Robert Pattinson on ‘Twilight’ finale: ‘It’s the end of an era’

From the LA Times:

Pub­lic speak­ing has never been Robert Pattinson’s favorite part of his job. But pre­sent­ing the Golden Globe to direc­tor Susanne Bier for her drama “In a Bet­ter World” Sun­day night proved to be a wel­come respite for the actor, who’s knee deep in the mid­dle of film­ing “Break­ing Dawn,” the final install­ment of the “Twi­light” saga, which will be split into two parts.

“It’s been really hard shoot­ing both films at the same time,” admit­ted the 24-year-old star, moments before he had run back­stage to present his award with “Tron” star Olivia Wilde. “But it’s the end of an era.”

That era cer­tainly will be one that Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment, the films’ dis­trib­u­tor, not to men­tion the franchise’s devoted fans, will be sorry to see go. Start­ing with 2008’s “Twi­light,” the fan­tasy romance that first saw Pattinson’s hand­some, brood­ing vam­pire encounter his mor­tal love, Bella Swan (Kris­ten Stew­art), the movie series has taken in roughly $1.8 bil­lion at the world­wide box office, as audi­ences lined up to see Swan wres­tle with her feel­ings for her immor­tal boyfriend and her best friend, Jacob (Tay­lor Laut­ner), a were­wolf, over the course of the next two films, 2009’s “The Twi­light Saga: New Moon” and 2010’s “The Twi­light Saga: Eclipse.”

At the start of the first part of “The Twi­light Saga: Break­ing Dawn,” Bella con­sents to Edward’s mar­riage pro­posal — Edward’s con­di­tion if he is to grant Bella’s request that he trans­form her into a vam­pire — and the young cou­ple are wed before head­ing to a remote island get­away for a honeymoon.

Speak­ing by phone this month, direc­tor Bill Con­don, who’s helm­ing both install­ments of the finale, said he has been thrilled with what he’s seen from his leads. “All the char­ac­ters are mov­ing [in this chap­ter],” he said. “It’s really about the pas­sage from ado­les­cence to adult­hood, and they all seem ener­gized by that. It’s the stuff they are all con­nect­ing to in their lives.”

As for Pat­tin­son specif­i­cally, Con­don added, “Now he’s deal­ing with a char­ac­ter who’s like him. The final movie allows us to step behind the cur­tain of what it’s like to be a vam­pire. It doesn’t seem that exotic any­more; It’s try­ing to be more real.”

The direc­tor, though, was ret­i­cent to share any details of the pro­duc­tion, which is film­ing in both New Orleans and Van­cou­ver, Canada, with a jaunt to an island off the coast of Brazil — a loca­tion that might in the end prove the most mem­o­rable to Con­don, because the entire cast and crew needed for the hon­ey­moon scene was stranded after a long day of filming.

“It was incred­i­ble. We got caught in the mid­dle of this huge rain­storm — I’ll remem­ber it for­ever,” Con­don said. “Eighty peo­ple sleep­ing on the floor of the set. We couldn’t leave.”