New Rob Interview with SensaCine - Life Promo Junket

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New Rob Interview in F Magazine - Scans + Translation

Translation under the scans. Some quotes sound a little "weird", probably lost in translation.



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New Rob Interview with Filmkrant (Netherlands)

“I always feel rather uncomfortable”

First Cronenberg, Michôd, Herzog, now Corbijn, very soon Gray, Korine and Denis: they all want Robert Pattinson. Why? What is the appeal of this teen idol?

By Kees Driessen

The penny dropped when I watched Cosmopolis (2012). The first time the film by David Cronenberg was disappointing to me. In ‘Vrij Nederland’ [dutch paper] I called him ‘bloodless – painful role for leading actor Robert Pattinson, who after his global success as a vampire in the insignificant Twilight series likes to sink his teeth into more serious material, but as autistic financial genius … he can hardly show a more emotional range [to the audience].

The second time I watched the movie I saw it. Then I understood that casting Pattinson was a great, even brilliant move. The hollow falsity of Cosmopolis is not only the reflection of the virtual financial system that is criticized in the film, but also of its leading character and, partly, its leading actor.

Robert Pattinson (London, 1986) plays in Cosmopolis a stunningly handsome stockbroker with huge financial success at a much too young an age, looking through the windows of his limousine with a detachment as if they were monitors, and fears that his inner self is rotting away (for which he gets daily anal examinations). You can almost call it typecasting, as a vampire with world fame.

Uncomfortable in his own skin

There are more great arthouse directors. David Michôd cast Pattinson in The Rover (not seen in 2014); just as Cronenberg, again, in Maps to the Stars (2014); Herzog, in a supporting role as T.E. Lawrence’s otherwise failed Queen of the Desert (2015); and soon James Gray in The Lost City of Z, Claire Denis in her yet untitled sci-fi movie and – very exciting – Harmony Korine, alongside James Franco, Idris Elba and Al Pacino in The Trap.

And now starring in Anton Corbijn’s Life, as a beginning photographer Dennis Stock, maker of the most famous photographs of James Dean. Where Cronenberg, as usual, in Cosmopolis magnified Pattinson’s character metaphorical and philosophical, the down to earth Corbijn uses [Rob] more realistic but nevertheless similar: as someone who feels uncomfortable in his skin, is keen to get recognition and feels a substantial distance to the world. “He’s an actor who wants to prove himself as an actor who plays a photographer who wants to prove himself as a photographer. Therefore the casting seemed like a great idea,” says a grinning Corbijn in Berlin.

Shy

Pattinson himself too is grinning a lot in Berlin. Many apologetic smiles too – like his character. Pattinson seems extremely nice, but is at the same time strikingly shy for someone of his fame and notoriety. Embarrassed BY his fame.

If he, as an actor often wanders outside his comfort zone? “I have no comfort zone at all haha! I always feel always rather uncomfortable.” He seems to mean it. “But so is my character.” And they {Rob and his character Dennis Stock] have more similarities. Like Stock Pattinson doesn’t like to be photographed. He really doesn’t. He mentions it three times. He feels like it’s making him ‘smaller’, “as if they are something away from you.”

Pattinson describes his character: “What I find fascinating is that he he couldn’t feel anything, not even love, as if he was handicapped.” And “Because he’s so restrained, he feels separated from the world, he lacks the experience of a normal person. That is quite tragic…” And: “I found it interesting that he finds solace in his art.”

Later, about all the media attention on himself: “Sometimes you feel just very separated from everything. That is a little worrisome..” And about acting: “You give quite a lot of yourself away, if you really

Compilation of All The Latest Translated Interviews From LIFE Promo (6 Interviews)

Lots of great new interviews have been released this week and were translated by awesome fans that took their time to share them with us. We decided to make a compilation a post on the weekend with all the translated ones :)

Here it is. Enjoy all the new Rob interviews, from LIFE promo. The ones in this post are from Berlinale. There's an audio interview at the bottom of the post.

WIENER ZEITUNG: "Sometimes I wish I had a bigger ego." (Translation | Via)

Robert Pattinson -not unlike James Dean- became a star overnight. Subsequently he has difficulties to loose the shadow of the vampire and that is what we talked about.

Mr. Pattinson would you have played James Dean if you would have been offered the role?
I would never have accepted the role of James Dean. Especially because I do't even look like him. Dane DeHaan does, I would have made a fool out of myself.

In the movie you are not the one in the limelight, but you are on the other side of the carpet as the photographer of the beautiful and famous. That must have been unusual for you.
My character Dennis Stock isn't really made for the red carpet. there is a scene in the movie where it's visible how embarrassing it is for him to do those gossip pictures but he has no other choice because he needs the money. So he becomes part of the photographers that push and shove to get the perfect picture.

How do you deal with popularity? That is the key question for famous people, isn't it?
It is weird, because I never really knew what popularity means. Some people got to know me better in these past years and they know that the character that people cheer for doesn't really exist. It's different for a popstar, because their name is the main focus whereas an actor plays different characters all the time. It is weird when you are cheered on for something and that is not really you, but at the same time this popularity helps you because you are not really hyped up as a person, it's more the character you play.

The movie shows a star before he becomes a star, it's about the months before it really started. I talked to you for the first time in 2008 just after the first Twilight movie was finished and no one knew if the concept would add up. You were a star that wasn't a star yet and a few weeks later everything changed. How did you feel in that moment before the storm started?
There hasn't been another phase like that in my life. Everything fit back then: I think I had the right age for a hype like that. At 21 I was young enough, but not too young and I was able to have a youth. The year before Twilight came into the cinemas was a lot of fun. I experienced the good sides of fame and not really realizing what was happening around me. The very first touch with fame is amazing, some ridiculous things like getting into clubs for example. I got into clubs they threw me out of before (laughs).

Nevertheless you stayed pretty grounded. How did you manage to do that?
I don't know. I think I still have to prove a lot to myself in different aspects of my life. Sometimes I really wish I had a bigger ego. That would help me to take more out of this thing.

Someone like you should not have a problem with ego.
Of course I have an ego. A certain amount of it is necessary to even go in front of the camera, no? Apart from that I see myself as shy and as a control freak. It is weird, because you can't really say it like that. Whenever I work with seasoned directors they always ask me: "Why do you always say you don't know what you are doing? I can see that you are doing something." I always answer: "Yes, but I don't know how."

New Rob Interview With The Irish Times

Once best known as the undead teen Edward in the Twilight series, Robert Pattinson is slowly but surely reinventing himself – from broody cutie-pie to go-to leading man.

Stormont may be in crisis and regional unemployment rates do not make for happy reading, but at least Northern Ireland can boast – albeit temporarily – one Robert Pattinson.

Last month, the former Twilight and Harry Potter star delighted two Co Down newlyweds when he agreed to join their wedding hooley. He also hit Cypress Avenue to mark Van Morrison’s 70th birthday, and has been deemed a most excellent sport when it comes to Belfast-based autograph and selfie hunters.

Even by Pattinson’s own account, the sun shines just a little more intently when he graces the northeast: “It’s been sunny every time I’ve been here,” marvels the heavily bearded young actor. “They tell me it rains. But I haven’t seen it.”

Pattinson has decamped to Ulster with a purpose. Following in the footsteps of Game of Thrones and the incoming Dad’s Army reboot, James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is the latest major production to shoot across various Northern Irish locations, including Methodist College, Strangford Lough and Craigavon House. Not that Pattinson has spent too much time in these stately locations. “I have mainly been on the boat that’s falling apart,” he laughs.

The Lost City of Z charts the exploits of the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, disappeared in the Amazon while looking for an ancient lost city. In the subsequent years, as many as 100 explorers and scientists have gone missing while attempting to find evidence of Fawcett’s party.

Rob On The Cover Of NME Magazine - New Interview

Click to read. Thanks to Verena for the scans :)

New Rob Interview with The Times UK

Click to read, really good interview.


Scans | Via

Rob's Interview with Teleschau - Translation

Although the Twilight movies, that made him into a superstar, ended a while ago, the Londoner, Robert Pattinson is still one of the hottest British exports in Hollywood. In a smart move he, who played the vampire Edward, also did more sophisticated movies like Remember Me or Water For Elephants. Now in Anton Corbijn's LIFE he plays one of the lead roles. The movie tells the story of the relationship between James Dean and Dennis Stock. At the end of those intense days were the legendary LIFE pictures that contributed to James Dean's status of an icon. In the interview Robert Pattinson reflects on photographers and how he deals with the hype around him, with a strong cup of coffee filled with huge amounts of honey...

A strange mix you are drinking there....
I really like it! The spoon has to stand upright in the cup, then it's just right. Until earlier I thought drinking coffee with honey is healthier and then someone told me that honey is as harmful as white sugar and you also kill bees with it. Now I have a guilty conscience. Cheers!

You are often photographed by other people in your private life. Did you switch sides for your role in LIFE?
Dennis Stock hated being called a paparazzi. For him what he did was art and he worked very hard for it to be seen as art. For me he was a man that wanted to break through with his art and that art was photography. It was only during the shoot that I realized this was a movie about a photographer for Anton Corbijn, because he is a photographer himself.

Today it would be impossible to just walk up to a movie star like Stock did and ask him if he wants to be photographed...
Nobody asks you anymore, people just pull out their phones. In all seriousness though: back then you had to be a total pro in order to get good pictures and then you had to work to get them printed and distributed. The general atmosphere was very different back then: the people worshiped film stars and wanted to celebrate them. They loved looking at nice pictures in magazines. Today there is such an over-saturation of pictures and because of that the pictures have to become more and more extreme in order for people to look at them. A beautiful picture of a celebrity doesn't do it anymore, one has at least look drunk in it.

How do you deal with that?
It's still stressful for me, but it also depends on the overall mood. If you are in a good mood you don't really mind, but if you are in a bad mood it affects you more than it should. You run the risk of circling around yourself. You start to think, "How will I look in the next picture?", even when no one is taking a picture. It drives you crazy sometimes. Fortunately it has gotten a lot calmer for me.

That might be because of your beard...
Definitely (laughs) as a disguise it works well. I sat next to a hockey team on a flight, the beard didn't work so well then...

In the movie the Warner Studios try to create a certain image for James Dean. How about you?
It's still like that with the big movies.That's why I'm doing smaller productions, because it's a lot less pressure on the director and everyone who works on the movie. Everybody can be themselves and don't have to change. The hierarchy is rather straight and you can be sure that the final movie is the exact vision of the director.

Do you need to work or do you have enough money to retire?
Definitely not enough. But you don't become an actor to get rich.

Rob's Interview With Gala Germany - Scans + Translation

Thanks to Verena for sending the HQ scans to us :)

Interview without a hangover. Robert Pattinson used to suffer from hangovers during former press days, today he tells us how he grew up.

Robert Pattinson became world famous playing the vampire in the Twilight Saga. The 29 year old British actor has long grew out of the role that made him famous and has become a convincing talented character actor like in his new movie LIFE by Anton Corbijn. In this biopic Pattinson plays a photographer who meets James Dean in 1955 and documents his life until his tragic death. That the once talkative Patinson is out of the woods, is really showing during the interview. His fiance FKA Twigs he routinely leaves unmentioned and today he has sort of an apology for his former flippant use of alcohol...

When I interviewed you for the first time Twilight wasn't even in the cinemas....
It was a crazy time. I was so inexperienced and not the least bit jaded. I remember that first day of interviews and how much fun it was for me because I hadn't done something like that before and I just spoke without notes...

Did fame change you?
I am trying to protect myself more, but I also got used to my situation. I used to be much more nervous in public and I would have never done things that I do now.

For example?
I went to the Venice Beach boardwalk for a walk. I haven't done something like that in years. And you know what? It was totally okay, only one person recognized me.

You seem much more relaxed.
Maybe it's because I'm getting older and it's much easier for me to give interviews, because I'm not hungover. It took me ten years to understand that. This might be the first interview I'm not hungover for.

You grew up with two older sisters. How did that influence you?
As a younger brother I was always excluded from my sisters worlds, but my mother is a very strong woman. Growing up with self-conscious women certainly influenced me. If I had grown up with brothers, I would have had more interest in team sports.

New Rob Interview with The Talks

Short audio at the bottom of the post


click for the HQ picture

ROBERT PATTINSON: “EVERYONE WANTS YOU TO BE SO VANILLA”Mr. Pattinson, are you disillusioned with your career?
I think a lot of actors get disillusioned and say, “Oh, I thought it was going to be one way, and it’s something else.” I never thought anything was going to be any particular way at all! You know, in the good times and the bad times, they’re all just new experiences. So I can’t really be disillusioned with anything because I didn’t have any expectations at all.

What about people’s expectations of you?
I’ve never really acknowledged people’s expectations of me. A lot of actors sort of fall into the job and feel like they’re going to get “found out,” like, found out that they’re a fraud or something like that. I think loads of people feel like that. I did a film with Anton Corbijn called LIFE where I played the photographer who shot those famous photos of James Dean and there are a lot of parallels between an acting career and a photography career.

Like what?
Both of them are almost entirely dependent on the material, especially if you’re doing stuff like taking photos of famous people and really talented people who are incredibly interesting and charismatic. As an actor, you want to be an artist, but you’re so dependent on everybody else! And even if you’re great in something, there’s only a few actors who the audience acknowledges that they were the reason something’s good. With a photographer, it’s very difficult to claim stuff, too.

As someone who has been hounded by the paparazzi more than most, was it cathartic to switch roles and play the photographer for once?
It was quite strange walking up to the Chateau Marmont as a paparazzi. It was very weird at the actual place. I don’t know if it was cathartic. Maybe it would have been if, because of him being paparazzi, he ends up getting beaten to death…

They’re just people, too.
Well… In fact, not at all. That’s probably why my character was so filled with self-loathing, because he’s a paparazzi. (Laughs)

New Rob Interview With Unicum (Germany)

Translation via Inthejungle83


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New Rob Interview with Berliner Morgenpost - Scans + Translation

BERLINER MORGENPOST: Are you afraid of photographers, Mr. Pattinson?

A young man that seems a bit disheartened, that is the first impression one gets during this interview with Robert Pattinson. There is no reason for the 29 year old to feel like that though, because after the massive success of the Twilight series he managed to establish himself as a serious actor. In Life he is seen as the photographer who shot the legendary pictures of James Dean.

Are you a good photographer?
Halfway decent, although I just had started it during this movie. I got the same camera that Dennis Stock had. The quality of my pictures does depend on the place and light. When I was shooting Queen of the Desert with Werner Herzog in Morocco, I got great pictures very easily, but when I returned to London my pictures came out very dark.

Usually you are the one that is photographed all the time. How well do you deal with that?
I’m struggling with it at the moment. When the first Twilight movie came out, I dealt with it very offensively-minded. That means I was out to present myself in a certain way and as long as you can control that it is good. But it became too much and it slipped out of my control. I had the feeling something was taken from me with the constant photo graphs and I got scared and closed myself off. At the moment I’m in the ‘please don’t take pictures’ phase.

What do you do when you go out and photographers are waiting for you?
I get scared.

Seriously?
No. I understand that I couldn’t let it make me go crazy. I’m tired of putting on a disguise or wear a hat.

Did you ever have a close relationship to a photographer like James Dean did?
Not with a photographer, but when the first Twilight movie came out there were some journalists I got along great with and also hung out with. There was one writer for EW who wrote a pretty cool story about me because we got along great. We went to a bar and got drunk.

Should we do that now?
No, I won’t ever do that again, because now people kind of know me through the many interviews I did and some journalists –no offense to you- try to get me to the point where I say something really awful.

New Rob Interview with The Guardian - The Observer

It is one of this summer’s four perfect days, a Friday afternoon to boot, and London’s most smug are bunking off work and descending like fashionable, tanned zombies on Shoreditch House members’ club. Meanwhile in a joyless, north-facing, little-used room called the Library you’ll find Robert Pattinson, the 29-year-old British actor. He’s not tanned; famously, he has the pallor of an eternally youthful bloodsucker. He’s not smug either; in fact it would be hard to find someone less pleased with themselves. And he’s come to Shoreditch House today to work – to do interviews anyway, one of the least enjoyable elements of a job that he’s not convinced he’s especially good at.
Does Pattinson come here often? “Um, yeah, kind of, er. Ish,” he eventually decides on. “I used to go to the gym here until I realised that I didn’t want people to see me going to gym.” He laughs, a posh, unexpected, winning guffaw. “I was so embarrassed,” he continues. “When you’re trying to lift up your 10lb dumbbells… Word spreads.”

Pattinson is monochromatic today: white T-shirt and thin jacket; black jeans, boots and unmarked baseball cap. He has a bushy beard (our pictures were taken before he grew it). It’s the kind the Victorians favoured, with a twiddly moustache, for a part he’s currently shooting. “Oh, this is driving me insane,” he says. “Let me know if I’ve got something hanging off the side. Avocados are especially bad.” Pattinson strokes his chin: “Hmmm, yeah, avocados are not beard-friendly.”

It’s around this point, maybe a couple of minutes in, that I realise I’m going to quite like Pattinson. It is not particularly something he’s said, but his, for want of a better word, vibe. If anyone could be forgiven for being an oddball, it’s him. Any chance Pattinson had of a normal career – a normal life – vanished when he appeared, aged 22, as the vampire Edward Cullen in 2008’s Twilight. Over five films he became very rich, unpleasantly famous and kinkily lusted over. One example: last year in Las Vegas, a woman married a life-size cardboard cutout of Pattinson; on their honeymoon, she carried “him” up to the Hollywood sign.

Such attention, such unsolicited devotion, would be a brain scramble for anyone. But what’s endearing about Pattinson is that it is easy to see the kind of person he was before he became one of the most famous actors in the world. He’s a bit of a goof. He’s prone to gabbling about, say, having a gloop of avocado on his face.

In short, Pattinson doesn’t carry himself like he’s God’s gift. He remains recognisably a 20-something from suburban London whose dad sold vintage cars and whose mum was a model booker.

The most interesting thing about Pattinson these days is the career he’s curating. To oversimplify it, pretty much any director would want Pattinson in their film: he has a name that gets a project green-lit and a fanbase that means people are sure to see it. Yet he has chosen to use this power in an unconventional way. Sometimes he actively seeks out filmmakers who he admires: “There’s not a lot of them, and I like quite specific stuff.” He doesn’t demand the biggest role or for his name to be in the largest type on the film poster – though that’s usually what happens anyway. He’s worked with cult auteur David Cronenberg twice (Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars) and with Werner Herzog, as TE Lawrence in the forthcoming Gertrude Bell biopic, Queen of the Desert, alongside Nicole Kidman and James Franco. He’s just signed up to play an astronaut in Zadie Smith’s first screenplay.

And this month Pattinson stars in Anton Corbijn’s Life, a warm, perceptive film about James Dean. But Pattinson isn’t playing Dean; he is Dennis Stock, a Magnum photographer who befriended the actor in 1955 and took the iconic shot of him walking in Times Square, smoking, huddled against the rain. Pattinson insists he didn’t, even for one second, consider lobbying for the role of Dean, a role taken by Dane Dehaan.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” says Pattinson. “I guess the only reason anyone would think that is from Twilight, because people always said about ‘brooding’. I’m not entirely sure what brooding is, other than a chicken sitting on her eggs. So I’m not entirely sure why that’s considered an attractive trait.”

There are, however, intriguing parallels to be drawn between Dean and Pattinson, two of the defining stars of their eras, or at least an examination of how the nature of celebrity has changed in the 60 years between their respective peaks. In Life, Dean is caught on the cusp of fame, shortly before the release of his debut film, East of Eden (in the ensuing eight months he would shoot two more films, including Rebel Without a Cause, before dying in a car crash aged 24). The studio, Warner Bros, puts him forward for interviews and Dean mucks them up, partly through inexperience, partly through sabotage.

Pattinson certainly knows how that feels. “When the first Twilight came out, I’d definitely say dumb stuff just so I wouldn’t sound cookie-cutter or part of the machine,” he recalls. For the most part this was pretty tame, such as admitting he took a Xanax before his final audition to calm his nerves or saying that he had been drunk for a year before he landed the part, living in a “cool little ex-crack den” with his best friend, the actor Tom Sturridge. “It’s not very difficult to shock people when you can literally just swear,” Pattinson says, laughing again. “You talk about being hungover and you just see the publicity department waving their arms going: ‘Shut up! Shut up!’”

New Rob Interview with The Scotsman

Thanks so much to Verena for sending the HQ scans to us :) You're the best

New Picture and Interview of Rob in Cosmopolitan Germany

Thanks to Verena for sending the HQ scans to us :)

Honestly Robert Pattinson, do fame and success drive you crazy sometimes?

Robert Pattinson ate a ‘curry wurst’ for lunch. That is the first thing he tells me after our ‘hello’ during our interview in Berlin. He pronounces it adorably ‘Denglish Corrywuscht’. “I had French fries with it, but only five”, he tells me grinning. “I’m trying to eat more healthy.” He doesn’t need it though: slightly tanned, the biggest thing about him is his beard, which, like his messy gelled hair, is very groomed. Ever since he played vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight Saga, he is the most sought after blood sucker in the world. The tabloids like to describe him as shy, but here he is smiling non stop, like a rascal planning his next prank. Maybe he is happy that the ‘blockbuster’ times are over. Ever since the fifth and last Twilight movie came out three years ago he wasn’t part of huge commercial Hollywood productions. Independent movies are now his thing. Like the ingenious biopic Life in which he plays the photographer Dennis Stock. He took pictures of James Dean for the US magazine Life in 1955, shortly before Dean died and made him immortal with his pictures. Fame and immortality are not strange concepts for Robert Pattinson, right?

Mr. Pattinson when was the first time you felt you were famous?
That was six months before the second Twilight movie came out. A PR guy invites me to a hip party in a club in LA. I forgot the name of the guy standing at the door waiting to be let in. The doorman just looked at me and said: “It’s okay, you can go in.” I was like “what?” Until then I never got into the clubs that easily. Shortly after that came the hot dog incident.

Tell me about that.
Well, I was eating a hot dog and dropped mustard on my shirt. Usually that would have made me uncomfortable, but everyone around me said “hey, that’s totally okay”, it was like I did something amazing . That’s when I knew: I can do whatever I want.

Being famous can be confusing then?
Yes, but only in one aspect: I don’t like to draw attention to myself, but I can’t walk around without being recognized. If people would say a quick “hello”, it would be fine, but every second person wants to do a selfie. That means I always have to be in a good mood.

Is there a question apart from the picture question, you can’t hear anymore?
“I know you will hate it, but………. “

Rob on The Cover of Les Inrocks (France) - New Interview and HQ Scans

Translation under the scans

Thanks so much to Verena for sending the HQ scans to us ❤️❤️❤️



Translation

‘I often need to hear I am legitimate’

They’d end of the Twilight era, his independence desires in Hollywood, his directing desires, his French cinemas envies after the aborted project with Olivier Assayas and before his next film with Claire Denis: Robert Pattinson makes his career assessment.

May 2012: Robert Pattinson steps for the first time on the red stairs of the Cannes Festival, where he accompanied the presentation in official competition the movie COSMOSPOLIS by David Cronenberg. A decisive step in the star’s course, who was leading towards prestigious Indy movies and ended his teens idol image, marked by the unloved TWILIGHT franchise.

Three years later, the transformation seems almost complete: the media hysteria he was surrounded by seem to have calmed down a notch, he went from poster boy to hipster icon, as he follows his radical and sharpened filmography. With David Cronenberg (Maps to the Stars, in an Australian thriller (THE ROVER, by David Michôd), or even in a small part with Werner Herzog (QUEEN OF THE DESERT), he definitely left the mainstream productions and asserted himself as an XXL actor, new embodiment of Indy movies with fire powers without equal in his generation. At a time where his last movie, LIFE by Anton Corbijn, charming but revisiting story about the friendship between the photographer Dennis Stock and James Dean, Robert Pattinson accepted to meet with us to assert his career and talk about his futur. He is the portray of an actor still in transformation, confident in his choices but nevertheless eaten away by doubts, a free electron who want to fall everywhere the cinema still pulses, from France at Claire Denis’ side to the vibrating Safdie brothers’ New York City. A man of the future.

Inrocks: How did you get involved in the LIFE project?
Rob: Reading the script, I felt like this movie would not be the ordinary biopic, a simple life story where we would tell by the menu James Dean and Dennis Stock’s story. There was something more singular, more intimate in the movie angle. And the fact Anton Corbijn was a part of the project just convinced me. I met him in Los Angeles a few years ago and we instantly got on. I really think he is one of the most talented director of our time.

Inrocks: What does interest you in his cinema?
Rob: his style. There is something with him which is really pictorial and gracious coming from his work in photography. Go from one domain to another is not easy; you often see photographers who crash trying to direct their first movie. But not Anton. He, for his first film, just proved he was a grand director. I have seen CONTROL on big screen at the time and it hit me hard. I was really impressed, to the extent that I could have become a Joy Division fan. An obsessional one at that…

Inrocks: In LIFE, you play the photographer Dennis Stock. What did you know about his and his career?
Rob: not much, but I immediately had a good feeling about this character, something rang in me as soon as I read the script for the first time. I met his son, and then I documented myself about his career, I had access to intimate archives as well as photographs never published. What I was discovering made me passionate. Dennis stock was not a sympathetic guy in reality. He was secretive, opaque, always on his guards, he refused to show his feelings or any really and he could be very abrasive. (He thinks about it a few moments). It is quite exciting for an actor to play this type of ambiguous character, not instantly nice or even readable.

Inrocks: You play Dennis Stock at the beginning of his career, when he was still a young artist ‘groping’, looking for his style and own path. Is it a state you could have identified yourself to?
Rob: of course. Dennis has zero confidence in his skills: he knows he can become famous for his art, that an artist is there inside of him. But at the same time he just denigrates himself all the time, he is doubting himself. What he needs, it is an approval for his work, he he tries to get it from James Dean. As soon as they meet, Dennis is obsessed by the actor, not as a fan, but because he needs his approval. He wants someone to tell him he can be a photographer, that he has the right to express his art. I can understand this feeling. I sometimes need to hear I am not making mistakes, that I am legitimate. The tiniest comments about my work still astonish me and makes me preserve myself.

Inrocks: don’t you think your role in Cosmopolis was the approval you are talking about?
Rob: it was a turning point in my career, evidently. Even then, before I talk about it, it makes me shiver. I made pretty nice things since, but I never found back the sensations I had with COSMOPOLIS. It was the craziest scenario, the most powerful one I had in my hands. It was not just a simple job, you know, but a fricking revival: a new insight on myself. The movie freed me from some complexes I had, and made my image change in the business. Other prestigious directors called me, people I would have never imagined to work with.

Inrocks: I bet you are referring for example to Werner Herzog, who offered you a role in his last movie QUEEN OF THE DESERT (new in France). What memories do you keep of this filming?
Rob: first, I remember the strange audition, really bizarre, a long talk with Werner Herzog about everything but the role itself: his adventure stories, his setbacks with snakes and iguanas… I stayed only eight days on set, but it asserted my impressions he is a passionate guy and completely marginal, out of the frame. What I like about Werner Herzog or David Cronenberg, is that they have a warriors nature: they go on with their new movies like it was the biggest and the strongest of cinema history. (He laughs). They don’t only want to lead exciting or controversies projects. With them, nothing is trivialized. The act of making a film is full an adventure. It gives back faith to the movie by working with these people.

Inrocks: And then there is James Gray, the director you are going to work with for THE LOST CITY OF Z…
Rob: It is a period movie, which will tell the life of an explorer who went to look for a lost city in the Amazon. This movie deals with an obsession leading to madness. James is really good with that. TWO LOVERS, that I consider as one of the most beautiful film ever (in English in the interview), already was an obsession going wrong. I cannot wait to act for him, to see where he can lead me.

Inrocks: you have been ‘knighted’ by numerous prestigious authors since COSMOPOLIS, but something stuck with the large audience: your image is still marked by your beginning in the young adults cinema. Recently David Cronenberg confided in the press you were still underestimated because of the nullify and stupidness of TWILIGHT. What do you think about it?
Rob: (A bit bored by the topic) These are David Cronenberg’s words I cannot judge. Maybe time is needed for some to forget the TWILIGHT era. Waiting for that, I have to preserve myself without asking questions, and just continue choosing my movie with coherency, to just trust my tastes.