Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke revealed that Summit Entertainment had initial reservations about casting The Batman star Robert Pattinson to play Edward Cullen because the studio believed the actor was not good-looking enough for the role.
Hardwicke made the revelation on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. The filmmaker discussed her reticence about Pattinson at the time, “When he came over to my house, he had black bangs for hair and was kind of out of shape because he was hanging out at the pub all the time,” she said. Hardwicke’s reservations evaporated after the actor’s audition, “I thought, ‘It works not just in person, but it works on screen.’ I had to be sure. Of course, in person, I just got carried away, but you have to be sure. Does it really translate (to the screen)?” she explained.
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Summit Entertainment was not confident of Pattinson’s suitability for Twilight’s Edward after Hardwicke showed them audition tapes the actor had shot with his eventual co-star Kristen Stewart, “I sent it to Summit, and he went over to meet them,” she said. “They called me back and go, ‘Do you think you can make this guy look good?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ Did you see his cheekbones? We’re doing a makeover on the hair and everything, and he’s going to start working out, and he’s going to be gorgeous.’ But they didn’t believe it at first. He walked over there with a stained shirt. It was Rob,” she added.
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Hardwicke also recently shared her thoughts on the Twilight sequels at a 15th-anniversary screening of the original film. The director revealed that she had the opportunity to helm the subsequent installments in the franchise but opted not to. Hardwicke was not as passionate about the previous books as she was the first in the series.
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“I think I really loved the first book the best, to be honest,” the director said. “It was just fresh. It was original. I never read anything like that. I’d always read about vampires in dark alleys in London and Paris, and this one, they’re in the trees, around in the daytime. They’re in high school. I’m like, ‘That’s insane.’ I loved it. And so, for the rest of the books, I didn’t fall as deeply in love with them as I did with the first one. So, I was kind of happy to do the first. I wanted to do the first one. My contract said I could do the other ones, but I didn’t want to.” Hardwicke explained.
