Interview with the vampire

Twilight's Robert Pattinson sinks his teeth into these questions

While 'doomed beauty' may be the cinematic stock in trade of handsome, dashing, 22-year-old actor Robert Pattinson who didn't shed a tear at his noble, startling death as wizard-in-training Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire u2014 truth is, the English actor lives a perfectly charmed life. "Lucky," he calls it with a modest laugh, preparing for the November 21 global release of New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, yet another adaptation of a beloved literary property, the vampire novels of Stephanie Meyer. In the film, Pattinson plays what else? u2014 another doomed beauty, the angst-ridden blood-sucker Edward. The world is already baring its neck in appreciation of Pattinson's rising star.u00a0
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In the past two years, you've taken major roles in filmed adaptations of two different blockbuster literary series, Harry Potter and Twilight. What's the strategy there? Do you hang out in libraries?
I wish I could tell you. I mean, I do like books, but I think it's just luck.

Are you a lucky guy?
I think I am kind of a lucky guy. I remember when I was younger I used to write in my diary: I want my luck to be spread. Never give me anything too lucky all at once. I'll take a little luck now and then, but spread it for 70 years. (Laughs) Now that all of this is happening, I'm sure the rest of my life will be ruined.

This is a really hot property, Twilight. I'm sure you are getting a lot of public affection these days.
I do get a lot of 12-year-olds. (Laughs) My fan base is just out of reach. (Laughs) It's funny, because I've actually done more films that aren't for kids, but no one's ever seen them. (Laughs) So I have a very young fan base.

Tell me about the differences between being a young, handsome movie star and being a young, handsome vampire.
I guess it all depends on how much you like going around killing people. (Laughs) The vampire I play doesn't really enjoy anything. He's kind of manic-depressive. (Laughs) He doesn't like being a guy.
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He doesn't like being a vampire. He can't really handle anything. I'm not sure that being good looking has anything to do with it, except vampires have always been attractive, haven't they?

Your Twilight character, Edward, is different from standard cinematic vampires. I'm wondering if you looked over the blood-sucking canon for inspiration.
You're right, there's very little about Twilight that's really vampire-ish. It's about vampires, I guess, but they're not the same vampires you're used to seeing in other movies. I found myself looking to real iconic figures and characters, those timeless, attractive figures, for inspiration: James Dean, Jack Nicholson, that old French film, Breathless. Edward's an outsider, mysterious, a bad boy, all the things girls find attractive.

I wanted to find the qualities that made those actors and those performances so appealing, so charismatic. I can't say I modelled the performance on anything or anyone, but I was looking for charisma and chemistry and trying to figure out what's worked before in the movies.

You're an accomplished musician. There have been rumours that the filmed version of "Bella's Lullaby", a critical love song to the story, is a song you wrote.
I improvised a piece on the day we were shooting. It obviously wasn't very good because they didn't end up using it. (Laughs) We ended up shooting the scene again with a song that the composer Carter Burwell wrote. I do actually have a couple of my songs in the movie, which I completely don't understand. It's very bizarre.

The director, Catherine Hardwicke, was listening one day to one of my CDs, I guess, and when she showed me an early cut of the film I realised she had used, without my knowledge, one of my songs in the movie. Not in
the end credits as some sort of joke, but in a key moment in the movie. It all matched perfectly the music, the lyrics, the scene. I had no idea. More luck, I guess.

Catherine Hardwicke who, incidentally, says you have these "long, beautiful vampire fingers."
I think what she meant is: I have very weird hands. (Laughs) The reason I had to learn the piece on the piano for the film is because they couldn't find a hand double that was convincing enough to match my weird, girly fingers. They were either going to use a woman or it was going to be me. It had to be me.

Vampire stories are always, fundamentally, about characters that, despite their supernatural powers, simply cannot have what they most want. I'm wondering if there's something you deeply want that you cannot have.
Nothing. I'm lucky, you know. (Laughs) Really, I don't mind being unsatisfied. That, in itself, is kind of satisfying. But the truth is, I usually get what I want. (Laughs).