Quotes

[on being discovered in a local drama club at 15] They (Barnes Theatre Club) were a very good group, and for some reason when I finished the backstage thing, I just decided to that I should try to act. So I auditioned for Guys and Dolls and got a little tiny part as some Cuban dancer or something and then in the next play I got the lead part, and then I got my agent. So I owe everything to that little club.

[in 2008] I aspire to be Jack Nicholson. I love his every single mannerism. I used to try and be him in virtually everything I did, I don't know why. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) when I was about 13, and I dressed like him. I tried to do his accent. I did everything like him. I think it kind of stuck with me.

[in 2009] I don't think anyone can understand what's happening. You wake up one day and you're suddenly a star... really weird. All of a sudden everyone knows who you are while you haven't changed one bit. It's a little bit over the top. All my life I've hated crowds. I was quite a paranoid person anyway, so it doesn't really feed well when people are looking at you. I'm not really in the right job. I don't like having my photo taken. I don't like the attention.

[in 2006] I went to one of these signing conventions. (for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)) It was one of the most interesting experiences I've had. It was so strange that people would pay for autographs. You keep thinking you should do a little dance for them as well or something.

[at 22 in 2008] I have been playing the piano for my entire life - since I was three or four. And the guitar - I used to play classical guitar from when I was about five to twelve years of age. Then I didn't play guitar for like years. About four or five years ago, I got out the guitar again and just started playing blues and stuff. I am not very good at the guitar, but I am all right. I am in a band in London as well.

My favorite teacher was probably my English teacher because she got me into writing instead of just answering the question. I used to hand in homework with 20 pages of nonsense and she'd still mark it. She was a really amazing teacher.

[in 2008, about Twilight] I was literally embarrassed about walking into the audition. I had no idea how to play the part at all. I thought that even going into the audition was completely pointless, because they were just going to cast a model or something. I felt it was kind of arrogant of me to even go in.

I wasn't at all focused on school, and I didn't achieve much. My school reports were always pretty bad - I never ever did my homework. I always turned up for lessons as I liked my teachers but my report said I didn't try very hard.

[in 2009, after Twilight (2008) was released] It's a little nuts. I'm trying not to drown... I guess I'm not the type of guy cut out to do a franchise. I'm not much of a crowd person.

[in 2009] Everything has become more intense for six months, since Twilight was released. It's hard to handle what's happening to me. I don't have the necessary hindsight, even if only to find a way out to this situation. But this celebrity thing, you can't fight it, it's useless, you can't avoid it. When it's not something you desired during your whole life, or something you don't aspire to, you're free not to care about it. I didn't sign for Disney. There's not a stipulation which forces me to smile to the paparazzi.

Sometimes I think, 'to hell with acting,' and then I realize I could be working at a shoe shop. Acting is much cooler.

[in 2009] Please don't give me all my luck now. Make it all stretch. I don't mind waiting. Make it stretch for 70 years.

When I was 14, I fronted a rap trio. Pretty hard-core for three private school kids from suburban London. And my mum's, like, cramping our style, popping her head in to ask, 'You boys want a sandwich?' I 100% wanted to become a rapper, my name was Big Tub. I remember I didn't know how to scratch and so I used to pull up and down the zipper on my hoodie and recorded it.

People just project their idea of my character (Edward Cullen) on to me and they just seem to assume that I'm the same, when, in reality, I'm not. I mean, just last year I couldn't even get a date and then this year, the world turns and it's so bizarre that everybody just changes their mind. I never considered myself attractive, really. I was always kind of gangly in school.

You get into acting to do movies and nothing else. I've never been interested in trying to sell my personal life. And that's really the only reason why people are bringing it [personal questions] up.

[in 2012, about Cosmopolis (2012)] Y'know, there are so few auteurs left. The one thing that pisses me off about working in films is when you start a project and then, suddenly, two days before you start, there's a massive rewrite to make an R-rated movie into something that's PG-13, and it's a totally different story. As soon as that line's been crossed, you know you're not making a movie anymore. You're making a...a... fridge magnet. But with people like Cronenberg you know that, no matter what, there will be a movie at the end, and it will be solid and self-contained, and it's not made for any other reason than it being a movie.

I was a bit of a loner at school. My first kiss was when I was 12, but I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 18.

[on starting acting in theater when he was 15] My dad and I were in a restaurant one day and noticed this group of pretty girls. The girls said they'd been to the local acting school. I never did any acting at school - I was quite shy - but after that day my dad nagged me about attending. He said he'd pay me, which is pretty strange, but I went.

[on performing in Cosmopolis (2012)] Before I did this movie I was fully intending on hiding for a couple of years, but this has really reinvigorated my ideas about acting. And I like being slightly on the fringe as well,rather than trying to get movies that are sort of vehicles.

[in 2012] The world would be a much better place, I think, if all these bankers and billionaires were followed by paparazzi. I can't really tell what's so interesting about actors. People don't find the personal lives of people with much more power than any celebrity would have, interesting. And I think if you put the lives of people who control billions of dollars on the front pages of every single paper, the world would be a better place. If you took away publicists and things and people spoke for themselves, then they have to be responsible for their own words.

I like movies more than acting, and I like the idea of being in movies that I like so at least you're sort of contributing something.

I think as soon as you feel validated, you're a bad actor. You need to constantly feel like there's a 99% chance of failure; total failure; devastating failure. You should feel like every single job is a potential which you're never going to get one again.

[on Edward Cullen from the Twilight (2008) saga] You can tell he's just gonna freak out one day and shoot someone... He's one of those guys who would be like an ax murderer.

[on his nickname 'R-Patz'] I would like to break the hands and mouth of the person who came up with it.

[at 28 in 2014] I couldn't do another Twilight movie, I'm too old.

[in 2014] I'm just trying to not be in stupid gossip magazines, basically, and I think the best way to do it is never be photographed ever. As I get older, I just get more and more and more self-conscious about getting photographed. I don't know why. I've done it too many times and now I feel like everyone can see through me.

[on his role in The Rover (2014)] I'm so bad at auditioning and I was terrified that I wasn't going to get it. I've never worked so hard for an audition. I really, really fought for it. But once I got the job, I've never felt more free in a part. There were no constraints to it at all. The first thing I asked David (Michod) was, "Is Rey mentally handicapped?" And he said, "I don't know. Decide." It was really open.

[on his sex scenes in Cosmopolis (2012)] None of them were supposed to be sex scenes and he (David Cronenberg) changed them all afterwards. I always find sex scenes are the most random thing to see in a movie. Two actors pretending to have sex. Why? It's so stupid.

[in 2014, on auditions] I just can't... I literally can't do it. It's just me looking uncomfortable, trying to put on an American accent... or sitting in the corner, making myself throw up and punching myself in the face. I get so nervous, like cripplingly nervous. I'm just bad at them and get tremendous anxiety and feel awful afterwards.

[on why he doesn't talk about his relationship and personal life] I'm always relatively open about stuff about myself, and I always try to contain it to that. You can never tell how someone's going to report something and how anyone else around you is going to react, because they didn't ask to be talked about. I can take responsibility for stuff I say about myself, but it's the same way I don't like people talking about me.

[in 2012, if he ever gets used to fame and the craziness surrounding him] I don't think so. I think if you start getting used to it, it means you're going crazy. But it's nice, it's like being on the craziest theme park ride you've ever been on and it's totally exciting. But eventually, at some point you got to have to take a break.

[about being in competition with Cosmopolis at the Cannes Film Festival 2012 for the first time] It's the most nerve-wracking thing I have done in years. The day of the screening is terrifying. You have the reviews coming out in the morning, so you're terrified about that. And you're doing interviews as well, so you're looking on your phone the whole time, to read them. And then you do the premiere where people could potentially, just like leave or boo. I mean, I wasn't even watching, I was so nervous, sitting there just like... that's the most stressful environment to premiere a film in, ever. It's definitely not an easy film and it's likely gonna get a mixed reaction. And to have the potential of being booed... I was just sitting there for an hour and a half, preparing myself to have a fight with 1000 people at the end of it. I was such a freak afterwards because I just gave up smoking recently as well. So even when there are clapping, I was like: 'Is anyone booing?' It's horrible, it's really, really nerve-wracking.

[in 2011] Some people are okay getting photographed doing their groceries or going out of whatever. I realized I cannot handle that at all. And so, I just don't go to places where I get photographed. It took a while to really figure out the places, but once you find areas where you can live a relatively normal, sane life it gets a lot easier, because in the beginning you just try and live the exact same life like you were living before. And you can't. So trying to do the same things becomes very stressful and you don't really know where the other world is and then you find the secret world and it's fine.

I hardly take any vacation. It would be nice to forget reality sometimes, but to be honest, I don't feel really tired. As long as you have drive, the desire to move forward, try new things - I don't want to stop at all. I got lucky because what I do is hardly different from resting, my hobby is my job. You are asking what drives me to move forward? Fear. Fear makes me get up in the morning and tells me: 'Get better, don't stop, you should experience this.' When you live like this, new opportunities arise all the time.

[in 2012] You don't want to make your name stand for just meaningless celebrity. It's a difficult battle. You need to want to have more than a pretty face on the screen or photogenic charisma that worked for quite a while. You have to know how to take risks. I'm aware of that and I don't fall for illusions. Everything happens at it's own time. Being a good actor is something that you earn.

One really nice thing about acting is that it's like a weird therapy exercise. If you're insecure or shy or something, then you can kind of experiment with expanding your horizons within the framework of a fiction.

[on an audience having preconceived ideas about him] You don't really want people to know who you are. It's just the worst thing that can happen for an actor. It's not even about them knowing who you are. It's just saying enough stuff to make people think you're a certain kind of thing.

Some people like watching skateboard videos where they can do the trick, others like watching when they crash. I'm more of the watching people fall and crash type of person. I want to be that kind of actor

Ever since I became an actor, I saw people who with just a little fame, totally lost it. I fell into Twilight, so I've always had a little bit of detachment. And you get afraid of losing yourself, so you grip on to certain aspects of your life. I'm always thankful to my family and I've got really good friends from growing up - I had them since I was 12. They never changed their attitude toward me and always treated me the same. I think the people who really lose it are the people who've only had friends from when they became famous. It's a different kind of friend.

[on Edward Cullen from the Twilight (2008) saga] 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.

I always say about people who do method acting, you only ever see people do the method when they're playing an assholes. You never see someone being lovely to everyone while they're really deep in character.