Robert Pattinson says that the worst haircut he’s ever had was a few years ago when he had “hair extensions and a little bob” for a movie on Salvador Dali. Talking to GQ UK, the 26-year-old heartthrob says, “That was incredibly bizarre. The extensions were temporary as well. I was trying to swim to somehow get in shape two days before we started shooting in this apartment complex in Barcelona. There were all these children everywhere… and I was this weird, pasty, hungover person with a girl’s black bob, swimming in the pool with huge clumps of hair falling out.”
The actor also recalls that, “I had my whole body totally waxed as well because Dali didn’t have any body hair. It was the most terrifying thing – this is terrible, but I saw the potential cannibal guy [Luka Magnotta] in the Sun today and I looked a bit like him.”
In the interview with the magazine, Pattinson also dishes on his hip-hop moment of glory, what he’s learned from working with Frida Giannini at Gucci, strange fan gifts, and sex scenes. The British actor plays billionaire Eric Packer in ‘Cosmopolis’, a drama set in New York City, in a not-too-distant-future. Speaking about the sex scenes in the film, Robert admits that, “It’s always a big thing. Juliette Binoche is one of my favourite actresses and within five minutes of meeting her on this we were pretending to have sex. Which wasn’t in the script. With both sex scenes we were supposed to have finished sex before we did the scene. Both times David was just like, ‘Yeah, just have sex.’ That was a little awkward.”
In ‘Cosmopolis,’ Pattinson’s character has two lifts, one of which is soundtracked by hip-hop. Asked about the rapper he would have in his lift, Robert told GQ UK that, “Definitely Ol’ Dirty Bastard. The biopic looks amazing! That guy Michael K Williams as well – I was obsessed with The Wire for ages. The guy who is directing – Joaquín Baca-Asay, who is James Gray’s director of photography – is amazing. All his movies look incredible.”
On what he learned from working with Frida Giannini at Gucci, Pattinson says that, “That’s funny, I’ve never had her singled out before – it’s like it’s a secret! She taught me one thing – you should definitely have good contacts at Gucci. They’re absolutely amazing. The amount of times I’ve been stuck in some random city and have called her up and had things brought in at absolutely the last minute – it’s crazy.”
“But also all this stuff is custom-made. You can do quite crazy things [with colour] if you have incredibly classic, really well-made suits. I guess I’ve been quite boring for a while. I used to be more interesting with them. Now I always just request things two days before: ‘Can you send 25 suits?’ I don’t even know what I want to wear,” the actor added.
Pattinson also reveals the strangest gifts he received from a fan. “It’s funny: there are certain things that get picked up on really quickly. I quit smoking the other day and didn’t even really realise that I’d said anything about it. I’ve been chewing these f***ing toothpicks all the time. Someone noticed in Cannes and literally the next day in Lisbon, then in Paris and in Berlin there were about 20 people on the red carpet giving me huge amounts of toothpicks. Thousands of them. I don’t even remember saying it in an interview but I must have said it somewhere. That was kind of strange,” Robert told GQ UK.
Photos courtesy of GQ UK
