Jamie Dornan was 50 shades of green when it came to living with Robert Pattinson.
The “50 Shades of Grey” alum admitted that he was “jealous” of former roommate Pattinson’s early success, as cemented by his star-making turn in “Twilight.”
“I’ve known Rob forever. He’s a really good friend. I love him. I think he’s one of the most investing, exciting actors around,” Dornan said during Wired’s “Autocomplete Interview” series. “I probably, at one point, was quite jealous early on. We were all friends back in London and Rob was going places and we weren’t. I think he’s the nicest guy in the world.”
Dornan and Pattinson were part of a rising actors crowd consisting of Andrew Garfield, Eddie Redmayne, and Charlie Cox. While Pattinson was a child star from “Harry Potter,” his career kicked off slightly earlier than his Oscar-nominated counterparts.
Of course, Dornan later went on to star in “Twilight” fan fiction franchise “50 Shades of Grey.” The “Haunting in Venice” actor previously told Entertainment Tonight that Pattinson’s role as Edward Cullen placed him in a “different stratosphere” than their friend group.
“I think with Rob it’s always been like, he sort of had success earlier, so we were a bit like, ‘Does he really fit in with us?,’” Dornan said. “Because we were not working and he’s working all the time. He did ‘Twilight’ and was suddenly in a different stratosphere than us.”
Dornan defended Pattinson’s “The Batman” casting last year, saying “all the naysayers love what Rob has done with Batman” despite the initial backlash to him taking on the Caped Crusader for Matt Reeves’ revamped DC film.
“Prejudgment is such a fucking disease,” Dornan said of the casting process. “It’s a disease in all our culture. In my line of work, sure. But in general, people prejudge people based on fucking anything really, and it’s very sad. Look at the reaction when Rob got cast as Batman. It was like 90 percent negative.”
Dornan added to IndieWire of his own process for taking roles, “If you get too comfortable in this industry, you’re fucked. I believe that. I always want to prove something to myself. I’m a bit driven in that way of always wanting to challenge myself beyond what I’ve already achieved, or what I’ve already sort of dealt with. I want the next thing to be something I have to work really hard to prove to myself — and potentially to other people — that I’m capable of this, whatever it is. Call it an ambition, or a desire, or whatever, but it’s something within me, to constantly test yourself.”
