Robert Pattinson has trouble watching himself onscreen.
The “Twilight” icon admitted to Wonderland magazine while in conversation with his “The Batman” co-star Barry Keoghan that he feels “quite disconnected” from projects after completing them.
“Do you still feel like when the film is done, you’re connected to it? I used to really struggle to watch myself,” Pattinson said to Keoghan. “Now, once it’s finished, I feel quite disconnected. I mean, not disconnected in a bad way, but it’s kind of like if…”
“The Boy and the Heron” voice actor Pattinson added, “I almost get more nervous when I don’t feel nervous. That’s why whenever I start a new job…I mean it doesn’t really help that I’m hardly doing any jobs at the moment, because I wish I was doing more. […] I just feel like now I’m back to the start again. I know the next time I do something, I’ll be like, I can’t remember how to do any of this stuff. It’s kind of nice to go into it as an amateur every time and be like, ‘This is a huge mountain to climb.’ It’s like being a total fake again.”
Pattinson also discussed what is “most useful” to learn when acting under a director.
“It’s weird, I guess it’s the only way to be able to have some sort of technical ability, but then to be able to be quite loose with it,” Pattinson said. “I mean, some people have it instinctively, but the more jobs you do, you’re just like, that’s the most useful thing to learn. When a director will say to me, can you do this specific thing, all I know how to do is just roll the dice again. Just do another take.”
He continued, “The nice thing about the job as well, in general, is that if something worked in a previous movie and you’re like, ‘Oh everyone said that was good’ and instinctively you go, well, everyone liked that – I want to do that again. And then next time round, everyone just says it’s shit and you’re like, what the fuck? You’re forced into reinvention.”
The longtime star further opened up about feeling the need to be “bullshitting” in certain roles.
“I think also a lot of the people who are drawn to acting when they’re younger are people who really like bullshitting and you have no qualms about bullshitting to anybody,” he said. “Once you start getting known, then it’s like, ‘Oh, my entire social ability was based on just making stuff up all the time.’ And now, there’s consequences for making stuff up.”
Pattinson concluded, “I always find if you’re doing a scene and if you end up realizing, ‘Oh, I’ve stayed really still’, and you’re kind of fossilizing, I suddenly get so conscious and there’s something interesting about keeping that constant roll.”
In September 2023, Pattinson told Interview magazine that he has a “deep, deep fear of humiliation” in his career.
“You can say it’s a shitty script or the director’s a dick or blah, blah, blah, but at the end of the day, no one’s going to care about the reasons. You’re the one who everyone’s going to say is lame,” he said. “And the vast majority of people will say you’re lame even when you tried your best.”
