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‘I don’t really know who I am’

He has the same effect on giddy teenagers as his alter ego Edward Cullen has on Bella in the Twilight series. With the release of new movie Remember Me, Robert Pattinson continues to captivate his legions of fans, all of whom would rather view himas the vampire with a human heart

SETTLING IN FOR an interview, dressed casually in a black leather jacket, a red-plaid shirt and jeans, Pattinson seems comfortable in the glare which has surrounded him since the release of Twilight (2008). He can even see the humour in it.

For example, he’s quick to refute the general assumption that none of his fans are much past junior high school.

“I remember this woman rushed me in an airport and cornered me to profess true and undying love,” Pattinson says. “I asked her how old she was, because it seemed odd. The woman told me she was 92 years old. She told me the same thing the 12-year-old girls tell me.”

The 23-year-old actor laughs.

“A magazine recently had it on the cover that I was pregnant,” he adds. “It was written without a hint of irony. I don’t even know what to make out of it. It doesn’t even qualify as libelous.”

Perhaps they’d simply run out of other things to say about Pattinson, whose every nuance has been pondered in newspapers, in magazines and on the Internet. No wonder that he tries to limit his media exposure, fearing that he may already be overexposed.

“It’s even a risky thing to do interviews,” he says. “I try to limit them, because no one is that interesting. I’ve never really struggled in any interesting way. And I have to stop being so self-deprecating, because then people will say, ‘That guy is an idiot.”’

OK, then, if he’s not an idiot and he’s not Edward Cullen, who is Robert Pattinson in real life?

“I don’t really know who I am,” the actor says, “but hopefully people won’t compartmentalise me.”

Romance in reel life

Pattinson has overcome his doubts about being interviewed in order to discuss his new film, a romance that involves no vampires but still concerns life-and-death issues: Remember Me co-stars Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper and Emilie de Ravin.

Pattinson plays the rebellious Tyler, a young man who has a conflicted relationship with his father (Brosnan) in the wake of a family tragedy. Tyler falls in love with Ally (de Ravin), whose spirit helps to heal him, but he doesn’t pass muster with her father (Cooper), who doesn’t think he’s the right kind of guy for his daughter.

“It’s a way for me to find another young character who can really touch a nerve with my audience,” Pattinson says. “Of course this is a guy who has real-life problems, but he’s still struggling, which was why I liked him.”

It’s another highly romantic role for a young man who says that he isn’t very romantic off the screen.

“Honestly, I haven’t done that many romantic things in my life,” Pattinson says. “I’m asked what goes through my head when I do movie love scenes. I do want to make it beautiful for everyone, both women and men.”

Men?

“I think guys appreciate romance,” the actor says defensively. “I’ve watched Titanic (1997) a few times, and I didn’t think it was a girl’s film. Only a complete idiot of a guy would think that about Titanic. So I don’t do my films thinking, ‘I’m in a series of films for girls.’

Even so, untold numbers of young ladies will be happy to hear that Pattinson has wrapped The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which will be released on June 30. It was easy to step back into Edward’s shoes, he says, because the Twilight movies have been filmed back-to-back.

“I guess it’s inevitable that you become more comfortable within a role,” he says. “You also become protective of the character.”

While quick to emphasise that he isn’t Edward Cullen, Pattinson will concede that there are certain similarities.

“I’m stubborn like Edward in some ways,” he says. “He’s pretty self-righteous. I can also get quite possessive and obsessive. I’m that way about my privacy.”

“I also have very specific ideas about how I want to do my work and how I want to be perceived, to the point of ridiculousness sometimes,” he continues. “I don’t listen to anyone else. I don’t have a permanent publicist – I couldn’t stand it if someone was trying to tell me to do something.

“I like being meticulous,” Pattinson concludes, “and it’s quite difficult as an actor to have that kind of control. That’s one great thing about the Twilight series – they do give you a lot of control.”

And also a lot of work: Pattinson admits that, between Twilight films – he’ll spend the year filming the two-part finale, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – and Remember Me, he has been too exhausted to enjoy his celebrity.

“I’ve had three days off since January 14 last year,” he says, “so I don’t have much time to focus on the rest of it. I will be on set all this year.”

A hero is born

It’s been a crazy ride for Pattinson, who before Twilight was known only for playing Cedric Diggory, the Triwizard Cup contestant who is murdered in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2003), and for parts in the little-seen Ring of the Nibelungs (2004) and Little Ashes (2008), in which he played Salvador Dali.

Since he beat out more than 3,000 actors for the role of Edward Cullen, however, his every move has been scrutinised by legions of fans, all of whom know that, in his spare time, Pattinson writes music and plays the guitar and piano.

Many also think, having read the tabloids, that off the set he whispers sweet nothings in the ear of his Twilight co-star, Kristen Stewart, but the actor insists that such is not the case. It’s Edward and Bella who are in love, not Robert and Kristen.

“You just have to remember that you’re being paid, on a movie set, to fall in love,” he says. “There are a lot of connotations that come with it.”

OK, so is he a whispering-sweet-nothings kind of guy in general? The actor says no.

“The most romantic thing I ever did was, at age 14, I put a flower in a girl’s locker,” Pattinson says. “And she thought it was from someone else, and he claimed it was from him.

“Life,” Pattinson says with a laugh, “is not like one of my movies.”