The British actor Pattinson looks set to become the renowned sci-fi horror director’s new muse. Playing the financial genius Eric Packer – who heads across New York in a white limousine in search of a hair cut – he appears in every scene of Cronenberg’s new film Cosmopolis, which competed for the Palme D’or at the years Cannes Film Festival and opens in UK cinemas June 15.
Cronenberg today described the star of the Twilight franchise as “a beautiful actor who often responds to scenes without even realising what he’s doing. That’s why I love him.”
Pattinson will perform opposite Viggo Mortensen, best known for his role as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings franchise, who starred in Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method. The two are regarded as creative partners.
Speaking in London today, the Canadian director of The Fly, Scanners and eXistenz said: “There’s a brilliant script by an author friend of mine called Bruce Wagner. All of his books are fantastic. I tried to get this script off the ground five years ago, but I couldn’t get it made. In a way its like Cosmopolis; it’s a difficult sell. It’s edgy in a nasty, disturbing way. It has emotion, but it has a weird emotion like Cosmopolis.
“It’s hard to make difficult movies. When you have very credible actors who bring a lot of attention like Viggo Mortensen and Robert Pattinson, you think it would be easy to raise 15 million dollars, but it’s not.”
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