Twilight studio expected director to make Robert Pattinson hotter somehow

Summit Pictures gave Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke an impossible task: Can she make Robert Pattinson look good?

By Matt Schimkowitz | November 21, 2023 | 12:11am

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Twilight studio expected director to make Robert Pattinson hotter somehow

Robert Pattinson and Catherine Hardwicke Photo: Astrid Stawiarz

Robert Pattinson may be a London 10, but to Summit Pictures, he’s a Forks 7.

Appearing on Josh Horowitz’s Watchalong podcast, Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke revealed that, in addition to having to adapt a pageturner like Twilight into a feature film, Summit Pictures expected the impossible: They wanted Hardwicke to make Robert Pattinson better looking.

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Now, far be it from us to comment on other people’s physical appearance, but generations of Twi-hards seem to agree that Robert Pattinson is, indeed, a smokeshow. Total hottie material. Just a real [eyes popping out of skull], [wolf whistle], [owooga carhorn]. To be fair, though, per Hardwicke, Pattinson wasn’t looking his Batman best quiet yet. Like many before him, he was going through a bangs period and “was kind of out of shape because he was hanging out at the pub all the time.” To be fair to ourselves, this also doesn’t seem that bad. Still, Hardwicke could sense the chemistry between Pattinson and Kristen Stewart and recorded their screentest for the studio’s consideration.

“After we did the fun auditions at my house for a couple of hours, then I looked the next morning at all the footage I shot and recorded, and I thought it worked not just in person but it works on screen,” Hardwicke said. “I had to be sure. Of course, in person, I just got carried away, but you have to be sure it translates.”

Well, for the folks over at Summit, it didn’t. They called her back and expected her to play god. “‘Do you think you can make this guy look good?’” Hardwicke recalled them asking. Hardwicke, still tethered firmly to reality, responded with a question of her own, “Did you see his cheekbones?”

“I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Did you see his cheekbones? We’re doing a makeover on the hair and everything, and he’s going to start working out, and he’s going to be gorgeous.’ But they didn’t believe it at first. He like walked over there with a stained shirt or something. It was Rob.”

Honestly, even Robert Pattinson, with the biggest, yellowest mustard stain on the grodiest t-shirt, could probably sell a blood popsicle to a Twi-hard in white gloves. In other Pattinson news, he and partner Suki Waterhouse are expecting their first child. Congratulations, Mr. Pattinson. Now, put on a clean shirt. You’re going to be a father!

TWILIGHT with Catherine Hardwicke I Watchalong