Robert Pattinson biography

Synopsis

Early Years

Robert Thomas Pattinson was born on May 13, 1986 in London, England. Pattinson is the youngest of three children, and the only son born to Robert and Clare Pattinson. During his childhood, his father ran a car-importing business and his mother worked for a modeling agency.

Despite his sometimes shy personality, Robert Pattinson wanted to be a performer from an early age; first as a musician like his older sister Lizzy Pattinson. It was his father who strongly encouraged him to try out acting. During one memorable night out for dinner with his dad, the two found themselves sitting next to a group of young girls who told Pattinson they'd just returned from the Barnes Theater Club, a renowned theater program at the Harrodian School, a private school in Barnes, England, just outside of London.

"Since then, he had nagged me about attending," Pattinson once said. "At one point he said he would pay me." Pattinson didn't bite on the payment offer, but did end up attending Harrodian as a teenager and joined its theater program. There, he took on starring roles in plays such as Out Town, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Anything Goes.

Acting Career

Pattinson's performances drew notice and in 2003, at the age of 17, he jumped from the stage to the screen, nabbing a role in the TV movie, Ring of the Nibelungs. The work required him to move to South Africa for several months, where the movie was being filmed. An unaccredited role in the movie Vanity Fair (2004) followed.

Around the same time that he was finishing up work on those two projects, Pattinson met with Mike Newell, the eventual director of 2005's, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The meeting and subsequent audition earned Pattinson the role of Cedric Diggory, Harry Potter's friend and a fellow wizard.

The movie and the role propelled Pattinson's life and career forward in unimaginable ways. Teen People magazine called him "the next Jude Law" while Screen International magazine labeled him a "British Star of Tomorrow." It was heady stuff and, as Pattinson freely admits, it did indeed go to his head a bit.

A big Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson fan, Robert Pattinson's post-Potter plan was to take on smaller roles in plays or films that could let him explore unique characters. But things did not follow course. He did go on to play a shell-shocked World War II veteran in the BBC thriller, The Haunted Airman (2005); a student with a teacher crush in The Bad Mother's Handbook (2006); and make a small cameo as Diggory in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). But he was also fired from a play in London and, before Pattinson knew it, he was in Los Angeles sleeping on his agent's couch and trying to figure out his next step.