What Drives Robert Pattinson and Pushing Comfort Zones

Robert Pattinson has being doing press for Breaking Dawn Part 2 and talking passionately about his upcoming project, Mission: Blacklist.

What drives him
As evidenced by recent choices -- including David Cronenberg's challenging "Cosmopolis," which featured him getting a prostate exam -- he's not afraid of risk. "I signed up for a lot of stuff in the last year. I was really fixated on working with a lot of people who are kind of dangerous," he says. "The business part of show business has really just taken a big s-- on the show aspect of it, and so I think anyone who has any visibility should be trying to do something that is really, really subversive. I think it would be interesting trying to get really subversive stuff into the mainstream. You're in the cinema not just as a consumer but as a participant." 

It's that sensibility that led him to sign up for the lead in "Mission: Blacklist," a film to be made in Iraq next year. "That's probably out of anybody's comfort zone," Pattinson offers of the film, which is based on a true story. "It's about this guy call Eric Maddox who was an Army interrogator who almost single-handedly found Saddam Hussein. No one really knows the story of it, and the story's absolutely amazing and kind of hilarious in some ways and bizarre." 

Comfort zones
That project teams Pattinson with French director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire, who used real Liberian child soldiers for his last film. "I think that's like his thing," says Pattinson. "I wanted him to be in his comfort zone, so we were both pushing, saying we need to shoot this in Iraq -- that's the whole point." 

You can tell where his passions lie by the fact that, during this interview, the actor talks more about "Mission: Blacklist" than "Twilight." 

His Parents Warming Up to Him Filming In Iraq
The role requires Pattinson to film in Iraq, which understandably made his family members uncomfortable at first — but the actor thinks his loved ones are beginning to warm up to the idea.

"My parents seem to be coming around to it now," he said with a laugh. "That's strange. I don't know what happened."

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