'I Didn't Like the Way 'New Moon' Was Treated By Critics'

Robert Pattinson is taking a break from his Twilight stardom to play a rebellious New York college student in Remember Me. In the indie flick, the 23-year-old gets to explode with rage, fall in love with a girl (played by Lost's Emilie de Ravin) and go head-to head with his domineering father (played by Pierce Brosnan).

Parade.com's Jeanne Wolf found out what Pattinson had in common with his character's search for identity.

Acting as therapy.
"I try and pick roles that will help me develop as a human being and I think I was going through a similar kind of experience as my character Tyler, which I guess you could call being rebellious. I thought just doing the film would actually help me to think about and discover things that would help me in my life. I was kind of using it as a therapy exercise."

His personal struggle.
"You're so focused on trying to be an individual and trying to like stamp your identity on something. But you kind of doubt what you want to be. You don't accept just being part of the world. I sort of had that feeling. I had this obsession when I was younger about everything feeling kind of fake. Eventually, you just stop sort of railing against everything around you because most people only cause problems for themselves. They're just blind to the reality of things."

Connecting with losing a loved one.
"I keep talking about my dog all the time. It was an incredible dog, and I said in an interview recently he was the most important person in my life. My family went crazy with me for saying that. But, however ridiculous it may seem to some people, my relationship with my dog was a defining moment. Having the dog die was, literally, like the worst day of my life. It was like losing a family member."

The reality of becoming an overnight success.
"I think you really cause yourself a lot of problems if you start fighting against it. There's nothing you can do. I mean, there's no mysticism to it. People recognize you and they want to talk to you, or want to see you. My trick is not to see them as a crowd. If you break down every crowd into individuals, then it's more manageable. It's just when you start seeing these huge masses of people screaming at you that you start going crazy. So I try to focus on a few faces and not the mass."

But when you're filming on location in New York...
"It ended up being like more of a circus than I thought it was going to be. At the beginning, it was terrible. Then, about halfway through, I just suddenly had an epiphany about it. I don't know what happened, but I know it's just fine. I guess it's just learning how to sort of block things out. It's like you've just got to be more disciplined about it."

A lesson in anger control.
"While we were filming, one of the security guys saw me getting more and more upset with the paparazzi guys. He just sort of came up and was like, 'Imagine going out there and trying to hit one of them while, let's say, 40 cameras are clicking away.' That was enough to kind of calm my frustration. But, at the end of the day, you can't say, 'I'm not doing it until these people go away.' You have to keep acting. So it was definitely way more intense than any of the Twilight films."

Maybe he skips the reviews.
"I didn't like the way New Moon was treated by the critics. I think it was reviewed in the context of just being a big franchise movie. When something is so hyped, inevitably, there is a backlash against it. I think Chris Weitz is an amazing director. I really enjoyed the film. So the naysayers kind of annoyed me."

So why not try an album?
"I kind of want to do one at the end of the year. All my friends are recording albums and I'm very annoyed about it. But I can't do two things at once. I don't know how people like Jennifer Lopez can act and also sing. I'm just like, 'I can't.' But, hopefully, I'll find some time to get it together."

TOMORROW, READ PART TWO OF PARADE.COM'S INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT PATTINSON WHEN HE'LL TALK ABOUT PLAYING THE DATING GAME AND MORE...

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Fear not, Twilight fans. This June, Robert Pattinson will be back in theaters as Hollywood's hottest vampire, Edward Cullen, in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

Meanwhile, you can catch him making love and war as troubled college student Tyler in the indie drama Remember Me. Parade.com's Jeanne Wolf found out why Pattinson would like to be more like his character, who doesn't hold back his emotions.

The dating game.
"When it comes to the opposite sex, I'm not as fully confident as the guy I play. I don't even remember the last time I asked someone out on a date, like, just went up to them and that's the first thing I did. I'm much more self-conscious and not wanting to fail. So I tend to hold back."

Ditto with unleashing his macho side.
"I related to Tyler in that I wish I could have done things like he did when I had the opportunity. There is something quite satisfying about being a little bit more reckless and even fighting. It's quite cathartic to just sort of randomly start hitting someone. It was fun kind of, letting all your rage go on the set. We had this big scene where I punch out some guys. It went fine and nobody was really hurt at all. But, at the end, I was like doing this thing where I was hitting myself in the arm, sort of pumping myself up. They cut it out of the movie, but I punched myself so hard that I was in a lot of pain for the rest of the shoot. It was the most stupid thing I've ever done."

He's felt the pain before.
"I got beaten up by a lot of people when I was younger. I was a bit of an idiot, but I always thought the assaults were unprovoked. It was after I first started acting and I liked to behave like an actor, or how I thought an actor was supposed to be, and that apparently provoked a lot of people into hitting me."

What he learned from Pierce Brosnan.
"We went out to dinner in a restaurant full of all these guys who looked like bankers or brokers. They didn't recognize me, but they recognized Pierce. And he said, 'Notice those people looking over?' I'm sitting there getting more and more self-conscious, even though I didn't realize they weren't looking at me. Suddenly, Pierce got up and introduced himself to everybody in the restaurant. At first I was like, 'What are you doing? You're like completely insane.' But it worked. Everybody just relaxed and stopped staring and you could tell they were going to go home and say, 'Pierce is such a nice guy.'"

No problem with being compared to James Dean.
"I think he was like the most influential person for young guys, especially actors, in the last 50 years. So yeah, I mean, I'm not ashamed to say I am very much influenced by him."

Facing up to the pressure of the box office.
"It's like a kind of a monster thing. The more people think they know you, the more you're identified with a certain kind of role. People always used to ask me about typecasting and I never had to really worry about it. You think people will judge you by your work. But the truth is, it's about whether the film you're in makes money or not. And if it's not making money, they're like, 'Oh, he's over.'"

His ultimate goal.
"You keep trying to make your name stand for something other than just like meaningless celebrity. It's a difficult battle, but I think people like Johnny Depp have done that. He's not judged by his public image, it's just his acting that counts. To get to that place takes a lot of discipline and a lot of hiding."

Credit : Parade