The mysterious machine of stardom is a fickle, unpredictable thing. As long as Hollywood has been around, it has been known to mold and remodel careers in an exceedingly unpredictable manner. Perhaps the most outrageous example of this appears in the form of our beloved Robert Pattinson, whose time in Hollywood has taken the most gloriously erratic turns.
But within a machine as well-oiled as Hollywood, can this kind of bizarre ascension to fame really be a mere matter of chance? In the case of R Patz, one might actually argue that his outrageously capricious career – from Twilight to The Lighthouse to The Batman – actually makes a whole lot of sense.
Pattinson first became a household name when, very early on in his career, he appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) as the chiseled-jawed, angelic prep-schooler Cedric Diggory. He didn’t even really have a whole lot to do in the film, but his floppy blonde hair and polite British accent instantly thrust him to teen heartthrob status.
Enter Edward Cullen
This, of course, set Pattinson up for his real big break: the Twilight franchise. Not unlike Diggory, Pattinson’s sparkling, vampiric Edward was (and honestly still is) positively beloved worldwide.
But, despite being bonafide heartthrob material, Edward Cullen inhabits a distinctly different energy than Cedric Diggory. Indeed, the Twilight franchise is home to a host of surreally bizarre and unintentionally comedic moments, including – but absolutely not limited to – a scene where Edward removes his shirt to reveal a chest sparkling like a disco ball, and then proceeds to say to his soon-to-be-GF: “This is the skin of a killer, Bella.”
Moments in the Twilight series like this continue to live in infamy over a decade later. And one of the main advocates of making fun of the films? Pattinson himself.
Choosing Chaos During Press Junkets
On press tours, Pattinson was the first to play into the idea that the series is utterly ridiculous. He often noted that there’s a lot of stuff in the Twilight world that makes no sense, for example, and once even suggested that the books’ author, Stephanie Meyer, is “mad.”
Making fun of the thing that made you famous is undoubtedly an… unconventional career choice. But for Pattinson, there is no denying that it is a choice that ultimately paid off. Once he really committed to poking fun at poor sparkly Edward, he took that persona and ran with it.
From there, he became a celebrity who consistently peppered interviews with incredibly strange things – like announcing that he smells like a crayon, lying about witnessing the death of a clown at a young age, or explaining that there is a little Gremlin inside of him.
