Future daddy and inflatable couch fan Robert Pattinson has never seemed that interested in being your standard movie stud. He’ll do Batman, but he’d rather team up with iconoclastic filmmakers, like the Safdie brothers or Claire Denis. Even as an up-and-comer before Twilight he didn’t aspire to hotness. In fact, according to the first film’s director, he almost didn’t get the job of Edward Cullen because he was, well, not that hot (yet).
“When he came over to my house, he had black bangs for hair and was kind of out of shape because he was hanging out at the pub all the time,” recalled Catherine Hardwicke during an appearance on the podcast Watchalong, per Entertainment Weekly.
Still, Hardwicke was taken with him and she shot some “fun” audition footage of him and his future co-star Kristen Stewart, and sure enough, he looked the part, almost.
“I thought ‘it works not just in person, but it works on screen.’ I had to be sure,” Hardwicke explained. “Of course in person I just got carried away, but you have to be sure — does it really translate [to the screen]?”
Alas, distribution company Summit Entertainment were suspect.
“I sent it to Summit and he went over to meet them,” Hardwicke remembered. “They called me back and go, ‘Do you think you can make this guy look good?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Did you see his cheekbones? We’re doing a makeover on the hair and everything and he’s going to start working out and he’s going to be gorgeous.’ But they didn’t believe it at first. He walked over there with a stained shirt… It was Rob.”
The rest, of course, is history, although Pattinson has spoken ill of the horrors he’s endured to stay in shape. He even got into trouble, both with the fan community and his own trainer, when he admitted during the quarantine break on The Batman that he doesn’t work out. Maybe leave the guy alone so he can work with cool directors instead of squeezing into tight comic book movie pants.
You can watch Hardwicke’s Watchalong appearance below.
(Via EW)
