From playing a reticent vampire to donning the cape of perhaps one of the most cherished superheroes, Bruce Wayne, Robert Pattinson has certainly come a long way in his career. But then again, the role that is responsible for catapulting him into the arms of fame definitely deserves a good chunk of the credit for the same.
Incidentally enough, the English actor came quite close to not landing the leading part in the renowned Twilight series, all thanks to an ungodly consumption of beer and his reluctance to go shirtless.
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The Twilight Audition Saw A Waxed And Pot-Bellied Edward
Back when Robert Pattinson was slated to audition for the role of Edward Cullen, the dashing vampire that every teenager used to fangirl over, he hadn’t been the most exemplary depiction of the character. Owing to a job he’d taken prior to his Twilight audition, Pattinson, 37, had undergone quite a change with regard to his physical appearance.
With his hair dyed black, his body fully waxed like a dolphin, and months’ worth of beer consumption conspicuously gathered in a chubby pouch of his stomach, the Tenet star looked like “a baby with a wig on.” In his interview with Allure magazine, he recounted –
“In Twilight, [Edward is] beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. When I turned up for the audition, I had done a job where I’d dyed my hair black, but I had an inch and a half of roots, and I had waxed my body. And then I had a few months where I’d been drinking beer all day, so I had this hairless, chubby body. I looked like a baby with a wig on.”
Looks like Edward’s skin wasn’t that of a killer, but of a chubby baby instead. Bella had nothing to worry about. Pattinson, on the other hand, did.
Robert Pattinson Refused to Go Shirtless for the Try-Out
Maybe he felt shy or the more appropriate term in this case would be, self-conscious; not that he had anything to feel insecure about because surely, Pattinson would’ve rocked even a beer belly with little to no ease. But since it was a big-studio audition, he had his reservations. For whatever reason it may have been though, The Batman star simply refused to take his shirt off for a particular scene. In fact, he was the only one out of the other candidates who refused to.
“They were doing screen tests with four people. In one of the scenes, I [was meant] to take my shirt off, and I think I was the one guy who didn’t.”
It certainly didn’t help that he’d shown up for the screen test without any knowledge whatsoever about the script or the source material. And when the director Catherine Hardwicke had called him up before the try-out, he’d bluffed about having read both of them.
So, the producers along with Lionsgate had been dubious, to say the least, with their potential casting choice. Pattinson’s agent, Stephaine, however, turned out to be his guardian angel who kept nudging him to give it a shot.
“Stephanie was like, ‘You’ve got to go and meet the producers and just shave 20 times before you go.’ It was basically the last-chance saloon when I got Twilight.”
And voila, Pattinson became the face of a blockbuster franchise. It only took a little bit of grooming on his end.
Twilight can be streamed on Hulu.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
