Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Topics: Robert Pattinson, Harry Potter
Poppy Bilderbeck
Robert Pattinson has opened up about his preparation and performance decisions for the role of Cedric in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
The actor, who later went on to star in vampire franchise Twilight, took to the wizarding world as a Hufflepuff wizard named Cedric Diggory, a prefect at Hogwarts and Seeker in the house Quidditch team. In the fourth instalment of the Potter series, Cedric competes against Harry in the Hogwarts Triwizard Tournament. However, during the competition he inadvertently comes up against Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew and, well, let's just say he doesn't feature much in the next film.
Pattinson has since revealed the process behind his preparation for the role, alongside joking how Diggory was his 'claim to fame' for being (spoiler alert) the first death in the franchise.
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In an interview with GQ, to 'break down his most iconic characters', Pattinson explained how he remembered holding a wand and thinking 'that it felt so dorky to hold it like a magic wand'. So instead, the actor decided to 'hold it like a gun with two hands'.
'Thinking I'm in like a Die Hard movie. I think I even have one eye closed when I'm looking down, like it's got a viewfinder on it,' he chuckled.
Pattinson reflected how he had 'sort of fallen into' the role. 'I mean, it was so terrifying. I remember the first scene I ever shot on that was in the magical maze at the end, and I'd never done anything with special effects and stunts and it was a big deal at the time. It felt very, very intimidating.'
In order to prepare for the role he read a book on method acting, but that 'the only thing [he] really got out of that was just beating yourself up before every single scene'.
'That was basically my only concept of how to prepare for a scene. I was psyching myself up as if I was getting into a fight or something before these scenes, and just screaming into a pillow and fighting, punching myself and kind of ripping my clothing and stuff, but I had all these prosthetic wounds on and all the prosthetics would melt off my face, and I'd have to have all my makeup done again, but I had no concept of how to kind of get into a psyched up physical state,' he said.
Addressing a parallel between his roles as Diggory and role as Edward Cullen, Pattinson said: 'It was definitely my concept to jump out of the tree at the beginning for my intro, which I then kind of repeated later on in Twilight.'
He joked: 'For some reason, I always have a suggestion to be like, 'Why doesn't he just appear just jumping out of a tree?'
While the handling of his wand may have seemed comical to the actor, his role of Diggory set him up well, leading him to move into an apartment in Soho, London.
He has since gone on to star in not only Twilight, but films such as The Lighthouse (2019), Tenet (2020), and the highly-anticipated upcoming release The Batman, alongside Zoë Kravitz, which is set to hit cinemas on March 4.
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