Why Robert Pattinson Was Nearly Fired From Twilight

robert pattinson in twilight

Robert Pattinson has been in the acting game for quite a while now, but he's still most well-known for his gig in Twilight, a series of movies that may not have panned out so well for the actor, had he not gotten his act together. Apparently, he and the other young members of the cast enjoyed raising hell on the set of the first movie in the franchise, Twilight, to the point where Robert Pattinson recently admitted that he was almost fired from the movie before it became an international success.

Luckily for the actor, he had agents around him who made him realize that behaving unprofessionally, even as a young man, would not fly on a set when millions of dollar on the line. Robert Pattinson ruefully explained about his attitude at Cannes this year, noting,

I didn't have to kiss anybody's [ass] the entire time. I don't think I did, anyway.

We're presuming Robert Pattinson did not have the same issues on the set of his new movie Good Time, as he's grown up quite a bit, even since the last Twilight film, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 hit theaters back in 2012. In that time, Robert Pattinson has taken on a slew of indie roles, including challenging ones like his gig on The Lost City of Z, where he had to transform his body for jungle rigors.

It's honestly not too astonishing to hear there was at least some talk that Robert Pattinson could be fired for set antics, especially since this story comes from a time before Twilight became a brand and before Pattinson became a household name. Besides the Summit Entertainment movies were kind of known for firing people, including sending out a scathing response when the studio opted to replace Rachelle Lefevre with Bryce Dallas Howard. Thirteen and Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke was also famously fired from the franchise before Twilight: New Moon went into production. Early on, if Summit had wanted to fire Pattinson, it totally could have happened.

By the end of the series, Robert Pattinson's character had become swoon-worthy enough that he likely was helping the Twilight movies to secure butts in the seats. In addition, his on-again, off-again romance with Kristen Stewart at the time was the stuff of legends, and it only served to add to the popularity of the franchise. It took the actor some time to get away from that image, and he told the New York Times it wasn't until Cosmopolis that he really cemented what he wanted to do in the acting biz.

I especially love the fact that it came out really at the height of my popularity. [It was] the big turning point for me -- I just realized that was what I wanted to do.

Despite acting out on the first movie and having totally branched out from the supernatural genre in the time after Twilight, Robert Pattinson seems to have a pretty good outlook regarding his time in the wildly popular franchise. He's even said he'd be open to doing more in the serious if something interesting and Twilight related came down the pipeline in the future. For now, you can catch him looking totally different when Good Time gets an official post-Cannes release.

Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.