Every Role Robert Pattinson Missed Out On | Screen Rant
Although The Batman star Robert Pattison is doing pretty well for himself now, the actor has missed out on some classic roles over the years—as well as avoiding some duds. Robert Pattinson has had an impressively eclectic screen career. For every blockbuster like the Twilight movies, the star has balanced out his screen CV by appearing in something more offbeat like the Salvador Dali biopic Little Ashes.
However, just because Pattinson has a wide variety of roles to his name doesn’t mean the actor has made the most of every career opportunity afforded to him. Throughout his lengthy screen career, Pattinson has missed out on being a part of some incredibly impressive movies. That said, he has also been spared some misfires that might have set The Batman star back in the eyes of the moviegoing public.
Much like fellow Safdie Brothers collaborator Adam Sandler, the missed roles of Robert Pattinson can be attributed to everything from poor decision-making to producers deciding on a more famous face for the part in question. However, some of Pattinson’s parts were missed due to the actor being cut from finished movies after filming his role, while others were caused by the actor himself deciding that he didn’t fit the role. Finally, a few of Pattinson’s missing roles are a mystery, as the actor himself has never explained why he didn’t end up with the part. With that in mind, here's every role Pattinson missed out on.
Directed by Mira Nair, 2004’s Vanity Fair is a middling adaption of the William Makepeace Thackeray novel of the same name. For its opening hour, the comedy-drama nails the sparkling satirical wit of Thackeray’s text, but the grim closing hour is overlong and too stiflingly self-serious to make the most of its star, the always effervescent Reese Witherspoon. Some of Robert Pattinson’s scenery-chewing might have helped the drab second half, but viewers will never be sure. This is because Pattinson had a part in the 2004 period piece and filmed scenes for the movie, but they were cut from the finished edit of Vanity Fair. Pattinson played protagonist Becky Sharp’s grown-up son Rawdy Crawley in the original ending of Vanity Fair, but another finale was used in the movie’s final edit and the young actor’s role was cut wholesale.
Of all the movies that Robert Pattinson missed out on starring in, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is probably the one he is least angry about failing to book. Hilariously, the actor screwed up his Transformers 2 audition by using the American accent he always auditioned with before Twilight made Robert Pattinson famous. Not realizing that everyone in the audition recognized him, Pattinson kept the accent on throughout his interview and accidentally left the producers with the impression that he was doing bizarrely bland in-character improv. Pattinson said his agent later called him to explain the mistake although, given how badly the Michael Bay sequel fared with critics, this incident may have been fate intervening to ensure that Pattison didn’t end up typecast as the lead in teen-oriented, critically despised blockbuster franchises.
On the opposite end of the scale when it comes to critical acclaim, director Paul Thomas Anderson’s tense modern masterpiece There Will Be Blood is one of few roles that Pattison openly admitted to wishing he had won. Like the later Oscar-nominated Western The Power of the Dog, the slow burn story had a role for a young actor playing an inexperienced naïf and an older actor playing his tough, troubled mentor/eventual enemy. Pattinson remembered his brush with PTA’s movie years later in an interview where the actor said, “I remember reading the script and thinking it was the best script ever. I just couldn’t do it… I was gonna go into the audition, but I was just, like, I can’t do it.”
Outside of these cryptic comments, little is known about the actor’s motivations for turning down the part. However, Pattinson may mean that he was too young and inexperienced to nail the role, or that his contractual obligations to the ongoing Twilight franchise made it impossible. Interestingly enough, although it is not known what part Pattinson was offered the chance to audition for, his age means that it was likely the role that later went to Paul Dano. Dano, in turn, went on to play the Riddler to Pattinson’s Batman in 2022.
While There Will Be Blood was a role that Pattinson wanted but couldn’t bring himself to audition for, the part he turned down in the MCU was one the actor was offered but had no interest in. Pattinson turned down a role in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy since he has just finished Twilight and didn’t see himself becoming a blockbuster star of superhero movies (ironically). It’s hard to picture him gelling well in the James Gunn movie, whose live-action cartoon tone would not have been an ideal fit for the moodier, more naturalistic roles that Pattinson was prioritizing post-Twilight. Fortunately, The Batman proved that the actor was not too late to cash in on the superhero trend, with the 2022 release earning reviews as impressive as those of Guardians of the Galaxy, despite its very different tone and style.
According to Scott Pilgrim Vs The World director Edgar Wright, Pattinson put in a “very intense" audition for the role that eventually went to Chris Evans. The part of arrogant movie star Lucas Lee could have been very different with Pattinson in the role, and the meta-joke of casting the Twilight franchise’s uber-famous heartthrob as an arrogant actor was likely not lost on the star. However, Pattinson may have later been relieved to miss out on the role since, although it was a hit with critics, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World was a box-office flop upon release. Since Pattinson has taken financially unsuccessful career risks on offbeat movies both before and since it may ultimately have been a blessing that the star avoided a role in Wright’s superhero satire. That said, the movie never hurt Evans’ career, although losing out on the part also did not stop Robert Pattinson from gaining the title role in The Batman and becoming a superhero cinema star to rival the MCU mainstay some years later.