Presenting "Fear & Shame": A short film written by and starring Robert Pattinson. pic.twitter.com/Sco8dYfVXQ— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) August 9, 2017
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) August 9, 2017
Robert Pattinson is in almost every moment of the film and gives what is without a doubt his career best performance. Pattinson plays Eric Packer with a deep internal rage, like a volcano about to erupt, but with a stone facade. Pattinson able to convey loneliness, fear and greed while being contained in a limo for most of the film. Eric Packer is the center of the film and if Pattinson’s performance was anything less than fantastic the film would have failed. Robert Pattinson gives one of the best performances of the year in Cosmopolis.Excerpt from South Philly Review:
As the lead character, a cold young man of privilege losing his grip on all things, Pattinson is startlingly fantastic, taken to places by Cronenberg he’s never been as an actor...It’s been years since Cronenberg delivered something this visually and aurally articulate, worthy of numerous viewings and readings. The seemingly random, yet keenly perceptive, brilliance of its words taunts you to keep up....It ends with a ripped-from-the-headlines final act that’s as much a squaring off of classes as any scene concerning the French Revolution. And yet, we take it in as just a riveting, terrifically acted exchange between two men.Excerpt from Monsters & Critics:
A stunning performance by Robert PattinsonExcerpt from Larsen on Film, 3.5 out of 4 stars:
Pattinson is very good: clipped, still, yet always a threat. Indeed, he's more of a pained killer here than in the Twilight films. The quick, ideologically dominated dialogue scenes are the heart of the film - "All wealth has become wealth for its own sake," goes one bon mot - and Pattinson easily matches verbal wits with everyone from Juliette Binoche to Samantha Morton to Jay Baruchel.Excerpt from Miami.com:
But the movie wouldn’t work without Pattinson, who is in every scene and holds the film together with his portrayal of a magnetic tycoon rotting on the inside — a disillusioned man who, having amassed everything he could possibly want, asks if that’s all there is. This is just one possible reading of Cosmopolis: Viewers with the stamina to make it to the end (discipline is required) may have differing interpretations of the final scene, which is often been true of Cronenberg’s best movies. DeLillo’s book, inspired by the dotcom bubble burst, was critical of how online entrepreneurs had reduced the power of money to an abstract commodity (“What does it mean to spend money? A dollar. A million.”)Excerpt from Red Eye Chicago, 3 out of 4 stars:
In writer-director David Cronenberg’s disturbing, oddly funny “Cosmopolis,” Pattinson’s inherent, detached restlessness finally becomes an asset....Hopefully the actor can bounce back from Kristen Stewart’s infidelity; with the exciting, dangerous “Cosmopolis” he at last proves he deserves roles, not just headlines.Excerpt from two critics, male (gave it a B) and female (B+), at Reeling Reviews:
Male critic: [Cronenberg's] latest, which takes place mostly in the back of Packer’s cavernous stretch, showcases his star Pattinson – the reason I was reluctant to see “Cosmopolis.” To my surprise, the “Twilight” thespian is the best thing in “Cosmopolis.” I have never been a fan of Robert Pattinson. I dreaded all of the “Twilight” movies (only in part because of Pattinson) and have not developed a great deal of respect for the actor, “Water for Elephants” notwithstanding. Director Cronenberg elicits a good performance from the young actor, one that actually overshadows the film itself.Excerpt from Orlando Weekly, 3 out of 5 stars:
Female critic: The director has also pushed his star Robert Pattinson out on a ledge past his own acting insecurities, getting Pattinson's most confident performance to date.
Robert Pattinson plays Packer with an assured level of detachment and scorn. Make no mistake, this is Pattinson's film – I can't think of a scene that he's not in – and he isn't called on to show much range or feeling, but does display some strong chops. He plays affectless well, managing to conduct a business conversation with Samantha Morton while the limo is being vandalized and literally shaken back and forth by an angry mob. All he wants is to feel something – anything – and so his planned excursion to the barbershop his dad used to take him to takes on deeper meaning.Excerpt from Game Redemption, 4.5 out of 5 stars:
Despite Pattinson’s strange New York accent (let’s chalk that up to the surreal tone) he holds his own when sharing the stage with Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti. That is very important given that Cronenberg decides to keep the camera close with long takes and shots. With Pattison taking up the majority of the screen time and screen, a substantial amount of pressure rests on his shoulders to carry the film and he pulls it off.I'd like to say this one is "meh" because I don't like when critics suggest Rob's blank state is natural but whatever. The guy from Philadelphia Weekly gave the film an A:
Cosmopolis is an ice-cold, woozy nightmare of a movie. The sleek limousine becomes a sort of purgatory, as Eric rides ever-forward at less than 5 mph toward ruin. He fucks, drinks, kills and even treats himself to an epically invasive prostate exam—any opportunity to jolt himself from this all-encompassing numbness, an emotional state at which Pattinson naturally excels. Great casting.Excerpt from HitFix, giving the film an A-:
I walked away blaming the movie, but thinking it over for the last week or so, I can't get it out of my head. It's exquisitely made, carefully controlled, a simmering look into the dead empty eyes of Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) as Rome burns around him. Based on a novel by Don DeLillo, it's all character, all mood, a slow surreal ride through Manhattan during a meltdown that seems to have been caused, in part, by his own hubris, and Pattinson is fascinating in the role. He seems to constantly be shifting through a complicated but subterranean inner implosion, pieces of himself shutting down at random, little by little. His stated goal for the day is simple enough. He wants a haircut. Never mind that the entire city seems to be on high alert thanks to the visit of a President and construction and protests and traffic and madmen and giant rats and angry wives and dirty lovers, all complications thrown in the path of Packer as he attempts to make his way across this tiny island, locked inside his sterile bubble.
I do not think I'm out of line when I observe that Robert Pattinson is from outer space. Part of what makes him so compelling in the film is that whatever weirdness Cronenberg throws at him, he rolls with it, staring out of that blank passive face with furious eyes. People race in and out of his personal orbit. He gets a physical from a doctor inside the cab at one point, carrying on a conversation while this guy's got half his arm inside him, and the way Pattinson plays that scene is impressive. On the whole, Pattinson delivers in this difficult role, and I can't picture anyone else tuning in more completely to what Cronenberg has done here.
It helps that Pattinson interacts with truly great performances from the supporting cast. Juliette Binoche shows up to have some sex, drink some booze, and lay some ugly truth on Pattinson's character. Sarah Gadon is Packer's wife, newly married and already looking for a way out, away from this shark-eyed and alien "other" who she has barely gotten to know as a husband. Jay Baruchel and Kevin Durand both do sharp and specific work in small roles here, and there's a wonderful but oh-so-short appearance by Samantha Morton as well. Paul Giamatti almost steals the film in the last ten minutes, and it's a testament to how good Pattinson is in the film that he stands there and refuses to let Giamatti run away with it. He gives as good as he gets. Giamatti is great, giving voice to all the frustration and powerlessness of everyone caught up in these forces at work in the modern world, these soft little boys dressed up in expensive suits, untouchable in their coffins on wheels. Giamatti is determined to break through the expressionless exterior of Packer to find the soft and vulnerable heart, and once he does, he plans to rip it out.
...
People lured in by the presence of Pattinson will not be prepared for just how different he is in the film, and I love the idea of people expanding their cinematic appetites because of his mainstream work, only to discover this poison pill.
R.I.P. Edward Cullen.
Seven weeks in the baking heat of the South Australian Outback has accomplished something even an army of vengeful Volturi couldn’t.
Described by one influential industry magazine as “career redefining”, Robert Pattinson’s against-type performance as a slow-witted drifter in desert Noir thriller The Rover has enabled him to emerge from the long shadow cast by the Twilight franchise.
That might explain the 28-year-old English actor’s relaxed and charming demeanour during interviews for David Michod’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to Animal Kingdom — the film that reinvented both Jacki Weaver’s and Ben Mendelsohn’s careers — which stands in marked contrast to his polite and unassuming but slightly-guarded approach to the media at the height of the Twilight phenomenon.
Pattinson says the glowing reviews that came out of the Cannes Film Festival last month, where The Rover screened in a prestigious midnight slot, felt like a validation “for about five seconds”.
But his next film is almost more important.
“With all that Twilight stuff, I know that if I was not me, I would be judging me,’’ he says.
“It’s almost like setting up a brand. If you get enough good reviews so that people go in expecting a good movie, then half your job is done.”
Guy Pearce, Pattinson’s co-star in The Rover, made the transition from soapie heart-throb to serious actor two decades ago with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, which was also selected for a midnight screening slot at Cannes.
“Basically, he is a leading man but he consistently does character parts,’’ says Pattinson.
“I always kind of admired how he did that and it is basically the same career path that I would like to have.”
The actor has just finished filming his own Queen of the Desert, helmed by veteran German director Werner Herzog and starring Nicole Kidman as archaeologist Gertrude Bell, in Morocco.
The role of T.E. Lawrence, he says, was his most challenging thus far.
“Even though it’s only a few scenes, it was definitely the scariest thing I have done. I am playing Lawrence of Arabia. Those are huge shoes to fill. It was just crazy walking in with the outfit on.”
Even when Edward Cullen was dominating his life, Pattinson still made time for other projects, such as Remember Me with Australia’s Emilie de Ravin, Water for Elephants, with Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz, and the period drama Bel Ami, with Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci.
His collaborations with veteran Canadian director David Cronenberg, on Cosmopolis and Map to the Stars, for which co-star Julianne Moore won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival this year, gained art house respect.
But it’s the character of Rey, a slow-witted misfit needy almost to the point of self-annihilation, that has drawn a firm post-Twilight line in the sand.
Michod put Pattinson through two rigorous three-hour audition sessions before casting him in the role.
“I had always thought he was some angular, super good-looking brooding guy,’’ says the director.
“Then I met him and he was way more interesting than that. He wasn’t just a pretty boy. He had a really interesting face. He was interestingly awkward. And clearly very bright.
“And the fact that he was willing to come back two days later (for a second audition) said to me quite definitively that he really wanted to do this movie and he really wanted to work hard.
“It also said that he was humble enough to not think it should be handed to him on a platter.”
Since The Rover had a budget of $12 million, and required a challenging, seven-week shoot in the South Australian Outback in February and March, it’s clear that neither money nor glamour were driving factors in Pattinson’s desire to land the role.
But the remoteness of the locations might actually have been a bonus for Pattinson, who would have been keen to escape the media attention that followed his split with long-time girlfriend Kristen Stewart in the wake of her affair with Snow White and The Huntsman director Rupert Sanders.
“The environment doesn’t really let you go outside,’’ he said during a break from filming in the one-pub town of Marree, at the intersection of the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks. The mercury on set that day hovered around the early 40s.
Time and distance have changed his perspective.
“I am constantly being prompted to say how awful it was,’’ Pattinson said during a press conference last week ahead of the film’s Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival.
But I really liked it. I just found it incredibly serene being able to look to the horizon. I liked the hardness of the landscape as well. There’s something strangely mystical about it.”
The external transformation of Pattinson from handsome heart-throb to brutalised victim took some doing.
The hair and make-up department sprayed him with a combination of olive oil, fly spray and sunscreen to achieve Rey’s sallow, unhealthy-looking complexion. The actor’s arms were shaved to make him look thinner, even whiter, and more vulnerable. And his hair was shorn crudely to help give the impression that he was suffering from a nasty case of mange. It was a daily process that took almost two hours to complete.
Pattinson’s internal shift is even more startling.
Ironically, the actor credits his experience on the Twilight films as a major factor in helping him find that character that allowed him move on.
“I never really had anyone pick on me at school. I think I just managed to skirt the edge of every different little group imaginable,’’ says Pattinson.
“But for some reason, I just got Rey, who has been bullied his whole life.
“I think it’s about fear as well. And I guess maybe the last few years, being a little scared of crowds, being a little bit paranoid when you are walking down the street, that fed into it a little bit.
“(That sense of) being extremely wary and also not knowing how people will react. There are trust issues there. Being a little more isolated, you get bit dislocated from normal behaviour.
“Rey is looking at people not knowing whether they are going to slap him or laugh.”David Michôd also had a couple more interviews pop up from his Australian promo and promo from when he was in NYC after Cannes.
In David Michôd’s second full length feature film, ‘The Rover’ (his first was the surprise Australian hit ‘Animal Kingdom,’ which garnered Jacki Waver an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress), Guy Pearce is a khaki shorts-wearing misanthrope living in post-financial apocalypse Australia. While mourning something (we find out what later) at a local dystopian watering hole, Eric (Pearce) has his car stolen, which sets off a movie-length hunt for the said stolen car. Along the way, Eric meets Reynolds (Robert Pattinson), a violent lost soul who holds the key to finding the all-important stolen car.
I met Michôd in the swanky lobby of the Bowery Hotel, a far cry from the world he creates in ‘The Rover.’ It was a surreal experience, discussing the economic collapse of the entire world while, unrelated to anything, comedian Aziz Ansari sits directly across from us for some type of business meeting. A lot of laughs were coming from that side of the hotel lobby. I can only assume Ansari was not talking about ‘The Rover.’
And it’s interesting to listen to Michôd discuss Robert Pattinson, an actor who Michôd had never seen in his most famous work, the ‘Twilight’ series. Pattinson does bring a bit of a wild card to this production. He’s still immensely popular with his ‘Twilight’ fans, but Pattinson is openly pursuing projects that distances himself — like this one and two David Cronenberg films — from the movies that made him famous. And, for what it’s worth, Michôd has no clue how that will affect the attention received for ‘The Rover.’
...
I know you hadn’t seen the ‘Twilight’ movies before casting Robert Pattinson, but what does his fame bring to this movie? Does that help? Can it possibly hurt?
I don’t know, it’s all a great unknown to me. You know, I love the idea of being able to take a person who I can only imagine his talents have been grossly underestimated.
This is a good movie for him, along with the Cronenberg films.
He’s a really smart guy with great taste. And he knows the filmmakers that he wants to work with. But, who knows what it will mean for the movie in the public consciousness, you know? I have no idea whether or not it will work for us or against us. But, I don’t really care — because I love the surprise and the revelation of it. And I would hope that people embrace it, because I think he’s really good in it. It was never going to be enough for me that he gave just a good, solid performance. It was always important for me that he give an extraordinary one — and I think he does it. He and Guy both.
Whose idea was it for Robert Pattinson’s character to have tics?
That was his. They felt organic. I don’t know how conscious and deliberate they were for him, but when I was watching them, they felt like this nice little organic manifestations of the character.
And you dirtied him up.
[Laughs] It had to happen. For me, Rob’s character is like a lost puppy dog. He’s lost his owner and he just kind of latches on to the first person he finds. It happens to be a particularly bad choice.Thank you Nancy R!
“With Rob it’s Beatlemania,” he says.
“But it’s been one of the great, sort of most rewarding things for me about this whole experience is realising that the guy who’s at the centre of this bizarre bubble is actually a really wonderful gentle, humble, interesting, funny human being.”
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is upon us. You have worked with Robert Pattinson in New Moon. What is he like, and do you see him being able to break free of the role of Edward?
I’m sure he’s not going to have any trouble himself personally, it’s whether the audience will accept him as something else. We’ll see. He certainly has the desire to stretch herself as an actor and try different things. He has a [different] film out at the moment, doesn’t he?
Yes, Remember Me, which is really good.
So I hear. I don’t think he’ll have any trouble. He’ll probably always be Edward Cullen for a whole generation, but I’m sure he won’t have any trouble doing that. And he’s lovely. He’s a very nice English lad who seems to have both feet on the ground. He’s very humble, very pleasant and hard-working. He takes what he does very seriously. I think he’s going to do very well, that young lad.
Pierce Brosnan, who describes Pattinson as:“a young man who has been catapulted into the stratosphere of fame. As far as I can tell, he has a good heart, he's humble, and he was very brave when he chose the role of Tyler, because he’s carrying the weight from Twilight, literally breathing on his neck. It’s up to him to choose interesting roles to film in between filming blockbuster movies”Lee Pace (Garrett in Breaking Dawn) calls Rob charming and humble.
"The thing about [Rob] that is so charming is what you see is what you get," Pace said. "He is as charming and humble and handsome as he presents himself. Totally what you see is what you get with him."
How did you react when Robert Pattinson thanked you for his Twilight “Best Fight” MTV Movie Award? Can you share your experience in filming that scene?
First let me say that Robert Pattinson is an amazingly humble person and a very hard worker. He works very hard and shows up to every rehearsal. The last battle scene in Twilight was very intense. Many of the stunts involved hard hits with wires and crashes which are so much fun to do! Without risking personal injury to Rob, I ended up doing the majority of stunts in the final battle which won the award.
I was at a friend's house and I started getting text messages and phone calls from friends saying "I think Rob Pattinson just thanked you on national TV". I was really stoked and also a little confused by the "I think" part. Immediately I went online and found a video of Rob's speech where he gave me credit for the award but said the wrong last name. To his credit, someone had misspelled my name on a photo shoot for LA Magazine and my wrong last name was plastered all over the internet. None the less, I was so stoked that he would even think of me for a shot out. Actors rarely do that for stuntmen. Rob is a very considerate individual and true gentleman. When I saw him on the set of Remember Me he immediately apologized for the mishap.
“I don’t think so,” says Christian, adding that if has changed, Robert has gone in the opposite direction. “If anything he’s become more humble and more introverted,” Christian tells OK!.
I have a friend that manages a bike shop here in Baton Rouge, and I brought my bikes in to get fixed. I walk in, and it's my 3 good friends who run the store, and only 2 other people. An older gentleman, and a younger, bearded one. I didn't recognize either so I just kept walking right past them (like 6 inches away from them) straight to the warehouse of the shop.
A half hour later, I realize, this fucking bearded guy is ROBERT PATTINSON. Robert fucking Pattinson. He was wearing a dark baseball cap, jeans, a red flannel shirt, and black shoes (looked like skate/bike shoes). He decides to buy a bike from my friend (a thousand dollar bike that I'm sure you'll see in paparazzi pictures from now on). This is a nice bike, and needs to be setup in the warehouse before sending him with it, so I then find myself in the predicament OF HANGING OUT WITH ROBERT PATTINSON IN A SMALL ROOM FOR AN HOUR. He's the most attractive person I've ever fucking met. And his beard? Epic. He's also the sweetest goddamn person, and I didn't ask for a picture, because he seemed to be enjoying the fact that not a single one of us acknowledged his celebrity.
Anyway. That's it. Fucking epic, and I don't even like Twilight. Oh, and that smile? That fucking smile? CUTEST THING EVER. He's like, Cedric Diggery nice. Super sweet. Super humble.
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