Robert Pattinson Revealed He Was Almost Fired From "Twilight" Over Tensions About Making The Movie "Too Emo" And His Manager Had To Fly Out To Intervene
"Whatever you're doing right now, after lunch just do the opposite or you'll be fired by the end of the day."
It's hard to imagine the Twilight franchise without Robert Pattinson, but according to the actor, he was nearly fired from the first movie over "tension" about its direction.
In an interview with GQ earlier this week, the 35-year-old opened up about his most iconic roles to date, which obviously included the vampire lead, Edward Cullen.
"I do think there's something in that first movie," Robert said of its tone. "You can see that people are taking it seriously and it kind of has a passion to it."
However, retelling a story about those early days, Robert revealed there had been a "strange tension" on set over the direction of the movie, as he believed it should have a more artistic approach, something the studio didn't quite agree on.
"I was 21 and kind of wanted to make it as arty as possible," he said. "We had this strange tension where the studio was a little bit scared to make things a little bit too emo and stuff, and I thought that was the only way to play it."
Seemingly embarrassed of the way he'd acted at the time, Robert said that he was "infuriated" on set and didn't realize it was close to losing him the job — that is until his manager and agent flew out to intervene.
"It just seems so ridiculous talking about it now because I was literally enraged…I spent so much time just infuriated," he said. "There's definitely something about being 21 as well, because I can't believe the way I was acting half the time when I think back on it."
On the day the cast and crew were shooting Bella meeting Edward's family for the first time, Robert's manager and agent made a surprise visit, where they apparently told him he needed to change his attitude or risk getting fired.
"[I] just thought everything was fine," he said. "Then at lunch, they were like, 'OK, so whatever you're doing right now, after lunch just do the opposite or you'll be fired by the end of the day.'" According to Robert, the conversation was enough to change his attitude and "got me to smile a little bit."
And that wasn't the only story from Robert's early days of acting — he also opened up about his role in the Harry Potter franchise, where he took on the part of Cedric Diggory.
"I'd sort of fallen into it. I mean, it was so terrifying," he said of being cast in the movie. "I remember the first scene I ever shot on that was in the magical maze at the end, and I'd never done anything with special effects and stunts. It was a big deal at the time. It felt very, very intimidating."
It turns out that in order to get into character, Robert had tried researching method acting, which didn't exactly turn out well.
"I think I'd read a book on method acting," he said. "The only thing I really got out of that was just beating yourself up before every single scene — that was basically my only concept of how to prepare for a scene."
He added: "I was psyching myself up as if I was getting into a fight or something before these scenes and just screaming into a pillow and like, punching myself and ripping my clothing and stuff."
But, although it sounded like an ordeal, the money he earned from the role was enough to give Robert the chance to figure out what he wanted to do next, which was...not acting.
"I really thought I was gonna do music at that point," he said. "I don't know where I had the belief in that, because there was absolutely no one saying that there was a music career on the table."
"I was doing a lot of gigs all the time, I was constantly doing open mics all the time," he continued. "Then I ran out of money basically. It was definitely going the wrong direction in terms of a career up until Twilight."
You can watch Robert's full interview with GQ here.
