Twilight producers told Robert Pattinson 'to cheer up or get fired'

Pattinson... was told he'd be fired the same day if he didn't cheer up his character Edward Cullen in Twilight - Credit: Lionsgate
Pattinson… was told he’d be fired the same day if he didn’t cheer up his character Edward Cullen in Twilight – Credit: Lionsgate

Robert Pattinson has revealed that he got the tone of his morose teenage vampire Edward Cullen in the ‘Twilight’ movies so wrong that he was threatened with being fired.

Speaking to Howard Stern, the British actor said that he got himself a day away from being replaced in the lead role.

“Considering Twilight’s kind of known to be this very ’emo’ thing, I just thought it was very, very serious,” he said.

“I thought at the time, if you’re going into a relationship with someone, the way to make it really intense is if you can barely talk to each other, you can barely touch each other, and it’s incredibly serious all the time.

“Kind of like what teenage relationships are! But everyone wanted it to be ‘this should be happy, and having fun, that’s what people want!’

(Credit: Lionsgate)
(Credit: Lionsgate)

“I remember the producers giving me a copy of the book, and every single instance where my character smiled had been highlighted, so I got a different coloured highlighter, and highlighted every time when he frowns.”

That didn’t go down too well.

“I thought I was pretty safe. But my agents flew up, and said ‘You have to do the opposite of what you’re doing now or you’re going to get fired today’,” he added.

In the final movies, Pattinson appears to have won out, however, with Cullen’s pale and sullen character being a pretty introspective fella, in general.

“I mean, I was probably going a bit too miserable. So there was some kind of compromise made,” he admitted.

Pattinson is currently getting serious plaudits for his role in crime drama ‘Good Time’, due out in the US next month, many calling his performance a ‘career high’.

There’s no release date confirmed for the UK as yet, but you can check out the trailer below.

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