There are few actors working today who are as versatile as Robert Pattinson. The 40-year-old Londoner first made a splash at the age of 19, when he caused a generation of fans to swoon at his chivalrous, clean-cut portrayal of Cedric Diggory in the fourth instalment of the series. Then came , the vampire saga which became a cultural phenomenon, grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide and secured the actor an obsessive global following.
Instead of parlaying his newfound fame into another blockbuster franchise, Pattinson confounded his critics and grew into a mainstay of auteur cinema. He played British officer TE Lawrence in Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert (2015), an ambitious photographer in Anton Corbijn’s (2015), a street hustler in the Safdie brothers’ explosive crime drama (2017), a bumbling pioneer in the Zellner brothers’ feminist western (2018) and an officer in Ciro Guerra’s JM Coetzee adaptation Waiting for the Barbarians (2019).
Then came a string of more high profile projects – Christopher Nolan’s , Matt Reeves’s , Bong Joon Ho’s , Lynne Ramsay’s – though that off-beat, arthouse edge remained. And now? Well, he’s having a hell of a year: after letting it rip in Kristoffer Borgli’s divisive cringe comedy and cackling his way through , Pattinson will be taking centre stage in Lance Oppenheim’s , the tale of To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen’s quest to rule the airwaves, and then heading to Arrakis for .
Ahead of ’s Venice Film Festival premiere, we revisit Pattinson’s 13 most memorable performances to date.
When Pattinson burst onto screens as a floppy-haired teenager, playing Hogwarts’ golden boy and original Triwizard Champion Cedric Diggory, he became a modern-day matinee idol. Roguishly handsome and unfailingly heroic, he battles a dragon, waltzes with Cho Chang (Katie Leung) and develops an unlikely friendship with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) before meeting a tragic end on the orders of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Despite his limited screen time, a star was born.
Trading one fantasy franchise for another, Pattinson’s ascent was accelerated when he took on the role of Edward Cullen, the deathly pale, high-cheekboned vampire at the centre of five box office record-breaking blockbusters: (2008), (2009), (2010), – (2011) and 2 (2012). They feature an all-consuming romance with a mere mortal (Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan) and shapeshifting werewolves, not to mention lashings of adolescent angst.
Eric Packer, the protagonist of David Cronenberg’s slick, sadistic thriller, is vampiric in his own way: a hollow-eyed and eerily expressionless currency speculator who cruises around Manhattan in his limo. As anti-capitalist protests rage around him, he watches his empire collapse and contemplates death. Pattinson plays him with relish, combining insouciance with steely menace, whether he’s confronting a would-be assassin or having a prostate exam in the middle of a business meeting.
There’s a scene in David Michôd’s brutal western in which Pattinson, playing slack-jawed simpleton Reynolds, sings along to Keri Hilson’s . Hearing him mumble “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful” is guaranteed to make you smile — a self-mocking nod to the actor’s public persona smuggled into a tense thriller set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It sees Reynolds accompany Eric (Guy Pearce), a loner whose car is stolen by thugs, on a furious, blood-soaked quest for revenge.
Maps to the Stars (2014)
Reuniting with Cronenberg for yet another bizarre fable, Pattinson stars as limo driver and aspiring screenwriter Jerome Fontana in this study of ambition and amorality in Hollywood. He befriends Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), the pyromaniac personal assistant of a fading actress (Julianne Moore), and is drawn into their glittering world as he awaits his big break. It makes for a barbed satire where laugh-out-loud moments collide with set pieces that provoke shock and awe.
The Childhood of a Leader (2015)
The formative years of a future dictator are tracked in Brady Corbet’s feature debut, which unfolds in France in the wake of the first world war. A riotous young boy (Tom Sweet) is there with his diplomat father (Liam Cunningham) and ice-cold mother (Bérénice Bejo), attacking his peers, faking ailments and denouncing God. Looming over them is Charles Marker (Pattinson), a reserved family friend whose significance to the story is startling — and only revealed in the film’s tantalising final shots.
The Lost City of Z (2016)
If you needed more proof of Pattinson’s chameleonic screen presence, watch him as the bearded explorer Henry Costin in James Gray’s sweeping epic about a British adventurer (Charlie Hunnam) in search of a hidden civilisation. The former plays the latter’s as they traverse the Amazon, meeting indigenous communities, coming under attack and all the while hearing rumours of a jungle city covered in gold. It’s a beguiling dream that they hold on to for the rest of their lives.
From the electronic soundtrack to the frantic visuals and overlapping dialogue, the Safdie brothers’ rollicking crime caper is as anxiety-inducing as it is absorbing. Pattinson shines as Connie Nikas, a bank robber who botches a job alongside his brother (Benny Safdie), which lands the latter in jail. In a bid to break him out, Connie devises a series of ill-fated schemes involving blonde hair dye, marked bills and a bottle of LSD. By the time the end credits roll, you’ll be gasping for breath.
French auteur Claire Denis’s vision of a dystopian future unravels on a sordid spaceship hurtling towards a black hole. Its inhabitants are death-row inmates, sent on a mysterious mission that could claim their lives — unless, of course, they get at each other first. In a sea of mesmerising performances from the likes of Juliette Binoche and Mia Goth, Pattinson radiates calm as Monte, the final survivor. It’s his quiet thoughtfulness that grounds the film and then allows it to soar.
Everything about Robert Eggers’s atmospheric thriller is slightly off-kilter: the camera angles that capture waves crashing on briny rocks, the chilling sound of cawing seagulls, and the haunted faces of Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. They play a pair of rugged lighthouse keepers, dispatched to a remote island off the coast of 19th-century New England and slowly descending into madness. With bulging eyes, matted hair, and sweat dripping from his moustache, Pattinson proves that he can completely disappear into a role and that his already impressive range is getting broader still.
As a brooding, long-haired, dark eyeliner-sporting Bruce Wayne, opposite Zoë Kravitz’s steely Catwoman, in Matt Reeves’s hallucinatory reboot, Pattinson deliberately swerved away from the more straight-forward interpretations of his predecessors in the part (everyone from Michael Keaton to Christian Bale) and breathed new life into the Caped Crusader. Those who had assumed the superhero saga would signal the actor’s return to the mainstream, saw that it was anything but – evidence that he now delivers arthouse credibility and commercial clout in equal measure in basically everything he does.
The skin contact wine-sipping, perpetually anxious curator, Charlie (Pattinson), reels from the slow implosion of his previously perfect life in Kristoffer Borgli’s bonkers comedy, after his fiancée, the smart and beautiful Emma (Zendaya) reveals a terrible secret from her childhood. Slipping from (relatively) smooth and debonair to frantic and scatty – and eventually blood-soaked and desperate – he’s incredibly funny to watch.
In Christopher Nolan’s ancient Greek epic, Pattinson is a scene-stealer as Antinous, the conniving, sumptuously-dressed villain trying to draw Anne Hathaway’s virtuous Penelope into a new union which would allow him to claim the throne before the return of Matt Damon’s Odysseus. It’s a part he sinks his teeth into gleefully – and, despite limited screen time, leaves an indelible impression.