When Robert Pattinson was shooting the Twilight series in his early twenties, he envisioned Edward Cullen slightly more broody than the one you saw on screen—and he tried to make it a reality until he almost lost the job. "Twilight is known to be this very emo thing," Pattinson explained to Howard Stern. "I thought it was very, very serious. I always just kind of thought—at the time I was like, 21— if you're going into a relationship with someone, the way to make it really intense is if you can barely talk to each other, you can barely touch each other, it's incredibly serious all the time. I mean it's kind of what teenage relationships are, and that's sort of what makes it feel like that. But everyone kind of wanted it to be, like, 'No, they should just be, like, happy and having fun. That's what people want. And that's the kind of teen romance thing."
The producers weren't subtle in convincing Pattinson that Edward Cullen was a happier guy. "I remember the producers giving me a copy of the book with every single instance where my character smiled and stuff, they highlighted everything," he recalled. "I got the same book, I got a different color highlighter and highlighted all the times where he frowned."
But R.Patz firmly stood his ground. That is, until his agents flew up to tell him to back down—or lose the part. "I thought I was pretty safe," he said. "They [the agents] flew up and were like, 'You have to do the opposite of what you're doing now or you're going to get fired today. I didn't [hold my ground]. I literally came back after lunch and I was like 'HI!!'" Pattinson said, then gave a deliberate big smile. "'I want to keep my job.' But I kind of did [what I wanted]. I mean I was probably going a little bit too miserable so there was some kind of compromise made."
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
