Rob's Interview With Parade - Part 2

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."
Parade