When the franchise that made you famous has made over $1.3 billion at the box office, you’d probably never lower yourself to audition for a role again, right?

Not Robert Pattinson.

To win over Animal Kingdom writer/director David Michôd, RPatz threw any Twilight swagger out the window. “I didn’t know anything about him,” Michôd told us Thursday night at The Rover‘s L.A. premiere. (He said this with a straight face.) “I hadn’t seen any of the Twilight films.”

But Michôd remembered meeting Pattinson and his “really wonderfully awkward physical energy,” which the director thought would be perfect for The Rover, a post-apocalyptic drama, which leaves RPatz caked in dirt and blood as the dim younger brother of a car thief.

Despite the fact that few in Pattinson’s position would continue to test for roles, said Michôd, Pattinson was cool about it:

“There were no airs, there was no arrogance, there was no sense of entitlement. Even in terms of testing for me. He knew that he needed to work hard to have the kind of career that he wants.”

How did Pattinson, dressed in a natty teal suit, feeling about bringing his Cannes hit to the U.S.? “A bit scary,” said the actor, looking around at the college crowd at Westwood’s Regency Bruin theater waving signs and posters. (Even Zac Efron was there.)

“But we had a really young audience in Australia a few days ago and it was such a bafflingly different reaction. Everybody was like, howling with laughter. And in Cannes you could hear a pin drop the entire time. Crazy. So I have no idea what the reaction’s going to be.”

So far, so good.

USA Today