Mud Eating and Other Wildly Odd Things Robert Pattinson Has Done in His Film Roles

Robert Pattinson is, well, Robert Pattinson. He’s a household name, mostly associated with Twilight and more arthouse films as of late. He’s also known to be a bit odd thanks to candid interviews on- and off-screen. And if you’ve seen any of his most recent films, you’ll know that he’s an amazing actor in them. He’s gained acclaim after his years as Edward Cullen, but it’s still worth a mention that these movies can have odd subject matters or require the actor to do some seriously weird things.

In January, Pattinson told Vanity Fair that he’s “almost exclusively played weirdos” for the past several years. “It was almost a relief to be like, ‘At least I’ve got Dior coming out, so I don’t look like I’m just completely enveloped by the dark side yet,’” he said about his recent Dior campaign. Here are just some of those things these weird characters have done. 

Ate mud

In his latest movie, The Lighthouse, Pattinson spent a lot of time in muddy situations because of the rain and climate. ”Peeing myself was another exaggeration,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in October about another interview he did. “But I did eat quite a lot of mud.”

The publication wrote that they were in a “rural inlet in Nova Scotia” and Pattinson said they were in the same weather and conditions that the characters would be in if it took place in real-life. “There’s something kind of freeing when you’re just constantly covered in mud and soaking wet,” Pattinson said. “There was a kind of anarchic energy, which I always thought was really fun but also pretty exhausting.”

It sounds like even eating mud didn’t put a damper on his filming experience with this one.

Killed a seagull

In The Lighthouse, again, Pattinson’s character viciously kills a seagull. Throughout the movie, he and Willem Dafoe’s characters are constantly pecked at by these birds. While it’s supposed to symbolize death and monotony eating away at them, it’s also a breaking point for the character. But don’t worry; it wasn’t a real bird murder, of course, and the birds were well taken care of. 

“Like The Lighthouse, the whole setup was made to avoid stress on the animals. They had breaks. They filmed in a big area,” animal trainer Guillaume Grange told Jezebel. “The crew was minimized. We restricted the movement of the people and the camera when the birds were out. All that is to make sure the animals were not stressed. If they’re not stressed, they don’t mind.”

Did a fake French accent

OK, this one might be debatable, but Pattinson’s French accent in The King is a little odd, if not silly. The King stars Timothée Chalamet as King Henry V of England, and Pattinson portrays his nemesis, The Dauphin of France. It’s a period piece that’s roughly based on actual events, but Pattinson’s luscious blonde wig and outrageous accent stole the spotlight whenever on-screen. 

Not to mention, another odd thing he did in the film was slide around and die in the mud at the end. It’s, again, a hilarious moment in an otherwise serious movie. 

Masturbated (quite frequently)

This one is actually a pattern in Pattinson’s repertoire of films. “I keep masturbating,” Pattinson told Vanity Fair. “In the last three or four movies, I’ve got a masturbation scene. I did it in High Life. I did it in Damsel. And The Devil All the Time. I only realized when I did it the fourth time [in The Lighthouse]. But when I saw the clay figure of the mermaid, if you’re getting turned on by that, you’re in a very strange place in your life.”

And to make matters worse, Pattinson actually vomited when he filmed the masturbation scene in The Lighthouse for the first time. “We’d just done a week of rehearsals where I’d basically hidden everything from [director Robert Eggers],” Pattinson told TimeOut London. “I felt I had to prove myself on the first day, so I went [for] the most extreme and grotesque… grotesquery.”

Luckily, no dogs were harmed in the making of any of these sex scenes. 

Sustained a butt injury

Lastly, this one is something that happened off-screen and obviously didn’t make the final cut. But when Pattinson wants to do a stunt, sometimes he goes a little too hard in the act. Like when he sprained his bum filming Twilight. 

“We were doing the fight scene at the end of the first one, and I tore my glute — well, almost tore it, basically in my second shot of the whole movie, of the whole series,” Pattinson said, according to MTV. “[They] had to get a physiotherapist to come in and massage my butt cheek for the rest of the day.”

Whatever there is to say about Robert Pattinson, don’t say he takes bland roles.