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Sat 22 August 2026 12:30, UK
In 2008, a blue-tinted romantic fantasy movie full of vampires and werewolves emerged to instant popularity, cementing Robert Pattinson as one of the ultimate heartthrobs of the era.
Twilight was unavoidable, and while it certainly wasn’t good, it has had an irreversible effect on teen-oriented cinema ever since. In the wake of the series’ release, which spanned 2008 to 2012, subsequent supernatural or dystopian franchises dominated the box office.
From The Maze Runner to The Hunger Games, even the much less teen-friendly erotic series Fifty Shades of Grey wouldn’t exist without Twilight. Its impact was mammoth; teenagers simply couldn’t get enough of this human-vampire-werewolf love triangle, although Pattinson certainly could.
He quickly became sick of the franchise, poking fun at it in interviews. He once told Empire, “The more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that’s how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he’s a 108-year-old virgin, so he’s obviously got some issues there.”
While Pattinson has since accepted the franchise for what it is, being grateful that Twilight gave him the boost he needed to become a star, it’s impressive that he was able to forge an acclaimed career out of something so critically panned. I mean, since then, he has worked with the likes of Robert Eggers, David Cronenberg, Christopher Nolan, Claire Denis, and Lynne Ramsay, even playing the titular superhero in Matt Reeves’ dark take on The Batman.
But where did it all begin for Pattinson? Interestingly, the actor didn’t actually have dreams of becoming a performer when he was young, only taking on professional roles as a teenager after being encouraged to act as a way to get over his shyness. Little did he know that within a few years’ time, he’d be leading one of the biggest cinematic sensations of the 21st century.
Sadly for him, his first-ever movie role as the son of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Vanity Fair was cut from the final version of the film, making his efforts feel rather fruitless, but luckily, things soon turned around when he bagged the part of Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series, the perfect primer for his tenure in another beloved franchise a few years later.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Yet, before both of these roles, Pattinson actually auditioned for a blockbuster that could’ve given his career a slightly different start, and it’s interesting to consider whether this would’ve still led him to Twilight. In the early 2000s, he tried his luck at a part in a certain religious epic, telling The Independent, “My first film audition was for Troy. I was auditioning to play Brad Pitt’s cousin. I was like, ‘What? I’m gonna play Brad Pitt’s cousin!’”
This could’ve launched Pattinson’s career a few years earlier, but clearly, these things take time. The audition didn’t work out for the inexperienced actor, and Garrett Hedlund nabbed the part of Patroclus instead. Years on, though, and Pattinson has gotten to appear in another Homer adaptation, Nolan’s The Odyssey (Troy was based on The Iliad), which fared much better with critics than Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film.
