11 Times Robert Pattinson Went Full Freak Mode, Ranked by How Weirdly Into It We Were
Robert Pattinson is no stranger to a freaky role and his fans are rarely not into it—us included.
If your algorithm is anything like mine (and if you’re reading this, it probably does), I’m guessing the Dune: Part Three trailer’s reveal earlier this year left you inundated with memes comparing Robert Pattinson and Anya Taylor Joy’s Dune: Part Three characters to everyone from Sting to Clairo to a kink-curious tech bro on a Raya date to Berghain.
Indeed, Taylor-Joy’s septum-piercing-looking stillsuit and shaggy, Neukolln-ready mop of hair certainly caught the eye, but it was the sight of a bleached out Pattinson in full-on freak mode (he appears to be playing Scytale — a shapeshifter who will likely be the movie’s baddie) that really captured the imagination of the actors most devoted fans.
Indeed, since breaking out as a teen heartthrob with early franchise roles in Harry Potter and Twilight, Pattinson has often leveraged his stardom to work with some of the most provocative directors around — a career choice that's seen him cast in several freaky roles over the years — eleven of which you’ll find listed below, ranked in descending order by how much we were into it.
Read on to learn a bit more about them and use the guide below to find them on services like Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
Okay, so in terms of freakiness, Pattinson’s adventures as Edward Cullen might not compare to some of the things that the other characters in his freak canon have gotten up to over the years, but oomph, if his fans weren’t here for it…
From watching Bella sleep in the original movie to constantly telling her how irresistible her blood smells to being literally old enough to be her great great great grandfather, Pattinson’s Cullen is the ‘romantasy’ ideal of an irresistibly toxic boyfriend — which is exactly why an entire generation of movie fans still hold a mile high torch for him.
For all that, Pattinson’s freakiest role to date surely has to be his deranged turn in Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse — a movie in which two keepers of the lamp (played by him and Willem Dafoe) quickly lose their marbles on a jagged piece of rock off the coast of New England.
This is the one where Pattinson’s lighthouse keeper masturbates to a small wooden model of a mermaid and, when not getting into drunken fights and frivolity with his only human companion, is met with alluring, Lovecraftian visions of slimy tentacles. If you’ve yet to see it and are a fan of Eggers’ more recent Nosferatu, you will likely appreciate it just as much.
Whatever you thought of Bong Joon-ho’s quite-all-over-the-place Mickey 17, there was no doubting Pattinson’s admirable and dedicated freakiness in the role — not to mention his delightful chemistry with co-star Naomie Ackie.
Bong’s eighth feature as writer and director easily had more in common with his just okay 2013 dystopian movie Snowpiercer than his all-conquering Parasite, but thanks to Pattinson’s squeaky-voiced and forever-expiring performance (as various Mickey clones), the film managed to tick along nicely. The story builds to an inevitable showdown between two of those clones, which itself led to a far less likely, and far more spicy, potential menage a trois between them and Ackie’s Nasha, which is exactly the kind of freak mode we’re here for.
A decade on from Cronenberg’s movie, Pattinson was once again called upon to play an impossibly wealthy man with a taste for vigilantism who moves around a violent city in a slick, black car.
We are talking, of course, about Matt Reeves’ The Batman, in which Pattinson became the seventh actor to play the caped crusader in a live-action feature — and, at the time of shooting, the third in 10 years. Given all that, Pattinson understandably took a different approach to the role, giving his Bruce Wayne a brooding, fringe-flicking, MCR/emo vibe that I, for one, was very much into.
The leering looks, the distaste for beggars, the dangerously short skirt (or pteruges, if you prefer)—Pattinson's oily Atinuos in Cristopher Nolan's The Odyssey might not be the kind of guy you want looking after your flat while your away, but even in the movie's stellar cast he easily stood out.
Nolan's monumental adaptation of Homer's epic poem is packed to the brim with dazzling spectacle and technical marvels, but Pattinson adds a much needed dash of sex and danger with his performance—and it's exactly the kind that his fans adore.
Either one of Pattinson’s two collaborations with body horror god David Cronenberg so far could have easily made this list, but in terms of pure freak-mode Patz, it had to be Cosmopolis — for all of the actor’s charms in Maps to the Stars, that movie is a Mia Wasikowska joint through and through.
Released in the very same year that Pattinson broke free of the Twilight universe, this adaptation of Don DeLillo’s late capitalist satire deserves extra credit for being the first to really allow the actor to let his freak flag fly — and also for making such wonderful use of those razor-sharp cheekbones.
Of all the interesting choices in the anglophone voice cast of Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent masterpiece, The Boy and the Heron, Pattinson’s unrecognisable work as the titular bird was an obvious standout — it was also, not for the first time with an unlikely Miyazaki character, oddly alluring.
The movie focuses on a 12-year-old boy whose struggles to process his mother’s death lead him on an adventure to a magical and dangerous world. While there, he’s accompanied and guided by a mysterious grey heron — who Pattinson voices with a remarkable range of vocal flourishes.
When Robert and Timmy presumably face off against one another in Villeneuve’s trilogy-closing opus, it won’t be the first time that they’ve played opposing forces in a movie. Indeed, in 2019, David Michôd cast Chalamet (a French-American) as the decidedly English Henry V opposite the London-born Pattinson as the decidedly French Dauphin in his pseudo-Shakespearean experiment, The King.
Could they have switched parts? Perhaps, but the actor still had an absolute blast in the role, proving once again that he is often at his very best when playing oddball supporting roles (and if you’re into this one, make sure to follow it up with his similarly freaky turn in Michôd’s previous effort, The Rover). The Dauphin might have been a creepy, cowardly slimeball, but whatever Pattinson was doing, it wasn’t not working for us.
Again, in a similar way to Good Time, Pattinson’s role as Monte in Claire Denis’ High Life is high on the freaky scale while also not entirely appealing — which is, of course, by design.
The movie is a fascinating and nihilistic space movie (imagine a horny, dystopian, and very French version of movies like Sunshine or Interstellar) that follows a group of convicts on a mission to extract energy from a black hole. For much of the journey, Pattinson’s Monte remains celibate, at least until a scientist (played by Juliette Binoche) extracts his semen and artificially inseminates his friend (played by Mia Goth). It’s a freaky film with sex on the brain, but I wouldn’t exactly call it sexy — hence its lower placement on our list.
Similar things could be said for The Childhood of a Leader — the debut feature of director Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) and, coming in 2015, one of the actor’s first certified freaky roles.
For this one, Pattinson played the cruel and brooding father of a boy who the film suggests will grow up to be a terrible European dictator. As ‘freak mode’ films go, it’s one of Pattinson’s more subdued performances, but he does get to wear a rather fetching tuxedo — so credit where credit is due.
