Rob on the evolution of Edward in ‘Breaking Dawn’

Rob took some time to talk with Fearnet about Breaking Dawn and the evolution of his character Edward Cullen.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview :

You’ve been playing Edward Cullen for nearly five years. Can you describe the journey he has taken, and the journey you have taken with him?

Right from the beginning, I ignored the fact that he was a vampire; I ignored the fact that he was 108 years old, except for in sort of metaphorical senses. You are left with a troubled teenager with a very simple story of him finding contentment with himself. He gets content by finding a woman and having a child, which I guess is how a lot of guys balance themselves out. At least, that’s the hope anyway.

Director Bill Condon mentioned that there was this self-loathing that you told him you had been playing with for the first three movies, that had never really been presented as a plot element.

Yeah. I thought that would be the key ingredient to Edward’s character. He’s 108 years old, but he’s never achieved anything he wanted to achieve. He’s been stuck in adolescence. When you are in adolescence, you think nothing is fair – he’s been living with that for 100 years. You’d eventually get to the point of desperation. It is very difficult to portray that and a love story at the same time, unless you want to make a very different movie. So I was trying to push for that angle. Breaking Dawn is probably the happiest Edward has ever been in the whole series.

Can you talk about the scene where the baby is born, and you turn Bella?

I read the script [for Breaking Dawn] before I read the book – that was the first time I had ever done that. I was astonished when I read that scene – I couldn’t believe we were actually going to do it. I was terrified going into it. It ended up being one of the most incredible scenes in this movie. There is definitely an R-rated – or even NC-17 rated – version of it – of a few scenes in this movie. Because of the violence, it gave a lot of freedom, and having every character so desperate, it became something very, very different. Especially for Edward, who has always been a pacifist, who is always very logical and objective. Suddenly I was playing edward, stuck between an emaciated dummy’s legs, chewing through a placenta, cream cheese and strawberry jam all over your face, and then pulling out this three-week-old baby with a wig on… it’s like something out of a Bunel movie.

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