Robert Pattinson reveals his agent’s reaction to his desire to be cast as Batman: ‘I thought you only wanted to play total freaks?’
- Pattinson, 35, is set to play the Caped Crusader in The Batman
- He said he ‘was aiming for quite different stuff’ when the role became available
- He said he was interested in the role when Ben Affleck left the franchise
- The Batman hits theaters March 4
Robert Pattinson said his agents were surprised when he wanted to play Batman.
The 35-year-old actor, who is set to play the Caped Crusader in filmmaker Matt Reeves’ upcoming movie The Batman, chat with the outlet Total Film on Monday about pursuing the role after appearing in independent films such as Good Time and The Lighthouse the past few years.
‘I was aiming for quite different stuff,’ the A-list actor said, adding that he became interested in the role after learning that Ben Affleck decided to depart from the franchise following Justice League.
The latest: Robert Pattinson, 35, said his agents were surprised when he wanted to play Batman in the upcoming film The Batman. He was snapped in LA last year
The English actor said he ‘just kept obsessively checking up’ on the role ‘for the next year or so,’ which surprised his agents.
‘Even my agents were like, “Oh, interesting. I thought you only wanted to play total freaks?” And I was like, “He is a freak!”‘
Pattinson said playing the role of Batman – following in the footsteps of stars such as Affleck, Christian Bale, George Clooney and Michael Keaton, among others – is ‘basically the jewel in the crown, of the parts you can really get as an actor.
‘But I’d never really thought I was anywhere close to doing it, and especially with the other parts I was attracted to at the time.’
Pattinson said he’s always been partial to Batman over other comic book characters
Pattinson told the outlet about how he incorporated the backstory of Bruce Wayne into his portrayal of the character, saying, ‘He’s got this enormous trauma inside him’
Pattinson told the outlet that he’s always been partial to Batman over other comic book characters.
‘I’ve seen every single one of the [Batman] movies in the cinema, which I can’t really say I’ve done for any other series,’ he said. ‘I was always really looking forward to them coming out. There was the combination of just being so attracted to it, but also feeling like it’d had a lot of movies made about it, and none of them are bad movies.’
He added, ‘People kind of s*** on some of them, but they’re not actually bad. They all kind of completely achieve what they set out to achieve, and they’re all really interesting, according to their time and place. I don’t know. I just had a weird instinct about it. But I’ve always loved the character.’
Pattinson told the outlet about how he incorporated the backstory of Bruce Wayne into his portrayal of the character.
‘He’s got this enormous trauma inside him, and he’s built this intricate, psychological mechanism to handle it,’ Pattinson said. ‘It’s like a really, really, really bad self-therapy, which has ended up with him being Batman at the end, as self-help.’
The forthcoming motion picture features an ensemble cast including Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/The Riddler, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman/Selina Kyle and Colin Farrell as The Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot.
The Batman hits theaters March 4.