Question of the week: Has being British given you something extra to play a vampire?

Teenfirst had a question for Rob and it wins the "Question of the week" award! Seriously :))

Has being British given you something extra to play a vampire?

I don’t know if being British helps! (Laughs) It’s weird because there were a lot of British people up for this part. The author’s choice was an English guy which was really strange. She wanted all English guys to play Americans. I think there is something about this myth in America of British people being classy.

The rest of the interview:

Was there something that you did to convince them you were the one?

I don’t know. I just went in and I had a connection with Kristen. I think it was because I so expected it to be different to how it turned out and expected the girl who played Bella to be so different to Kristen, that I was so genuinely shocked when she did her performance.

I just thought it was going to be a real damsel in distress actress. And I couldn’t pretend to be the Prince Charming to some dippy girl! Not that that is how the book is. But I thought that was how the film would turn out. And of course Kristen is tough, smart and a good actress, and so it completely changed my opinion and so I ended up playing him as a kind of a wreck. That was how that happened.


What makes Edward different from the conventional vampire?

He doesn’t have fangs. He doesn’t die in the sunlight, but he does have pale skin. I dyed my hair a bronze colour. He’s completely reluctant. Most vampires don’t want to be vampires because there’s a moral issue involved and Edward has that belief. He doesn’t kill people anymore. But at the same time, he doesn’t really know if it’s right not to kill. And he can fit in with normal society.

Did you have to go to a dark place to play the role of a vampire?

Sort of. The way I wanted to play him was more of powerlessness, like he’s a kind of helpless character. He was unconscious when he was made into a vampire. He didn’t have a choice. He woke up three days later and he has to kill people and he doesn’t know why. He finds out that he’s never going to age and he’s going to live forever, and he’s like this Superman guy but he never asked for it.

But before that night he was this normal seventeen year old and now he has to go off and kill a bunch of people and it’s all his surrogate father figure’s fault he’s like an eternal adolescent. He’s very frustrated.

Did you get to do your own stunts?

I tried to. Some of them were pretty extreme and also my stunt double looks exactly like me. The scariest one was when I run and I put my hand out to stop this car which is racing towards me. I had practiced it a bunch of times but the car is like coming at 30 miles per hour. And I was sick on the day of shooting.

I had taken antibiotics and I was really dozy and the car went off its tracks. So there I am, holding Kristen’s stunt double and my timing was off because I wasn’t feeling too good and the car like hit me in the face. Then I dropped her and I couldn’t stop laughing.


Any injures?

I didn’t have any injuries but Kristen’s double could barely walk for a like a month. I felt so bad!!