Interview (en anglais pour le moment) :
Robert Pattinson’s star is back in orbit. Before returning to the big screen on March 7 in Mickey 17, a sci-fi dark comedy from Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, he appears as a sensual Everyman in a new Dior Homme campaign.
Pattinson rocketed to global fame in the Twilight series, and that vampire vibe—dark, moody, enigmatic—shaped his early days in the spotlight. But when he turns up on Zoom in a Supreme hoodie, his hair standing in all directions, it all seems to rest more lightly on his shoulders. “Everyone has some level of impostor syndrome, but for many years I was very envious of people who I perceived as feeling very comfortable in their own skin, especially when they’re performing. Why can’t I just feel like that? Maybe it’s just a natural gift and I wish I could be like that, blah blah blah. I spent a long time trying to get rid of anxiety,” he tells Vanity Fair. “And I guess after many years of doing something, you realize, oh, you can’t really get rid of the anxiety, but you can turn it around and use it as energy. My insecurities about everything as a performer became my radar for what to do.”
After working with Dior for 10-plus years, Pattinson has even grown to embrace being the face of a fragrance. “I was very clear about what I wanted to do on the first [campaign] because I really knew what I didn’t want to do: a looking-into-the-camera, heyyy sexy fragrance thing,” he says with a laugh. “So it has this energy where you’re fighting against it. I’ve kind of settled into it a little bit more, so I guess there’s more sensuality. It feels more grown. There’s a romanticism to it, which is sort of quite sweet.”
As both the campaign and his next film enter takeoff, Pattinson spoke to Vanity Fair about embracing his role as Dior’s leading man, confronting self-doubt, and—rest easy, Olivia Rodrigo and Grimes—why he has no desire to go to Mars.
You acknowledge in the campaign video that you don’t know a ton about fragrance itself. Have you picked anything up from working with Dior for the last decade?
I’ve literally got press notes for this, and I can’t do it. I can’t convincingly say it. Even when I was saying it to Francis [Kurkdjian, Dior perfume creation director] behind the scenes, to have someone who has such an educated talent and deep understanding of scent saying, “What do you think it smells like?” I’m like, “Well, I think it smells like….” And he is like, “What are you talking about? That’s not even slightly what it smells like. [Laughs] But what I like about this new scent is that there’s a closeness to it. I’m not really that into having a scent where as soon as you walk into a room, everybody’s like, oh, you’re wearing a fragrance. There’s something about this which combines with your natural scent as well. It’s not massively obtrusive. It’s more of an aura thing.
For the campaign video, you dusted off the motorcycle skills you learned for The Batman. How did the choreography—riding on the beach while a woman straddles and faces you—compare to other onscreen stunts you’ve done?
For one, it’s very difficult to look cool wearing a motorcycle helmet, especially when you and your love interest are both wearing helmets, so you are vibrating, headbutting each other. There is literally no way to make this look cool. It’s impossible trying to ride a motorcycle on a beach in wet sand. And it’s also arctic temperatures, with freezing cold wind blowing in your face. It was a real test of what my Blue Steel face can withstand.
The new fragrance’s main note is iris, which is used “from the flower to its roots.” How have your roots as a performer helped you grow?
I remember when I was younger, there were two scripts which I didn’t even go to the audition for because I was like, the part is too good and I’m not good enough to do it. Now I’m like, if you think that the part is too good, that’s the part you 100% should get and really, really fight for. The more you feel, if you fuck it up, it would be like a travesty—that’s the part you should go after. So yeah, just using those initial insecurities as fuel. From the roots to the, what was it? To the tip?
Does that perspective come with age or from specific career experiences?
Yeah, it’s kind of like the first time you do something, it’s almost out of necessity. A cliff is in front of you, but if I do a little jump, I’m just going to fall down the cliff. I have to just hope for something on the other side. Then you do it once and it’s like an adrenaline thing. You go, oh, that’s actually really fun leaping into the unknown. And occasionally you fuck up. But the more times you’re doing it, you realize it’s not that bad if you completely mess up. Hopefully you just don’t mess up too many times in a row.
I often think about the link between scent and memory. Is there a scent that transports you to a certain time or place in your life?
It’s funny, my memory is so centered around things that I was repulsed by or grotesque things. [Laughs] Like, why are all your memories gross? The smell of rice pudding. It’s really so random, but this couple who used to look after me when I was a kid, called George and Ivy, used to heat up Ambrosia rice pudding. I really associated it with going around to their house, their babysitting, and being really excited about it. It’s genuinely a very, very strong memory. And I have such a bad memory. That’s one of the only memories of my childhood. Literally, whenever I’m back in England, I still eat it out of the can. I almost like the taste of the can as well. [Laughs] It’s kind of nice.
Do you ever use scent to get into a character?
I did it for Batman because he’s heightening his senses, wanting to see in the dark, to become more animalistic. Then I wore a scent on this movie called Maps to the Stars because he was a limo driver, and I always associate limo drivers with very strong aftershave.
Mickey 17 is finally coming to theaters in March after a few delays. How will it feel to have it out in the world?
It’s strange because the last few years for the film industry, starting with COVID and then the strikes, everyone was constantly saying cinema is dying. And quite convincingly. I was literally almost turned off. It actually started to get a little worrying. Then looking in the last few months, there’s this flurry of very ambitious movies. I feel like the stuff that’s going to get nominated for Oscars this year is going to be really interesting, and it seems like there’s suddenly a new batch of directors who the audience is excited about as well. Hopefully Mickey will come out in a period of enthusiasm for cinema.
What was the last film you saw that made you excited about movies again?
I saw this Norwegian movie Armand, which I thought was amazing. My friend Brady Corbet’s movie The Brutalist. Anora. You can even see in terms of scripts, I mean, every actor for two years was saying, “What is happening? Nothing’s cool.” Not saying that everything that came out wasn’t cool, but actually it was very studio. I don’t know what was going on really, what happened in the Saturn return or whatever it is, but now there’s really cool parts everywhere.
I was struck by how different your voice sounds as Mickey. How did you come to find his sound?
It was weird. There’s a really unusual part of his personality where he inexplicably is a glutton for punishment, but he doesn’t see it as punishment. How can you play a character who has zero self-worth but isn’t depressed? It’s almost impossible to compute. And I was trying to think of his desires. Most people instinctively don’t want to be just a number. Mickey just wants to be a number. It’s at the height of his ambition. He’s like a silly dog who keeps shitting inside. You keep punching it and then it gets really upset, you’re like, okay, I’m sorry. Then you put it outside, it just does the exact same thing again and again, again and again. [Laughs] It’s just sort of exhausting.
I was trying to think of what kind of personality type would go with that. I’ve tried out a bunch of different voices and physicality. Essentially, we were trying to do makeup tests of what Bong thought a sort-of simpleton would look like. I had these crazy prosthetics on my face at one point, and I’m like, “Are you sure? Is this the correct decision?” We eventually figured out this middle ground. But it was funny. I remember Bong saying, “Where is this accent from in America?” I don’t know, nowhere. [Laughs]
Did the film cause you to think any differently about existential topics related to death and space travel?
I like how much it normalizes space travel. It reminds me of when all these news stories came basically saying that aliens exist on earth, after years and years and years. Literally the president basically says, “Yeah, there are aliens.” And everyone’s forgotten. They’re on TikTok again two seconds later. That’s the attitude about space travel…. It’s not like what you see in normal sci-fi movies, where there’s a gravitas to it. With Mickey, it’s just the same old shit. You go from the other side of the universe and you’ve still just got an awful boss. Everyone’s treating you like shit. There’s no respite on the other side of the universe. It’s worse.
So what is your stance on going to space?
My lack of imagination…even when you see someone on a space shuttle: Okay, so you go in the space shuttle, and then you just look out windows. How different would it be from watching the TV, watching a screen saver? Other than being able to tell people. I wouldn’t mind doing a space walk, but being in the ship? I think I’d prefer to get a dog.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire