Robert Pat­tin­son: ​‘There’s Some­thing very sen­su­al about the way Claire shoots’

Robert Pat­tin­son has an excel­lent laugh. He gig­gles at var­i­ous points dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, which is dis­arm­ing, because for so long now he has been asso­ci­at­ed with a cin­e­mat­ic som­bre­ness that comes from watch­ing him under­go lengthy bouts of intense mis­ery on screen. From shed­ding his tween heart­throb image in David Cronenberg’s styl­ish thriller Cos­mopo­lis to bleach­ing his hair per­ox­ide blonde for the Safdie Broth­ers’ down-and-dirty Good Time, there’s a full-bod­ied inten­si­ty about the roles he chooses.

Claire Denis’ High Life is no excep­tion – as way­ward cos­mo­naut Monte, he exudes a rough-hewn pathos, resigned to his gru­elling exis­tence aboard a rust-coloured space prison. Yet at the same time there’s a ten­der­ness at play, most read­i­ly present in his inter­ac­tions with infant daugh­ter, Wil­low. Far from embody­ing the intense seri­ous­ness of his var­i­ous on-screen per­sonas, Pat­tin­son brims with an imp­ish effervescence.

Over the course of our chat he chides me about the irreg­u­lar­i­ty of cor­re­spon­dence with our pub­li­ca­tion, opines the prob­lem with being British in the Unit­ed States and reveals the hor­ror of work­ing with ani­ma­tron­ic chil­dren. He apol­o­gis­es for inelo­quence and enthus­es over Nag­isa Oshima’s In The Realm of the Sens­es (“One of my all-time favourites!”). All of which speaks of an actor who still seems bedaz­zled by his own good for­tune – and star­ry-eyed at the prospect of what­ev­er comes next.

LWLies: Do you remem­ber any details from when you first met with Claire Denis?

Pat­tin­son: I first met her when I was 27… no, wait. I must have been 28. High Life kept get­ting pushed and pushed. It was sup­posed to shoot in 2015, the same year as The Lost City of Z with James Gray, and I was real­ly wor­ried I was going to have to shoot them at the same time. But it took anoth­er year or two. I think from when I first met her, it was four years until the movie happened.

Do you remem­ber the first time you met her in person?

Yeah, it was in Los Ange­les, and I’d read this very brief syn­op­sis of the project, which said it was about a 50-year-old guy, and I wish I could remem­ber, because I had this one idea, this one weapon to use in the meet­ing. I can’t remem­ber what it was that I said, but it some­how con­nect­ed with her, and I could see the change in her mind. I thought, ​‘No way! That worked?!’ I’d loved her work for years and years, and I real­ly liked her. I’d nev­er seen her be inter­viewed or any­thing, and to meet her, she’s so fun­ny and light-heart­ed, and a bit of a rebrand. She was so fun in the meet­ing, and then it was like two years lat­er that I actu­al­ly got the part, which was one of the most sig­nif­i­cant moments of my life.

That’s quite a long wait between the first meet­ing and find­ing out you have the part.

It’s crazy, yeah. She shot a whole movie in the time it took. It start­ed to wor­ry me, and High Life is a dif­fi­cult movie. I was aware of the unlike­li­ness that it would ever come to fruition. As well as being quite ambi­tious, it’s quite big as well, y’know? It’s lit­er­al­ly in space.

Claire has described the film as more of a prison movie than a sci-fi movie, but at its core, it all comes down to survival.

Yeah, it’s a strange one. The script was chang­ing so much as we were doing it. I just trust­ed Claire so much. It’s fun­ny, because even the films of hers that I love, I can watch them and I still couldn’t tell you exact­ly what they’re about. I couldn’t tell you what Beau Tra­vail is about. It’s more of a feel­ing. There was a plot to this, but… I’ve start­ed doing this more and more with every­thing I do. I think hav­ing a com­plete idea of who the char­ac­ter is or what the story’s about, it makes it less inter­est­ing. With High Life, I was just play­ing each indi­vid­ual scene as an inde­pen­dent enti­ty. So I wasn’t even think­ing about what sort of film it was, and because we were inside this ship on this long shoot, it didn’t even feel like I was on a stage. It just felt like I was in corridors.

What is it about Claire’s films that you con­nect with?

There’s some­thing in the way she shoots that’s very sen­su­al. I very rarely find this synes­the­sia-like qual­i­ty, where you watch her movies and you can real­ly feel what they feel like. I remem­ber talk­ing to her about it – she said this real­ly beau­ti­ful thing, that when she looks through a cam­era there’s this feel­ing of want­i­ng to touch but being afraid to, and so she uses the cam­era as her hand. It real­ly feels like that. Also I feel like almost all of her movies are very con­tained worlds – she’s real­ly using cin­e­ma as an art­form. The sto­ries she’s try­ing to tell can only be expressed through film. She’s real­ly max­imis­ing the medium.

When we spoke to you in 2014 you said you had a list of direc­tors you want­ed to work with, which includ­ed James Gray. Have you added any­one to the list since then?

Def­i­nite­ly Ciro Guer­ra, who I just worked with on Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians. I keep check­ing them off though – I’m work­ing with them quick­er than I’m com­ing up with new peo­ple! But I loved Embrace of the Ser­pent, and I was so hap­py to work with Ciro. Maren Ade, I real­ly want to do some­thing with her. There are lots. I’m reluc­tant to put it out there because it looks like I’m treat­ing them like Pokémon.

I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to Har­mo­ny Korine’s The Trap, which end­ed up not happening…

I know, I think the cast kept chang­ing, and it came pret­ty close to hap­pen­ing a cou­ple of times, and then the cast changed again like a month before it was sup­posed to shoot, and I think it had just hap­pened a few too many times, and it just fell apart even­tu­al­ly. It sound­ed cool though, and I love Har­mo­ny Korine. That would’ve been a fun one. Maybe next time he needs a hit­man or something.

In terms of the roles you’ve tak­en since Cos­mopo­lis, you’ve played quite a lot of criminals.

There’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing about those sorts of films that appeals to me. I guess in a lot of ways, they’re the movies I liked when I was young – like pret­ty much every actor, I loved Paci­no and De Niro. But then there’s a part of me, com­ing from Eng­land, and when I first start­ed… if you’re tall and have flop­py hair and a posh accent, they’re like ​‘Peri­od dra­mas!’ And then you’re exclu­sive­ly in the peri­od dra­mas box. I was like, ​‘No! I don’t want to do peri­od dra­mas! They’re boring!’

You have just made a peri­od dra­ma, The King, which is set in the Mid­dle Ages. Admit­ted­ly, that is a David Michôd peri­od drama… 

[Laughs] Oh yeah. Well, that period’s alright. It’s a lit­tle fur­ther back. I mean, peri­od dra­mas between the 18^th and 19^th cen­tu­ry. I’ve done a cou­ple, and as soon as I put on that high Edwar­dian col­lar, I’m like, ​‘Ugh­h­hh’. Your cos­tume is out-act­ing you at all times.

When you were film­ing Good Time, you and Ben­ny Safdie spent some time in char­ac­ter off set, just hang­ing out togeth­er. Obvi­ous­ly with High Life that’s not real­ly an option.

Y’know, when I was film­ing with Scar­lett, the baby, there would be a kind of 20-minute cry­ing jag when­ev­er I’d take her. She was only 13 months old and we’d be tak­ing her from her par­ents, but she’d basi­cal­ly for­get about them after 20 min­utes. We realised that when we kept giv­ing her back and forth she’d keep cry­ing, so I start­ed just hang­ing out with the baby for hours and hours, play­ing this kind of super­nan­ny where I had to keep her camera-ready.

This is the first film where you’re just act­ing pret­ty solid­ly with a baby for most of your scenes, right?

Yeah. I guess in Twi­light there was a baby… but they tried to do a robot baby.

I remem­ber the robot baby very well.

It was so hor­rif­ic, there was no actu­al baby involved, and then they made it all CG, and I was hav­ing to mime hold­ing a baby. Just weeks of pre­tend­ing to hold a baby.

Did you get to High Life think­ing, ​‘Guys, I’ve got this down, I’ve mimed hold­ing a baby many times’?

It’s very dif­fer­ent in real life! But I find when­ev­er there’s a kind of wild-card ele­ment, it just makes it so much eas­i­er. When you have some­one who’s not an actor, and has no desire to be an actor, so doesn’t feel any kind of fear of the cam­era… So babies, ani­mals – it always makes it easier.

How do you try to chal­lenge your­self with the roles you take on?

I feel like as soon as I repeat myself even a lit­tle bit, I sud­den­ly get real­ly self-con­scious. If you’re push­ing some­thing out into the unknown a lit­tle bit, you can’t real­ly judge your­self, because you don’t real­ly know what you’re doing. As you get a bit more con dent, you’re more will­ing to take a script where you have absolute­ly no idea how you’re going to approach the part, and just pray that it ends up being good.

Also I just get bored, too. It’s so easy to fall onto lit­tle crutch­es. Even with a voice I can’t real­ly do it more than once, because then I think, ​‘Oh, this is my act­ing voice’. That’s why I can’t even do any­thing in my nor­mal accent, because it doesn’t feel like I’m work­ing. I have this weird envy of Amer­i­can actors who don’t have to try – they just use their nor­mal accent. They sound like they’re in a movie already! If I use my accent, it sounds like I’m on TV.

That’s the prob­lem with being British. We always sound like we’re in peri­od dra­mas or work­ing at the BBC.

[Laughs] It’s very uncinematic.

High Life is released on 10 May. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.