Robert Pattinson talks Cullen, Dali & fame

The amazingly talented and versatile actor, Robert Pattinson, sat down with London's The Independent (not sure when) to talk about the roles he's played/playing and how things have changed for him.

Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he admits he's still trying to get his head round it all. "So many people have watched Twilight or heard about it, you can be sitting anywhere and the chances are someone will come up and recognise you." This, he adds, included coming out of a sandwich shop in Yorkshire, and being accosted by the only person on an otherwise empty street and being asked for a photo. "How can you have immediate recognition in Guisborough coming out of Benjis?" he giggles. "That was very strange!"

According to Pattinson, Dali's whole character is sleight of hand. "I guess in a lot of ways, it's the story about him putting a mask on," he says. "In the rest of his life, a lot of the time he forgets he's wearing the mask. Or he's aware he's wearing the mask but he can't get it off. I found that the most interesting part of him. Someone who's wearing this mask, which is destroying everything in their life... they can't get it off and they can't remember how to get it off. They can't remember who they were before. And if they go back to who they were before, it'll probably destroy them too."

Pattinson admits there is some comparison between Dali and Twilight's Cullen, who endures a similarly fraught affair with a teenage girl. "I think both of them were terrified. Especially Dali. He had so many sexual hang-ups. He was crippled by so many different things.

"If you read some of his early-life autobiography, it's horrible... the amount of mental anguish he has to go through, just to have any kind of even vaguely sexual relationship. It's really depressing what he's going through in his head. Dali had a massive fear of penetration – penetrating someone or being penetrated."

Certainly, when Pattinson tells you that things haven't "really changed so much in my head" since Twilight came out, you can believe him. Willing to please, he carries the bewildered air of someone who still can't quite believe what has happened to him. Yet it'd be unfair to dub him "lucky", for his is not simply a case of 'right place, right time'.

Pattinson knows that the female attention will not diminish with the Christmas 2009 release of Twilight sequel New Moon. He's pleased it doesn't feel like a mere money-spinner. "It feels like we're making a stand-alone movie." He's even at ease that his life is going to be turned upside down once again, having accepted how impossible it is to control his public image. "You can never be known for what you want to be known for," he notes. "People will know you for whatever they want to know you for." For a 22-year-old, that's surprisingly perceptive.

[Source]