few days before the premiere, I was removed from the role in the play in the West End. I went to auditions, but no one was interested. I was already walking on impulse. I have already decided to become a musician. Played in clubs in different groups, sometimes solo. This, by the way, is a serious school of life. In a club, in order to draw attention to yourself and your music, so that visitors are distracted from drinking and talking, you must be exceptionally interesting. And I never thought of myself as such. But after the episode with acting, I wanted to start something completely different — not connected with other people’s words and ideas, something of my own.

Why did you decide to return to acting?

Unexpectedly, I was cast in Toby Jugg’s Chaser, a modest TV movie. I auditioned only because it seemed interesting to me — to play a disabled person without getting up from a wheelchair, not to use ordinary plasticity. There was something invigorating about it…

I remembered all this when the Twilight fuss started. About the fact that sometimes life goes in such a way … And I realized that I need to get out of Twilight. To the light To any light — daylight, electric. I mean, I need to try to act in small films whose creators set artistic goals for themselves.

Who would have thought then that David Cronenberg himself would offer me the role? (Pattinson played in his film Map of the Stars. — Approx. ed.). That I will get a truly tragic role in Remember Me? And I also agreed to “Water for Elephants!” — a complete denial of the fantasy and romance of «Twilight». You see, you really don’t know where you will find, where you will lose. There is more freedom in art projects. It depends more on you, you feel your authorship.

As a child, I loved my father’s stories about sales techniques, he is a car dealer by vocation. This is a kind of psychotherapy session — the specialist must “read” the patient in order to guide him along the path of healing. It seems to me that this is close to acting: you show the viewer the way to understand the film. That is, to sell something for me is next to the performance of the role.

Part of me loves the art of marketing. There is something sporty about it. And I don’t understand when actors don’t want to think about the commercial fate of a film, even an arthouse one. This is also our responsibility. But, in general, in the end, «Twilight» showed me the right path — participation in a serious movie, no matter how low-budget it was.

Tell me, Rob, has the scope of your personal relationships changed over time as well?

No, not that… I have always envied people of my age and gender who smoothly move from one relationship to another. And no offense whatsoever. I don’t. Relationships are something special for me. I am a loner by nature and a visible refutation of the theory that one who had a happy family in childhood seeks to create his own. I don’t.

Are you looking to start a family?

No, that’s not the point. It’s just that my relationship is somehow … easier, or something. Not that they were frivolous, they are simple. We are together as long as we love each other. And that’s enough. I somehow … do not take root, or something. For example, I am indifferent to everything material. I do not consider this a manifestation of my special spirituality, I am an ordinary person whose life has developed unusually, and that’s all.

But this, that I am not fond of money, was recently pointed out to me by a friend. And with reproach. «Part a minute with the book, forget about Pabst and look at things soberly,» she said of my usual activities — watching movies and reading. But, for me, money is only a synonym for freedom, and things … ground us. I have a small — and not by Hollywood standards, but in general — house in Los Angeles, because I like to be among the mangroves and palm trees, and my mother loves to sunbathe by the pool, and a penthouse in New York — because my father is obsessed with historic Brooklyn. But for me it was not a problem to live in rented apartments. I just didn’t want to move anymore … Maybe this means that I’m starting to take root?

Three of his favorite films

«Flying over Cuckoo’s Nest»

The painting by Milos Forman made an impression on Robert when he was a teenager. “I played him when I was 12 or 13,” says the actor about McMurphy, the hero of the film. “I was terribly shy, and Nicholson-McMurphy is decisiveness personified. You could say, in a way, he made me who I am.»

«Secrets of a Soul»

The film was made in 1926. It’s unbelievable!» Pattinson says. And indeed, now the film looks, though stylized, but completely modern. The scientist suffers from an irrational fear of sharp objects and a desire to kill his wife. Georg Wilhelm Pabst was one of the first filmmakers who, following the pioneers of psychology, dared to look into the dark recesses of the human soul.

«Lovers from the New Bridge»

This movie is pure metaphor, says Pattinson. And he continues: «It’s not about a blind rebel and a clochard, it’s about all couples, about the stages that relationships go through: from curiosity to another — to rebellion against each other and reunion on a new level of love.»