Actor says of busy 2026 in which he has had several big roles: ‘Once you start spinning plates, it gets quite addictive’
Robert Pattinson has talked about the “addictive” nature of working on several films simultaneously, having starred in several of this year’s most highly anticipated productions, despite recently becoming a father for the first time.
“Once you get the momentum going, it’s strangely not that hard,” said Pattinson at the Venice film festival. “Once you start spinning plates, it gets quite addictive.”
The London-born performer has drawn critical praise this year for his turn as Antinous, the primary antagonist in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, as well as playing a lead role in the dark romantic comedy The Drama and making his Dune debut in the third instalment of the franchise this December.
On the Venice Lido, Pattinson was promoting Lance Oppenheim’s forthcoming arthouse thriller Primetime, which he joined as a producer before agreeing to star as the lead, and prepared while filming Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love with Jennifer Lawrence.
“I just had a baby,” the actor told a press conference on the Lido. “So I had no desire to go out at night, so suddenly I had twice as much time to do anything with, which was very helpful.”
The 40-year-old actor had his first child with the English singer-songwriter and actor Suki Waterhouse in March 2024.
A “fever dream rather than a biopic”, Primetime sees Pattinson play Chris Hansen, the driven but ethically ambiguous host of To Catch a Predator, a mid-2000s US TV series that orchestrated elaborate sting operations to film adult men seeking to have sex with minors.
“Obviously, I hope [Hansen] likes the movie,” Pattinson said, after Hansen saw the trailer and said he found the actor’s fictional portrayal “overly dramatic”.
Pattinson said of Hansen: “There’s something electrifying about him. I would hope the amount of inspiration his character has given a lot of people for years is some kind of compliment.”
Pattinson is due to reprise his role as the pointy-eared billionaire vigilante in The Batman II, which commenced filming in London in June and is due for release in early 2028.
“I am definitely not doing simultaneous stuff during Batman,” the actor said. “It’s impossible.”
