Robert Pattinson asks that I don’t disclose this particular Los Angeles coffee spot to the public. “This is my spot, secret,” he says, approaching from behind me in a black cap, vintage T-shirt and jeans. You can find it opposite a Starbucks, next to a petrol station — if that helps. It’s near a freeway. Pattinson says he never eats the food, but he fist-bumps the waiter who brings him his usual: an iced coffee and an Arnold Palmer (iced tea and lemonade). He takes a sip from one straw then a sip from the other in between vapes. “Don’t mention the vape,” he says. “So embarrassing!”
A decade ago Pattinson was one half of the most famous on-screen couple of the Noughties: the vampire Edward Cullen, high-school sweetheart to Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan in the five-movie box-office juggernaut that was The Twilight Saga. Pattinson was the pin-up of every teenager, and the secret crush of those old enough to know better. He was a huge part of the success of the film franchise, which took an already well-loved teen book series by Stephenie Meyer to new heights. The movies grossed more than £2.5bn worldwide and spawned a group of superfans known as Twihards. For the cast members it was like Beatlemania, but goth.
During the peak Twilight years — 2008 to 2012 — a bodyguard accompanied Pattinson on film sets. There are tales of him fending off paparazzi by keeping changes of clothes in parked cars around Hollywood, ducking, diving, creating diversions. It reads like a 24/7 heist movie. “It sounds awful, but I got these massive highs when I escaped people,” he says. “Especially when you see the absolute frustration on their faces when they’re trying to follow you.” He argues that he’s too old to be papped in 2019. “They don’t give a shit. There are only so many times they can get a picture of me wearing a black hat. It’s been seven years now.”
Pattinson carries himself with the gawky awkwardness of a young man who doesn’t quite know his own attractiveness — certainly not like a serious 32-year-old. For instance, this morning his car broke down. It’s 10 years old and it cost $1,000. “It’s quite good,” he says. “Everything in it is broken. It has a hole in it. People see it and they’re frightened, so they get out my way.” He did have a bougie car years ago — a vintage Mustang. His dad, who deals in antique cars, warned against it. “It stalled constantly,” he says. “To have an attention magnet that breaks down and you have to get out and push it round corners … That’s the hubris people love to see come undone.”
Pattinson is aware of his celebrity. He moved to LA almost 10 years ago. When he first came to visit the city in 2006, it was a different time. “The height of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton,” he marvels. “Going out then was the best. There were no English people.” He says that made his accent a “get out of jail free” card. “You’d be led into places. Astonishing. You could hang out with everyone. As soon as cameraphones came it tamed people.” He remembers seeing Mickey Rourke in a club pouring ice over people. “Did that even happen?” he whispers to himself, considering how preposterous it sounds. He thinks young actors are more straight-laced now. “There’s not as much reverence for past …” he struggles. Debauchery? “Yes! Debauchery has been cancelled. The whole of debauchery.”
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His celebrity nickname, R-Patz, remains in wide distribution (he once told the press it originated with “some fat celebrity blogger”). “It’s weird,” he says of the title today. “A shadow self.” He has never succumbed to social media — Twilight-mania happened during the dawn of Instagram, although some of the cast members had Twitter accounts. Does he google himself? “Occasionally,” he says sheepishly. “The other day I read: ‘God! He’s had so much work done on his nose.’ I was really flattered.”
When Twilight ended, Pattinson’s career security blanket was taken away. “There was a period when I didn’t work for a year,” he says. “That was scary. I tried to start a restaurant. Absolutely disastrous.” His dream was a private dive bar. “You’d need facial recognition to get in!” But the dry spell didn’t last. Pattinson had already clocked up a catalogue of projects between Twilight movies, from the romantic drama Remember Me to the period piece Water for Elephants with Reese Witherspoon. He carved out a credible indie career with serious directors such as David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis, 2012, and Maps to the Stars, 2014). Next month, he appears as Monte, a convict serving a death-row sentence, in the space thriller High Life. His co-star Juliette Binoche plays a doctor performing experiments to create new life — which result in Monte’s infant daughter. He bats away suggestions that playing a dad got him thinking about whether he wants to have children. “No,” he says, and continues on a tangent about the tricks he learnt. He was charged with calming the baby if it cried. “It took for ever. What’s that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie when he’s the nanny?” he laughs. Junior? “I was like that.”
He can dodge personal questions like a pro by now. When he began his off-screen relationship with Kristen Stewart in 2008, the tabloids’ appetite was insatiable. For years neither would confirm or deny the relationship, until, in 2011, Stewart told an interviewer she had an English boyfriend. Things went south when she cheated on him with her Snow White and the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders, in 2012, and Pattinson eventually moved out of their home in 2013. He was in a three-year relationship with the British pop star FKA Twigs until 2017 — they were allegedly engaged, but again neither confirmed it. Is he on good terms with his exes? Yes is all he’ll say. “Yes. Yes.”
Currently he is reportedly dating the model Suki Waterhouse. They were first spotted kissing last July, after a trip to the cinema in London. I want to talk about Suki, I say. “Do I have to?” When did you meet? He squirms and draws up the barricades. It’s understandable. “If you let people in, it devalues what love is. If a stranger on the street asked you about your relationship, you’d think it extremely rude. If you put up a wall it ends up better. I can’t understand how someone can walk down the street holding hands, and it’s the same as when I do it and a hundred people are taking your photo. The line between when you’re performing and when you’re not will eventually get washed away and you’ll go completely mad.” He will say, however, that despite the break-ups he doesn’t believe high-profile matches are futile. “They were pretty long relationships, not like three months,” he says reasonably.
In LA he does hang out with film people, but only, he says, because he wants to discuss work. “That’s why I’m here. If I go out and I’m not talking about work, it’s a waste of time.” One of his oldest Hollywood friends is Katy Perry. They met before I Kissed a Girl became a hit in 2008. “She’s exactly the same. That’s difficult to do,” he says. In her bathroom are letters from past presidents wishing her a happy birthday. “It’s so f****** cool, like five presidents! I got a tweet.” Indeed, in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted: “Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again — just watch. He can do much better!” Again, life seems like a gag. “That’s my equivalent. She gets five presidential letters. I get relationship advice in a tweet.”
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His career trajectory amuses him. “My friend from school bumped into my form teacher and they said: ‘It’s so weird what happened to Rob. Of all the people in school …’ ” He howls. Pattinson grew up in Barnes in southwest London with his mum, dad and two older sisters. He describes his younger self as a “space cadet” and has no memory of fawning over film — his only acting experience before getting the part of Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter franchise in 2005, aged 19, was after-school drama lessons. Twilight swiftly followed, and to this day he has imposter syndrome as a result of “falling into” acting. “[Some just] have to show people their talent,” he says. “I literally think I have none. At all.” When he reads scripts, he’ll often think: “This would be so cool if some other actor did it.”
For all that, he has an impressive array of films coming up this year: The Lighthouse with Willem Dafoe, a new Christopher Nolan project and a Netflix original entitled The King, for which he has just signed a post #MeToo “behavioural contract”. He says he’s all for reversing inequalities: “If it’s a question of me being paid more and getting a worse actress, or me being paid less and getting a better actress, I’ll do it for f****** free.” In The King, he stars with Lily-Rose Depp and Timothée Chalamet. On Chalamet’s rising star, Pattinson refutes any common ground between their experiences as young Hollywood pin-ups. “Straight off the bat he’s nominated for an Oscar. Different world!” he says. “At his age I was doing mall tours.” Though he’s quick to add: “I actually did love it. One of the more fun things to do with Twilight.”
With that, Pattinson’s iced coffee and his iced tea are now finished. Due to the car fiasco, he has to order an Uber. “Argh!” he says punching his thumbs on his iPhone screen. It’s due for repair, too. “I don’t take the expensive Ubers,” he says. “I do tip, though. I give five stars.” See? Nice guy.
High Life is in cinemas from May 10
Styling: Tony Irvine. Grooming: Kristan Serafino at Tracey Mattingly using Sisley Paris. Local production: Marcos Fecchino
