1986–present
Robert Pattinson News: Actor Modeled Mickey 17 Voices After Ren & Stimpy
Robert Pattinson has long turned heads with his characters’ unique voices and accents—and his latest role in the space drama Mickey 17 is no exception.
Starring in the latest film from Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho, Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, a financially destitute man who signs up to colonize the ice planet Niflheim. Before embarking on the dangerous mission, however, his body is cloned so that every time he dies, a new one generates. When one clone is mistakenly marked dead, both the titular character and the newest iteration, Mickey 18, meet face-to-face and are forced to reckon with their reality as “expendable” employees.
To differentiate between the two characters, the 38-year-old actor looked to the ’90s Nickelodeon show Ren & Stimpy, about a cartoon cat and chihuahua. Pattinson told Empire in October 2024 that Mickey 17’s voice is “a little like Stimpy” and “when 18 comes in, it’s a little bit more like Ren.”
“I just had this idea that he’s kind of like a dog with a complete lack of self-worth,” he told Empire. “He just keeps turning up, reporting for duty. But then I hope the reveal is that it’s a combination of deep, misguided guilt and also survival. It’s him just saying, ‘I’ll just keep lowering my expectations the whole time.’”
Mickey 17 arrives in theaters March 7.
Who Is Robert Pattinson?
British actor Robert Pattinson has transitioned from teen heartthrob in the Twilight movies to a well-established leading man in Hollywood. He first rose to prominence in 2005 for playing Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Soon after, the London native was catapulted to fame as vampire Edward Cullen in Twilight. Along with the successful Twilight sequels, Pattinson has also starred in The Batman, Remember Me, Good Time, and Tenet. The actor stars in the upcoming sci-fi fantasy Mickey 17, releasing in March 2025.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Robert Thomas Pattinson
BORN: May 13, 1986
BIRTHPLACE: London, United Kingdom
CHILDREN: 1 daughter
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus
Early Life
Robert Thomas Pattinson was born on May 13, 1986, in London to Robert and Clare Pattinson. His father ran a car-importing business, and his mother worked for a modeling agency. The youngest of three children, he grew up with two older sisters, Victoria and Lizzy.
Despite his sometimes shy personality, Pattinson wanted to be a performer from an early age. While attending Tower House School, a boy’s preparatory school, he took an interest in music and acting. By the age of 6, a young Pattinson was playing piano and guitar and involved in school plays.
He initially wanted to be a musician like his sister, Lizzy, but their father strongly encouraged him to try out acting. As a teenager at The Harrodian School located outside of London, Pattinson excelled in English class and joined a local theater group called the Barnes Theatre Company, where he appeared in such plays as Our Town, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Macbeth, and Anything Goes. He also took up modeling and started performing his own original songs at open mic nights.
After being approached by a talent agent following his leading performance in Our Town, Pattinson decided to pursue acting professionally and began auditioning for movies.
Movies: Twilight, Batman, and Harry Potter
At the age of 17, Pattinson scored his first movie role in the 2004 romantic drama Vanity Fair. Based on William Makepeace Thackeray novel, the young actor portrayed the son of the main character, Becky Sharp, played by Reese Witherspoon. However, he discovered his scenes were deleted from the final cut. “Basically I went to the screening, and no one had informed me that I was cut,” he told W Magazine in September 2017. “They got on to my bit, and it was just a totally alternate ending.”
Luckily, the same thing didn’t happen to his next part in Ring of the Nibelungs, a 2004 TV movie about a Nordic dragon slayer. The work required him to move to South Africa for several months, where the movie was shot.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Around the same time he was finishing up work on those projects, Pattinson got an audition for a Harry Potter movie. The casting director for Vanity Fair felt bad about his scenes getting cut and suggested him for a role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). After auditioning and meeting with director Mike Newell, Pattinson earned the role of Cedric Diggory, a young wizard who competes against Harry Potter in the sport of quidditch and the Triwizard Tournament. He returned to the role for a brief cameo in 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The movie 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.” Before the decade was over he would be anchoring a sci-fi series of his own, but first, he wanted to diversify his resume.
A big Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson fan, Pattinson’s post-Potter plan was to take on smaller roles in plays or films that would let him explore unique characters. He went on to play a shell-shocked World War II veteran in the BBC thriller The Haunted Airman in 2006 before portraying a student who has a crush on a teacher in The Bad Mother’s Handbook the following year.
Twilight's Edward Cullen
In 2007, Pattinson got a shot to star in Twilight. Part of his audition for the role of Edward Cullen, a century-old vampire in love, took place in the bedroom of the movie’s director, Catherine Hardwicke. Pattinson wowed both Hardwicke and his future co-star, Kristen Stewart, with his performance. “Everybody came in doing something empty and shallow and thoughtless,” Stewart told GQ. “But Rob understood that it wasn’t a frivolous role.”
And yet, for the legions of Twilight readers who had waited breathlessly for the movie adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s book, Pattinson’s casting as the perfectly gorgeous Cullen struck a nerve. There were calls for a boycott of the film, and up to 75,000 fans signed a petition asking he be removed from the cast. “They had this picture from this Viking film I did where I looked like someone had beaten me in the face with a frying pan,” Pattinson later said. “I was wearing this disgusting wig. And they were like, ‘This is Edward.’”
In the end, casting Pattinson paid off. In the movie’s first weekend in November 2008, box-office receipts totaled nearly $70 million on the way to grossing more than $408 million worldwide. Its leading man was catapulted to heartthrob status among the movie’s most adoring fans. It also served as a reminder that Pattinson, a guitar and keyboard player who loves Van Morrison, retained his music aspirations, as the Twilight soundtrack includes two songs by the actor.
On the heels of his Twilight success came the 2008 drama Little Ashes, which starred the actor in a meaty role as a young Salvador Dalí. Pattinson then returned to the part of Edward Cullen for The Twilight Saga: New Moon in 2009, as well as three more films: 2010’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and parts 1 and 2 of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Remember Me and Water for Elephants
Between work on the Twilight series’ later films, Pattinson starred in the 2010 romantic drama Remember Me, in which he played a young man who falls in love following a family tragedy. He was also cast as Reese Witherspoon’s love interest in the circus-centered Water for Elephants the following year.
In 2012, Pattinson landed one of his most challenging roles yet, portraying a young billionaire in the drama Cosmopolis, which was met with early success from audiences and critics alike. The film, directed by David Cronenberg, also starred Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti, and Samantha Morton.
The Lost City of Z and Good Time
While the heartthrob buzz subsided somewhat after Twilight ran its course, Pattinson began plying his craft in more critically acclaimed films. He starred alongside Guy Pierce in the 2014 Australian dystopian drama The Rover, followed by a role as a limo driver in David Cronenberg’s Maps of the Stars later that year. In 2017, Pattinson landed another supporting role as explorer Henry Costin in the biographical adventure The Lost City of Z before starring as a bank robber in the indie crime drama Good Time, which received rave reviews.
The actor earned particular praise for his performance in Good Time as a desperate man trying to free his brother from prison. Shortly after the movie’s release, Pattinson told W Magazine he got part by reaching out to directors Josh and Ben Safdie after seeing a poster for another film they had directed. “Just from the strength of that meeting we were like, ‘Let’s just do something,’” he said. “There was no script. I think it was just the kind of nexus of an idea.”
The Lighthouse and The King
Continuing to seek out smaller, character-driven projects, Pattinson co-starred in the 2018 western comedy Damsel with Mia Wasikowska and the sci-fi feature High Life, with Juliette Binoche that same year. In 2019, he joined Willem Dafoe for the well-regarded psychological horror flick The Lighthouse. Pattinson and Dafoe portrayed two lighthouse keepers trying to maintain their sanity on a remote island in the late 19th century. He also enjoyed a prominent role in the drama The King, based on the historical works of William Shakespeare. Pattinson played a French prince opposite Timothée Chalamet, Lily-Rose Depp, and Joel Edgerton.
Tenet and The Devil All The Time
In 2020, Pattinson played a spy handler in the Christopher Nolan movie Tenet. Released amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film received mixed reviews, but the actor was praised for his performance and chemistry with co-star John David Washington. That same year, he starred in the Southern gothic The Devil All The Time, playing a duplicitous small-town preacher. Despite his acting chops, Pattinson and the film’s other European actors were criticized for their Tennessean accents, with some questioning the authenticity of the dialect.
The Batman
For his next project, Pattinson starred as the Caped Crusader in The Batman in 2022. The actor portrayed a more gritty version of Bruce Wayne/Batman than his predecessor, Ben Affleck, and earned praise for his interpretation of the iconic role. Calling it “by far the hardest thing,” he explained his acting approach to the role in an interview with GQ in February 2022. To Pattinson, Wayne dressing up as Batman and fighting crime is an “addiction” brought on by trauma, which is why he thinks the movie is a “sad” one.
“It’s kind of about him trying to find some element of hope, in himself, and not just the city. Normally, Bruce never questions his own ability; he questions the city’s ability to change,” he said. ”But I mean, it’s kind of such an insane thing to do: The only way I can live is to dress up as a bat.”
The Batman was one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, pulling in nearly $775 million in ticket sales globally. Pattinson is expected to reprise the role in the highly anticipated sequel, The Batman II, in 2027.
New Movies: Mickey 17 and Die, My Love
Pattinson is set to return to the big screen in March 2025 for the upcoming sci-fi fantasy Mickey 17, directed by Bong Joon Ho. He plays Mickey Barnes, a financially burdened employee who volunteers to be a disposable clone worker to colonize an ice planet. Forced to undertake dangerous missions, a new body regenerates every time he dies. When one clone is mistakenly marked dead, both Mickey 17 and the new version meet face-to-face and are forced to make sense of their reality.
The actor will also star in the horror comedy Die, My Love opposite Jennifer Lawrence about a new mother dealing with postpartum depression who enters psychosis. The movie does not yet have an official release date but is slated to arrive in theaters sometime in 2025.
Fiancée Suki Waterhouse and Daughter
Pattinson started dating his fiancée, actor and singer Suki Waterhouse, in the summer of 2018. They were first spotted sharing a kiss outside a movie theater in London that July.
Over the years, Pattinson has kept his relationship with Waterhouse, and his dating life in general, relatively private. In a 2019 interview with UK newspaper The Sunday Times, the actor refused to divulge any details about his relationships, saying: “If you let people in, it devalues what love is. If a stranger on the street asked you about your relationship, you’d think it extremely rude. If you put up a wall it ends up better.”
In November 2023, Waterhouse announced that she was pregnant with their first child, and a month later, People confirmed the couple were engaged after Waterhouse was seen wearing an engagement ring. The following year, in March 2024, she gave birth to their daughter, whose name hasn’t yet been made public.
In early January 2025, rumors circulated that Pattinson and Waterhouse were married in a private ceremony on New Year’s Eve. However, this information hasn’t been confirmed.
Before he met Waterhouse, Pattinson was previously engaged to singer FKA Twigs. The two started dating in September 2014 after meeting through their mutual friend, singer Florence Welch. Pattinson and FKA Twigs got engaged in 2015, but after three years together, the couple broke up, citing conflicting travel schedules as the main cause of their split. Prior to that, the actor was in an on-and-off-again relationship with Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart from 2009 to 2013. Their relationship ended following Stewart’s cheating scandal with director Rupert Sanders.
Net Worth
As of August 2024, Pattinson has an estimated net worth of $100 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. The actor gets paid an annual salary of roughly $25 million.
Quotes
- You get into acting to do movies and nothing else. I’ve never been interested in trying to sell my personal life.
- I think as soon as you feel validated, you’re a bad actor. You need to constantly feel like there’s a 99 percent chance of failure; total failure; devastating failure. You should feel like every single job is a potential which you’re never going to get one again.
- You don’t really want people to know who you are. It’s just the worst thing that can happen for an actor. It’s not even about them knowing who you are. It’s just saying enough stuff to make people think you’re a certain kind of thing.
- If you let people in, it devalues what love is. If a stranger on the street asked you about your relationship, you’d think it extremely rude. If you put up a wall it ends up better.
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Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
