Robert Pattison is clearly not letting criticism of the Twilight movies get him down.
After playing Cedric Diggory in the fourth Harry Potter movie, the British star shot to global fame in the late 2000s when he was cast as Edward Cullen in the teen romance series.
However, while the Twilight series was a box office hit, and garnered a loyal army of devoted fans, it’s fair to say that not everyone was such a big fan at the time, with Rob admitting he still deals with haters of the franchise two decades on.
“I love that people keep telling me, ’Man, Twilight ruined the vampire genre,” he recently told GQ Spain, in an interview translated by Variety.
He apparently responded: “Are you still stuck on that shit? How can you be sad about something that happened almost 20 years ago? It’s crazy.”
Since the Twilight saga came to an end, Robert has become known for choosing rather left-field roles, including the sci-fi horror High Life, Robert Eggers’ unsettling black-and-white offering The Lighthouse and voicing the eccentric titular bird in the English-language version of Studio Ghibli’s The Boy And The Heron.
Next, he’ll be seen in Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho’s long-awaited Mickey 17, set in a dystopian future where “expendable” workers are regenerated after their death so they can be reused.
The film will also feature appearances from Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo and Steven Yeun.
In 2022, Robert admitted he’d wanted the Twilight films to have more of an edge at the time, telling GQ in a video interview: “I wanted to make it as arty as possible. We had this strange tension where the studio was scared to make things a little bit too emo and stuff. I thought that was the only way to play it.
“I spent so much time [on set] infuriated… I can’t believe the way I was acting half the time.”