Pattinson appears in The Odyssey, continuing a career built on choosing filmmakers rather than parts. After a vampire romance franchise made him internationally famous very young, he moved into art house cinema and worked there for years before returning to large productions on his own terms.
He is British and came to acting through youth theatre before the franchise. His subsequent choices have been deliberately uncommercial, including collaborations with directors known for hostility to conventional narrative, and he has been publicly self deprecating about the work that made him famous.
Recurring subjects: disintegration, men whose composure fails under isolation, and performances that are physically and vocally strange by design. He plays discomfort convincingly and is willing to be genuinely off putting, which is what made his art house period work and what he has since brought into blockbuster casting.
His independent films of the last decade, particularly a black and white two hander set in a lighthouse, are widely admired, and his casting as a major comic book lead was treated as a test of whether that art house reputation would survive the transition. It did. His career is a standard example of a franchise actor rebuilding a filmography from scratch.
For viewers who want a leading man who is comfortable being unpleasant. Suited to anyone who knows only the vampire franchise, since almost nothing that followed resembles it.
