Robert Pattinson talks babysitting and High Life

Here’s an extract from an interview with AZ Central, click on the link to read the full interview:

“The script of the character on paper seemed so incredibly dark, but as soon as you work with a baby — especially a nice baby — you just feel a much softer and different slant on the character,” he says.

“She’s incredibly fun and easy to work with,” Pattinson says. “The cool thing about this, the script was sort of loose. We had space to see what she wanted to do, and I worked with that. People say, ‘don’t work with children or animals,’ but I find them spontaneously fun.”

But soon, he discovered that Scarlett would get fussy over one thing.
“I realized that after I handed her back to her parents, she would hate being separated again, so I’d end up babysitting her for hours,” he says.

This isn’t the first time Pattinson has been a dad on film. Does playing a father elicit desires of a family?

“There’s definitely a significant amount of pleasures with it,” he says. “But when she wouldn’t stop crying, and I’d hand her to her parents, there’s a great sense of relief afterwards.” Pattinson laughs. “I’m almost 33, but I still think of myself as a 10 year old.”

…

Does Pattinson think his character regrets his actions that arguably landed him on the ship in the first place?

“It’s definitely different to think of what regret means at that point,” he says. “It’s a pretty harsh sentence if you were sentenced to death at 13, 14. You basically spent your entire life in prison. I’m sure, but he also seems like a strange, sadistic character.”

The silence adds to the ever-mysterious Monte. At the beginning of the movie, there’s hardly any dialogue. Instead, the audience sees everyday life in isolation between a man and his daughter who is only old enough to blurt out sound effects.

“I think this shows a whole intimacy having very little dialogue and being in the same set all the time makes you feel like you’re not doing a lot, but it’s nice,” he says. “It’s … meditative and hard, but doing so felt satisfying.”

“It’s kind of what I really like in all of Claire’s movies,” he says. “It’s about the practicalities and textures. It’s also easier to work with a director who’s made movies before, and it’s nice trusting what she wants to do. There’s no need to question anything … and I don’t have to learn more lines (laughs).”