Robert Pattinson has been reflecting on the cultural impact of Twilight weeks after the series’ first novel celebrated its 20th anniversary.
READ MORE: ‘Die, My Love’ review: Jennifer Lawrence dazzles in Lynne Ramsay’s Oscars shoo-in
The vampire romance, the first in a series of four books by Stephanie Meyer, was released in hardback on October 5 2005, and spawned a highly successful movie series in which Pattinson starred alongside Kristen Stewart.
The first movie, also called Twilight, was released on November 21, 2008, and introduced Pattinson as vampire Edward Cullen and Stewart as Bella Swan, a 17-year-old who falls in love with him.
Pattinson had appeared in movies including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Vanity Fair and The Haunted Airman before Twilight, but The Twilight Saga catapulted him to global stardom. Together, the five movies grossed over $3.3billion worldwide, with the second, New Moon, having the sixth-highest worldwide opening weekend with almost $275million and the ninth-highest in US history with over $142million.
Speaking to Extra TV at the New York City premiere of his new film, Die My Love, on Saturday (November 1), he said of Twilight: “It’s amazing. I can’t believe the cultural legs that movie has had … just mind-blowing to me. It’s so cool … I get asked about it every single day … I have such fond memories about the whole thing. I’m so grateful for it.”
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In the past, Pattinson has criticised Twilight, describing it as “a weird story” in 2019. But in January, he expressed surprise that people have continued to ask him about it 20 years after the first book came out.
While the series was very popular and had plenty of dedicated fans, it had its fair share of detractors too, and he said to GQ Spain, “I love that people keep telling me, ‘Man, Twilight ruined the vampire genre’. Are you still stuck on that shit? How can you be sad about something that happened almost 20 years ago? It’s crazy.”
And in February, he said it was “quite strange” getting used to having male fans in recent years after becoming a teen idol with a huge, predominantly female, fanbase during his Twilight days.
Elsewhere at the Die My Love premiere, meanwhile, Pattinson spoke about his connection to co-star Jennifer Lawrence. In the black comedy-drama, she plays a new mother who develops postpartum depression and enters into psychosis, while Pattinson plays her partner.
He said about Lawrence, “We’ve kind of had very similar life experiences even though we didn’t know each other at all before this … And I’ve always thought she’s just really funny and stuff in interviews, and being just, like, preternaturally talented and, I don’t know, we got on really well in the first phone call. We were like, ‘Oh.’ We’re like, ‘We like each other.’”
He also spoke about how being a father himself impacted his approach to the movie – he shares a daughter with his fiancée, singer and model Suki Waterhouse.
“I’ve done quite a few movies with babies and I quite enjoyed acting with babies before,” he explained. “But on this one, I mean, the babies were exactly the same age as my daughter and so I was dealing with the same stuff, but my acting child was as well.”
Die My Love is released in cinemas on Friday (November 7). In a four-star review, NME described it as an “excellent film” that will “probably be in the running for big prizes come awards season,” adding: “Away from the shine of Hollywood, Die My Love is also sure to provoke conversation around the incredibly challenging time many new mothers experience.”
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