Robert Pattinson Called This Movie 'Torture' - and We Can't Help But Agree

Many creators will stop at nothing to shock their audiences. Examples include Alfred Hitchcock, who had a flock of birds set loose on Tippi Hedre, and Stanley Kubrick, who demanded that actors and crew remain on set for weeks on end.

Robert Pattinson once found himself in such a predicament. After his breakout role in the Twilight movie series, the actor went from strength to strength, becoming a top Hollywood star and working with numerous big-name directors like Herzog, Nolan and the Safdie brothers. But the actor never expected to have to endure, in his own words, literal 'torture' to deliver an honest performance.

'That's the closest I've come to punching a director,' Pattinson said, describing his experience working on the set of The Lighthouse in a joint interview with his co-star Willem Defoe for Interview Magazine.

Inspired by symbolist art and 1930s French cinema, Robert Eggers' cinematic experiment is a shocking black-and-white experience reminiscent of early David Lynch works.

Few people expected a film starring Pattinson and Defoe to be a surrealistic psychological horror flick drawing on psychoanalysis and maritime mythology. But it wasn't just the characters that suffered the terrifying conditions seen on the screen; the actors had to endure them as well. Pattinson ended up doing take after take of a harrowing scene in which he is repeatedly sprayed from a fire hose.

'However much I love Robert [Eggers], there was a point where I did five takes walking across the beach, and after a while I was like, "What the fuck is going on? I feel like you're just spraying a fire hose in my face." And he was like, "I am spraying a fire hose in your face." It was like some kind of torture,' Pattinson shared.

'It definitely creates an interesting energy,' he added. That's a peculiar choice of words, seeing how to shoot one scene, the actor had to literally masturbate on camera in front of the entire crew.

It would appear, though, that Pattinson sees such challenges as an opportunity to hone his acting skills while immersing himself in the auteur's creative vision.

'I mean, I'll literally do a movie specifically because I think I can't do it. You just hope you don't drown. And then when you don't drown, you hopefully figure out how to swim,' the actor said. It seems like Pattinson's philosophy is that whatever doesn't kill you makes you a better actor and is thus totally worth it. Or maybe, he's just torturing himself in a futile attempt to atone for The Twilight.

Source: Interview.