The job of an actor is to disappear into a role and become whatever character they're supposed to be playing. While many actors tend to have a "type," this generally means that an actor will be called on to play all sorts of roles throughout their career. While Robert Pattinson might still be mostly known as the sparkly vampire from Twilight, he's gone on to play an incredible collection of roles and will soon be adding comic book superhero to the list in The Batman. The actor's range is so impressive that it's hard to believe he can actually pull it all off, and it turns out, even the actor himself sometimes feels that way.
Speaking with the director of Robert Pattinson's newest film, Netflix's The Devil All the Time, the actor says that, while he's been in a lot of movies playing a variety of roles, he never feels like he takes that experience with him to his next project. Instead, it's like every time he starts a new production, he feels like he has no idea what he's doing and has to start from scratch. According to Pattinson...
Every single time I start a move I just feel like I have no idea how to act. It only really seems to come together. You need the adrenaline. I think you need to feel like a total failure. You feel your absolute worst the day before, your confidence falls out…. It only seems to come to you when it needs to.
While Robert Pattinson might start out feeling like a failure, it seems that when somebody yells "action" everything he needs seems to come to him, and he settles into his new role very quickly. This includes The Devil All the Time, where he plays an incredibly creepy preacher. Maybe it's not always a good thing that these characters find him so easily. Though, maybe this goes part of the way to explaining where in the world that accent came from.
Watch the full conversation between Robert Pattinson and The Devil All the Time director Antonio Campos, which includes that outrageous accent, in the video below.
I'm shocked if a lot of other actors don't generally feel the same way a lot of the time. Every character is different and if an actor has complete confidence before they start playing a role that's new to them, I feel like they're probably missing something important.
One assumes Robert Pattinson had a similar feeling when he started work on The Batman. It may have even been a stronger feeling because for the first time he's taking on a role that we've seen many other actors give their take on. While I doubt the new Batman will be a complete failure, we'll have to wait until next year to see just how this Batman stacks up against the rest.
