Robert gets over his nerves with a disappearing act
SOMETIMES Robert Pattinson has to sit down, stop being anxious and recite: ‘ Just be yourself and accept you’re from Barnes.’
The actor knows the leafy district in South-West London well. It’s where he went to school, did a paper round and attended the local drama group, after which the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises propelled him to a kind of stardom he disdains.
He can’t escape those movies, even though over the past few years he has done his strongest work in a string of what he terms ‘provocative’ films. ‘I react quite strongly to people trying to put me in a box. I just want to try on a different persona.’
To prepare for the role of a delusional robber trying to break his brother (played by Benny Safdie) from a guarded hospital room in the film Good Time, the director Josh Safdie had Pattinson roaming around New York trying to look like a loser.
They visited a city jail and Pattinson had his hair slicked back — and no one recognised him until he and Safdie reached the girls’ correctional section. ‘They were whooping “Edward, Edward,”’ Safdie recalled, as he uttered the name of Pattinson’s character in the Twilight series.
HEFARED better working in a car wash and he’d pop into a corner shop to purchase items in character. ‘I’d play around with words and you can tell instinctively whether people are buying what you’re saying. Then I go away and work on making my characterisation more convincing.’
Pattinson likes to disappear in a role, but Good Time is the real deal — a first- class disappearing act where he’s unrecognisable in a film that he totally dominates with a powerful, convincing performance. It’s one of my top-ten performances of the year.
Good Time was shown in Cannes back in May, but Pattinson was terrified before he arrived there. He worried that a plot line involving an actress playing a schoolgirl who becomes involved with Connie, Pattinson’s character, would create problems.
‘At the time of doing the film it felt pretty scary, but the relationship between Connie and Crystal has been cut down and I remember thinking I should make Connie rather asexual, which makes it OK, and I don’t know why I was so worried,’ he told me.
He said that after years of acting he has only recently become comfortable with it.
‘Even though I like doing it I get so much anxiety about performances. I try to calm myself and say, “Just be yourself and accept you’re from Barnes. Be real to yourself.”’
I told him to stop worrying and put all his anxiety and energy into his acting, which is what he has started to do.
He’s making a film with Claire Denis called High Life. ‘It’s about a bunch of deathrow prisoners who get a chance to go into space and explore a black hole. It’s completely insane, which is fun.
‘We’re filming in Cologne and there are French and German crew and producers and there’s a lot of culture clash which I’m enjoying.’
It’s a pity that I don’t write reviews for the local paper in Barnes any more (I did about 100 years ago) because I would happily have told readers that their lad did good in Good Time.