CNN: My eight minutes with Robert Pattinson

I just recently became a tweeter on Twitter. After walking out of a screening of the new Robert Pattinson film “Remember Me,” I tweeted just that. Suddenly my blackberry went into overdrive, and all incoming messages were from new Twitter followers. But really, they were all Robert Pattinson followers. I had no idea just how strong the power of Pattinson was until I witnessed it first hand.

Yesterday I interviewed R. Patz (as his fans affectionately call him) at the Regency Hotel here in New York. He was wearing an army-green jacket, a plain white-T and jeans. What really stood out was his hair. It was sticking straight up on top. It seemed to me that he was unlike most actors with preening stylists in tow. I liked that.

They held me right before it was my turn to go into his room. I could overhear one of the girls on headset saying, “Where are Robert’s lattes? It’s been a while.” Soon a tray came up to the room with two metal pitchers.

When I walked into to the room they announced my name and that I was with CNN. Pattinson stood up to shake my hand. This rarely happens at press junkets. Journalists are ushered in and out interview rooms like a revolving door – no one gets up.

I thought Robert looked a little pale, perhaps that’s what was making his green eyes seem so green. He was easy to talk to and relaxed, although through most of the interview his hands were moving. At times they were in his hair – now I understood why it was standing up seemingly on its own. He might have seemed a little sloppy, with his unruly hair and his slouchy T-shirt, but perhaps that is what made him more endearing.

I asked him how he was doing. He didn’t complain; he motioned to the small table nearby which now had his coffee.

He asked me if I was based in New York. I told him that I was.

“That’s cool,” he said. “How have you been finding the snow?” he asked in his soft-spoken English accent.

“It’s been okay, manageable.” I answered. I think he started to say “Can’t deal with it,” when suddenly we heard someone yell “SPEED.”

We both laughed – it was time to start the interview. No time for small talk, there was a cattle drive outside of journalists waiting for their handful of minutes with him.

I asked Pattinson about the film and if he thought it was about love and the fragility of life.

“Sometimes people come into your life like at the right time and you know they achieve, there’s like a purpose they’re destined to achieve something. But I don’t know if it’s necessarily about love but it does fix something in either one of them.”

“Remember Me” doesn’t have a typical Hollywood ending, and what happens has been leaked on the Internet. I asked him about the way the film ends.

“It’s strange as well as being a sort of tragedy cause also it’s very weirdly uplifting movie as well for a kind of tragic thing.”

“What do you do now to have a private life?” I asked. “There is such a spotlight on you now, where do you go to get away from it?”

Pattinson leaned over to take a sip of his coffee. “There are so many places, I mean you have to be asking for it to cause problems for yourself.”

He said, “I’ve been shooting in London and it’s the absolute opposite of this. There’s no one around, I mean ever. There’s huge demographics of people who’ve never seen or heard of ‘Twilight’ and it’s quite easy to find little pockets where you can like disappear.”

“Do you feel like you’re handling it well?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Pattinson said with a light laugh. “I’m kind of just working the whole time, so hopefully I’ll just side-step around everything.”

It may be difficult for Pattinson to side-step around everything, when he’s at the center of it all.

Posted by: CNN entertainment’s Andrea Mineo