Hot Actor: Q&A With "Twilight" Star Robert Pattinson

Were there any risks that you wanted to take that you ended up just not being able to do?
Edward's constantly saying, "I'm a monster, I'm a monster, I'm a monster," and doesn't end up being one. We shot the final scene first, and I wanted the fight to not just be a fight, but to literally have him turn into that monster. In the book he very much comes in to save the day as the hero, but I noticed when we were doing the blocking it's the first time he's seen a lot of her blood — and I thought it would be interesting [for him to start] wanting to kill her and then fighting himself for that.

There's a part that we significantly cut down in the PG-13 — when I start winning there are all these stunts, but stunts are so protracted that you couldn't get what me and Kristen wanted to do, which was to literally try to pull his head off. [At that point] it's like you've turned into this beast. Then there's a scene where I try to attack [my father in the movie] when he tells me to stop. I think it's him looking at me, saying, "I thought you were the one. You're my protégé, and you're really, really not."

After that point in the movie, he's certain that once she's seen that's who he [really] is, and there is no way there's a happy ending. I kind of wanted to make it really, really depressing; I just sort of got further, and further away from the book as I picked up on little pieces.

I think a lot of people who like the book and like the love story at the end will be sort of baffled by it. But I also thought that's the best type of love story, where the whole time he knows his thoughts and he knows he has so many doubts and he has so many things about weakness. Like, he couldn't kill himself because he's afraid he doesn't have a soul. He couldn't be a proper vegetarian vampire, can't be a proper real vampire, can't be a real man, can't be anything, and it's all like, he's completely impotent about everything. Then he finds this one thing, which makes him feel alive, and he can't even protect that. He can't do anything. He thinks he's a very insignificant human being — well, thing.

Right.
Then it makes it so much more amazing the second when both of them literally could just die when they leave each other, and I wanted to make that kind of operatic Carmen type of thing. At the same time you've got to try and please some people [laughs], and you couldn't really go too dark with it because of the book.

I wanted them to touch three times: when he saves her life and it hurts him to touch her, when they try and kiss when he tries to kill her, and when he's sucking the blood out and trying to kill because he's so afraid of what would happen. Then the director gave me a copy of the book with these highlights of all the times that he smiled and all the times that they touched. So...

Stephenie Meyer talked about the influence of a lot of Victorian literature, which definitely seems obvious in Twilight, even the fact that his name is Edward. Do you see that there's a Victorian quality to Edward?
Yeah, I definitely think it's a lot of Heathcliff.

What's attractive about that kind of character that made him popular then and still popular now?
It's being unreadable. It's attractive in women as well, just that kind of mystique. It's so obvious, but so few people do have it, especially in characters now and especially in modern society where there's so many celebrities.

You're in this position where you're playing this character who's attractive because of that mystique and then don't have that luxury.
I just disappear. It doesn't really make any difference. But I didn't play it so old-fashioned; I tried to get in little elements. I think there are so few young characters in modern films who even have any form of restraint unless they're a geek. I guess Edward would be the jock in a normal type of story, and just playing it sane you can't really touch — everything is very understated.

Why do you think he's attracted to Bella?
I think it's a progression. The way I did it the, whole thing comes as a complete surprise to him. He has so many issues. He's stopped killing people for 50 years, she comes in and he's like, "Oh, I can't control myself!" I just thought that the guy would think, "This fucking girl is not gonna ruin [me]," like, "She's not better than me and I can control my base instincts." And so the relationship starts as [testing] his own power of will.

It's like, "I can go a little bit closer to her, and closer and closer and closer," and then a joy comes out of that where he's just like, "See, eating my instincts again." Later on it's funny how wanting to kill her makes him realize he's in some way alive. And that's why she becomes so important, because the only thing he wanted to do before is become human and die.

There's no way to pin down the story. I never really understood it the whole way through. I understood Edward's character. I didn't understand what Bella was all about. I really tried, and I was working with Kristen for ages. There's definitely some defining characteristics of young girls, which are very, very strange and which aren't really explored in movies. Troubled teens, especially girls, in movies are just so one dimensional it's ridiculous, and they always have somebody to fix them in the end. Whereas in Twilight she doesn't really get fixed she just gets this addiction.

She's all right in the beginning and then she becomes completely dependent; even in last scene of the movie, she's saying, "Don't ever say you'll leave me." That's what makes the story unusual; when you read it at face value and it's just like, "Oh, it's an easy read." You can read it in a few hours, and it's kind of cheesy but as soon as you actually look at it you have to really take massive leaps to join the dots of the character. So I ended up putting tons and tons of thought into it, just to make it not be cheesy cash-in movie 95 percent of the people probably expect it to be.