“The Strength of the ‘Twilight’ Movies Is Not the Acting,” Says Director David Cronenberg

Even though he's probably one of the few actors of his generation to boast such a large and fiercely loyal fanbase, Robert Pattinson is yet to make box office gold outside the “Twilight” franchise. David Cronenberg is the latest director to come to his defense: Rob can act, just give him time and space to prove it.

He needs both because, clearly, “the strength of the “Twilight” movies is not the acting,” Cronenberg says in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times.

That's not to say though that Pattinson shouldn't get credit for the work he's done on the immensely popular vampire film saga, the director adds.

Pattinson himself joined him for the chat with the LA Times, occasionally chiming in to speak his own mind, particularly when the topic of the media's role in today's culture came up.

“The strength of the 'Twilight' movies is not the acting,” Cronenberg says. Before he cast Pattinson in “Cosmopolis,” he made it a point of watching all his movies and some of his live interviews, to get a better sense of his personality and whether he'd be up for the job.

“But it’s not understood that doing 'Twilight' requires presence and professionalism. Are you saying this is an Academy Award performance, or Alec Guinness? That’s a whole other discussion. But you throw somebody on a grueling set like that – a normal person would be dead in an hour,” the director adds.

Pattinson agrees: he's growing tired of people constantly focusing on his acting and especially on whether he'd ever do a movie to show it off – speaking as if he'd just been playing at acting so far.

“With this movie people keep saying, 'Is this ['Cosmopolis'] gonna be the movie where he can prove he can act?' It’s like, 'What do you think I have been doing?'” the British actor cuts in.

Cronenberg notes that many critics have already gotten used to picking on Robert, and all for the wrong reasons, to the point where they completely ignore his achievements.

“By the way, he’s a British guy doing an American accent. People don’t realize that there are a lot of very good actors who cannot do accents, and they don’t give Rob credit for that,” he explains.

“Oh, give me anything!” Pattinson laughs.

“Cosmopolis,” starring Robert Pattinson and directed by David Cronenberg, is based on a script inspired by Don DeLillo's book of the same name. As of now, it has a pretty solid 65% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with its top critics.