Well, even actors who make millions of dollars shooting movies have a hard time looking bad in front of people. IndieWire (via Interview Magazine) reports that Robert Pattinson revealed his biggest fear in a new interview: looking lame onscreen. Apparently his paychecks aren’t a buffer against the anxiety of being unemployed, humiliated, and the general things people worry about.
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In the new interview, Pattinson talked about his fear of looking bad onscreen, although it’s all on him to ensure his performance is sound. “I have a deep, deep fear of humiliation,” Pattinson said about accepting roles he didn’t totally believe in. “And also, you sort of know it’s down to you. 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. And the vast majority of people will say you’re lame even when you tried your best.”
“I mean, that’s kind of how I look at everything,” the “The Batman” actor continued. “I’m constantly thinking that you’re just going to spend the vast majority of your life unemployed and desperate and kind of feeling like you’re a total failure. I think that’s just what life is. I think it’s just part of it.” Pattinson also noted that the precarious nature of waiting for the next gig is the most anxious part of acting as a career for him. “You’re specifically at a maximum most of the time you’re doing a job and you’re employed for three months. That’s the most stressful thing in the world.”
Sure, work security is stressful, and so is feeling humiliated; but Mr. Pattinson, you made $25 million from the last “Twilight” movie. This isn’t exactly the same kind of stress other people less rich and famous than you have to deal with on a regular basis. But it is a little gratifying to hear an actor talk about their craft and career in a way that’s relatably neurotic. We all want to do well and feel secure, even with the buffers of fame and wealth there to protect Pattinson.
Pattinson’s talked about the inherent stress of an actor’s working schedule in a previous interview with GQ from 2020. Back then, he explained he started agreeing to do more commercial movies because while films like “The Lighthouse” and “Good Time” fared well with critics, they didn’t open up a lot of additional doors for him. “I started the beginning of last year with no job,” Pattinson said. “And I was calling my agent and just being like — I had gotten good reviews in stuff — and I was like, ‘What the f*ck? I thought this was a pretty good year, and I’m fucking starting the year like I’ve just done a pile of trash.’”
That’s when the actor knew he had to pivot a bit with the work he took on. “The problem which I was finding was, however much I loved the [indie] movies I was doing, no one see them,” he continued. “And so it’s kind of this frightening thing, because I don’t know how viable this is for a career…I don’t know how many people there actually are in the industry who are willing to back you without any commercial viability whatsoever.” Sure, Pattinson’s paycheck for Robert Eggers‘ 2019 film isn’t the same as, say, his “Twilight” pay out. But there are more things for an actor to think about than a paycheck; like, for instance, artistic merit, which “The Lighthouse” has in spades. The final “Twilight” film? Not so much, despite the commercial appeal.
In any case, Pattinson’s future projects indicate that he’ll dabble in commercially viable films and more indie, niche one, or however one cares to describe them. Up next for the actor? Bong Joon Ho‘s follow-up to his praised “Parasite,” “Mickey 17,” in theaters next year. And then there’s Matt Reeve‘s sequel to “The Batman,” which paid Pattinson $3 million to play The Caped Crusader. Again, a paycheck that should make anyone afraid of public humiliation, but we’re all human, aren’t we?
