Robert Pattinson in Esquire UK

Rob Pattinson is featured on the September issue of Esquire UK. He discusses about The Rover and Maps to the Stars, among many other things.

Last summer, he finished The Rover in Australia, a dystopian western from David Michôd, who made 2010’s brilliant Animal Kingdom. Pattinson’s performance is already receiving rave reviews. He then spent 10 days on Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s merciless satire about Hollywood, followed by Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert in which he plays Lawrence of Arabia. This spring, he made Anton Corbijn’s Life, in which he plays the photographer Dennis Stock, who took iconic photos of celebrities in the Fifties. And later, there’s a crime drama by the French director Olivier Assayas, co-starring Robert De Niro.

These are just the confirmed productions. There’s a long list of other compelling indie projects in the pipeline. A film with James Gray (The Immigrant) based on David Grann’s book The Lost City of Z, and a couple of films that are actually being written for him – Harmony Korine (Spring Breakers), is writing him a gangster movie, set in Miami, and Brady Corbet, one of the killers in Michael Haneke’s blood-chilling Funny Games, is developing a script called Childhood of a Leader. “It’s about the youth of a future dictator in the Thirties,” he says. “Like an amalgamation of Hitler, Mussolini and some others. I don’t want to jinx it, but Brady is like a savant of film. I’ve known him for like eight years, and he’s only 25 now.”

This is an extraordinary résumé he’s building. And he’s doing it with purpose, actively seeking out the filmmakers he admires. He cold-called Harmony Korine and met him for dinner, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “it took me a long time to realise I could do that”.

Check out the full interview over at Esquire UK, as well as a photo gallery.

via EsquireUK