Jamie Campbell Bower Hails the $3.3 Billion Cultural Juggernaut Robert Pattinson Can’t Stand

Here is a fun little Twilight time warp: Jamie Campbell Bower is out here giving the vampire saga its flowers, while Robert Pattinson is still pretending it never happened. One guy says the franchise taught him how to handle a cultural tidal wave. The other has spent years roasting it. Both can be true!

Jamie Campbell Bower: grateful, grounded, and very aware of the machine

Bower only popped in and out of the series as Caius, one of the ancient Volturi leaders, showing up in New Moon and both parts of Breaking Dawn. In a new chat with Rolling Stone, he said the whole Twilight/Harry Potter chapter absolutely helped him get ready for the Stranger Things frenzy.

'This isn't about me. It's never about any actor. Anybody could have played this part. I'm just fortunate that it was me.'

He described Twilight as massive in scope but said being a smaller piece of it let him hover on the edges and take it all in without getting swallowed. Also: the numbers speak for themselves. The Twilight films pulled in about $3.3 billion worldwide, per The Numbers. You can decide how you feel about sparkly vampires; the box office already decided.

What the Twilight job meant to Bower back then

Flash back to 2009, around the release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Bower did an interview with The Cinephiliac alongside co-star Edi Gathegi, and he was pretty candid about what the spotlight does for a young actor. The short version: when a movie is that visible, casting suddenly sees you for roles you would not have gotten in the room for otherwise. He talked about being early in his craft and having to level up fast, focusing on every audition and learning from colleagues who had been at it longer. He also had a very clear read on fan energy: the screaming is for the movie, not the actor, and if he can show up, represent the work well, and people leave happy, that is the win.

Cut to now, with Bower terrorizing Hawkins as Vecna. He is not running from his past; he is using it.

Meanwhile, Pattinson has spent years roasting his own franchise

Pattinson turned Twilight into a career launchpad, then sprinted in the other direction. It has been a long-running joke with the fandom because he has been so consistent about it. Greatest hits include:

• Right after the first movie, he caught heat for saying Stephenie Meyer’s books probably should not have been published.
• He described the novel as uncomfortable to read and compared it to peeking at the author’s dream-based fantasy, as he put it in one interview (ComingSoon).
• He once said Meyer seemed 'mad' and in love with her own character, and that some passages made him squirm (also in that same press run).
• On Edward Cullen himself, he joked the guy would probably be an axe murderer in real life (MTV).
• He has pointed out plot issues more than once and has claimed he has only seen bits and pieces of the films, not full viewings (InStyle).

Is it harsh? Sure. But at this point, it is part of the lore. The man with the skin of a killer has never missed an opportunity to needle his vampire era.

The takeaway

Two Twilight alumni, two very different relationships with the thing that blew them up. Bower is genuinely appreciative of what the machine did for him and how it prepared him for Stranger Things. Pattinson is, well, Pattinson. Either way, the saga remains a cultural monolith that minted money and careers. If you want to revisit the chaos, Twilight is streaming on Hulu.