Here is a translation of a recent interview Rob Pattinson gave to the Brazilian magazine Época. Did you know he admires political speech writers?
When I was a teenager, I though everything I was feeling and all of my questionings were a fantasy. When I turned 20 I realized that I wasn’t making anything up. I had really gone through all that. It gave me great relief cause I could accept the fact that I was part of the world, that I wasn’t some strange, alien being that didn’t connect with anything.
Did you go through a phase of writing poetry? Rebelling?
I was never a teenage rebel, and I never wrote poetry cause I think it’s too common-place. I wrote music, and later on, started acting. One of the greatest things about being an actor is that it works as an outlet to a lot of other things. It’s the only job in which you have an excuse to think about how would you feel in certain situations. From the moment you start dedicating a big part of your time thinking about other personalities, you end up getting rid of a sense of fatigue that may bring resentment.
-Was it hard choosing between a music career and being an actor?
I still write music. After Harry Potter I started taking supporting roles in movies just for the money. Then came Twilight and everything changed. Suddenly I had the responsibility to choose jobs, some influence in the pre-production and in the script’s development. Everything gets better, cause you’re investing your time in something productive. One bad thing about being an actor, though, is that you have little control over what you do. The most you can do, most of the time, is say Yes or No.
-You admire political speech writers. Is that a profession you’d like to have if you hadn’t decided to become an actor?
One of the most interesting things to me, about political speeches, is that most people who write them don’t have any political affiliations with the candidate. You have an incredible power in your hands without the weight of responsibility. You can be nonchalant about who wins. I’ve read an interesting book called Alpha Dog, about a group of advertising executives who became political advisers and created a billion dollar Industry that reorganizes the way the elections are handled. And they changed the look of politics. The candidate is just a face to them. It’s all a publicity machine.
-In an interview to Details magazine, you said you love to read about tropical diseases and mentions the amazon fish candiru.
(laughs)The young script writer that helped me revise the Remember Me script it’s also fascinated by obscure diseases. So we started exchanging e-mails with imagines of those, which, let’s be honest, it’s a horrible thing. Out of all of them, nothing can be worse than a parasite fish that goes through your urethra and feeds off your blood. (laughs)
-With all of the success of Twilight, you had to learn how to deal with fame. How is this process?
When you have a goal in life, everything gets easier. If this sudden fame had happened to me and I didn’t have anywhere to go, emotionally, maybe I would’ve gone a little crazy. But as soon as I did the first Twilight movie, I knew that I’d had more jobs. I’m obsessed with movies and I wanna make good ones. If I had kept myself too present in the colective hysteria created by the movie, I would’ve become hysterical too. That’s dangerous. At first, I looked at the masses like they were a wall from where it arouse a deafening sound. Everyone looked the same. Now I look at the masses in an individual way, I can make up people’s faces, which is less scary.
-It must be a brutal experience to have a legion of fans.
It’s intimidating, yes. What I really don’t like it’s the amount of gadgets with cameras on them. I try to attend to fans that ask for a photo, I try to please all of them when I go out to dinner, for example. What drives me mad is when I noticed, from my peripheral vision, that someone is trying to take my picture without my permission. I feel like I’m being treated like an animal. The Paparazzi moves a million dollar Industry, and I don’t wanna be a product of that. When that happens, I get up, go to the person and try to embarrass them. (laughs)
-What kind of music do you listen to?
I love jazz, the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins is my favorite. I bought a CD from the group Bossa Nova Bossa. And I just bought a Brazilian instrument. It’s incredible.
-Which One?
It’s a “viola caipira” (some sort of typical guitar), I payed 50 pounds for it. I have an obsession with buying obscure musical instruments. And I was fascinated with the design of this guitar, the thick neck, the ten strings. The sound is mighty powerful.
