Robert Pattinson

He was born on 13 May 1986 in Barnes, a quiet corner of south west London. His father imported classic cars from the United States and his mother worked for a modelling agency, which is how he ended up in teen magazines and catalogues between the ages of 12 and 16. He has two older sisters, Victoria and Lizzy, and he started acting with the amateur theatre company in his own neighbourhood.

From there, at 18, he went straight into a 'Harry Potter' film. Twenty years on, Robert Pattinson has had five films out in twelve months, works back to back with Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve, and is sitting on the best reviews of his life.

Cedric Diggory, then four years of hysteria

His first real part was Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), directed by Mike Newell. The character dies at the end, but it was enough for 'The Times' to name him a British star of tomorrow. He had already shot a scene for Vanity Fair (2004) that was cut from the film.

What came next has few parallels. In 2008 he played Edward Cullen in Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke's adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer novel, opposite Kristen Stewart. The five films in the saga, from New Moon (2009) to Breaking Dawn: Part 2 (2012), took more than $3 billion between them.

The fame that came with it was out of proportion even by Hollywood standards. He has talked about that stretch as a long bout of anxiety, with hotels under siege and no way of walking down a street. His relationship with Stewart, which ran from 2009 to 2013, was reported almost daily.

Between instalments he kept slipping odd things in. He played a young Salvador Dalí in Little Ashes (2008), took his first lead in the small British comedy How to Be, and both starred in and produced Remember Me (2010). He also had a go at old fashioned melodrama with Water for Elephants (2011), alongside Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz.

The escape plan

He drew up the exit in 2012 and David Cronenberg signed it off. In Cosmopolis he is a billionaire crossing New York in a limousine while his fortune evaporates, and it went into competition at Cannes in the same year the last Twilight film opened. He went back to the same director for Maps to the Stars (2014).

His taste has barely shifted since: directors with a signature, characters who aren't comfortable to watch. He was a feral drifter for David Michôd in The Rover (2014), the photographer who shot James Dean in Life (2015) with Dane DeHaan, and T. E. Lawrence for Werner Herzog in Queen of the Desert.

For James Gray's The Lost City of Z (2016) he dropped two and a half stone and hid behind spectacles and an enormous beard so nobody would spot him. It worked.

The reputation really turned with Good Time (2017), Josh and Benny Safdie's film in which he is a small time robber spending one long night trying to get his brother out of custody. It brought his first Independent Spirit nomination. Then came High Life (2018) for Claire Denis and the comic western Damsel.

The Lighthouse (2019) stuck him on a rock in the 1890s, losing his mind opposite Willem Dafoe in boxy black and white, and earned him a second Spirit nomination. Robert Eggers directed. That same year he was the Dauphin in The King, and in 2020 he worked with Christopher Nolan for the first time on Tenet and played a predatory preacher in The Devil All The Time.

Batman, and the noise again

When the casting was announced in 2019 the internet did its usual thing. The Batman opened in March 2022, directed by Matt Reeves, with Zoë Kravitz, Colin Farrell and Paul Dano, and took over $770 million. His Bruce Wayne is a hollow eyed recluse who looks like he hasn't slept in years, closer to Kurt Cobain than to any playboy.

The sequel, The Batman: Part II, finally went into production in spring 2026 after several delays, and Warner Bros has it down for 18 February 2028. He has called it a hard left turn from the first one.

Five films in a year

In March 2025 he led Mickey 17, the first film Bong Joon-ho made after his Oscar. He plays an expendable, a worker sent to die on suicide jobs and reprinted by his employer each time. It finished on $133 million, well short of what it cost.

That autumn brought Die My Love, directed by Lynne Ramsay, where he is the husband of a woman coming apart after giving birth, with Jennifer Lawrence in that part. Mubi bought it at Cannes for $24 million, the biggest deal of that festival.

2026 has been the busiest year he's had. April brought The Drama, Kristoffer Borgli's black comedy in which he and Zendaya are a week away from their wedding when something surfaces. It cost $28 million and made $132 million.

In July he went back to Nolan. In The Odyssey he is Antinous, the most arrogant of the suitors waiting it out on Ithaca, and the film has become the director's biggest ever hit at more than $1.75 billion. In December he turns up as the Face Dancer Scytale in Dune: Messiah for Denis Villeneuve.

The role everyone is talking about is a different one. In Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim and produced by Pattinson through his company Icki Eneo Arlo, he plays Chris Hansen, the NBC journalist who spent years catching paedophiles on camera for 'To Catch a Predator'.

It premiered in competition at Venice on 5 September 2026 to an eight minute ovation, A24 put it in American cinemas three weeks later, and he came out of it an Oscar contender, with notices better than the film's own. Hansen, who licensed nothing, called it an insult to the people who protect children, went to see it at a cinema in Times Square and graded the performance a D. Pattinson said in Venice that he hoped Hansen would end up liking it.

Music has always been there in the background. He has played piano and guitar since he was four, sang two songs on the 'Twilight' soundtrack, put a guitar part on a Death Grips track and wrote with Tindersticks for 'High Life'. He has been one of the faces of Dior since 2013.

About his own life he gives away as little as he can manage. He has been with the actress and singer Suki Waterhouse since 2018, they got engaged at the end of 2023 and their daughter was born in March 2024. Neither of them has ever confirmed whether a wedding happened, and neither looks likely to.

The earliest credit MovieNCo has for Robert Pattinson is Vanity Fair (2004); in all, 35 films over 22 years. They have worked as actor in 35 and producer in 2. Their title most voted by MovieNCo readers is Twilight (2008), with 322 votes. Their busiest decade is the 2010s, with 19 titles. The person they have worked with most is Kristen Stewart, on 5 films, among them Twilight and New Moon.