Robert Pattinson had a profile in the New York Times a few days ago, and it’s an interesting piece. For all of his good-natured promotion, you can tell that the Twilight Saga is really draining the crap out of all of the stars. Still, Pattinson isn’t really bitching about it, he just sounds exhausted, and like there’s nothing new he can really say about his role as the most sparkly of the Sparklepants Vampires. The full piece is here, and here are some of the better quotes:

On Twilight burnout: “It can get a little boring,” he said softly over coffee at the Four Seasons hotel here, referring both to playing an unchanging vampire and to chewing over the Cultural Importance of It All. “The good news is that the whole thing is done in seven months.”

He thinks Kristen Stewart handles it better: “Kris is better about dealing with photographers than I am.”

Sparkles, Philosopher King: “I’ve learned to let it go a bit, but I’m still really bothered by it,” he said. “The more you are exposed, the more people irrationally hate you, I think we reached a point, a peak, with ‘New Moon’ where the stories became so saturated into the culture that it started to feel normal. It’s like the tabloids don’t know what to write anymore because they’ve used up all their scandals.”

He admires Joaquin Phoenix: Mr. Pattinson talks about a desire to play “characters that are not parodies,” and he would love to do a comedy with Todd Solondz (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”). He would like to have a career like Joaquin Phoenix, somebody who makes unorthodox roles pop.

On working on Water for Elephants: Mr. Pattinson has clearly enjoyed working on something else. He lit up when talking about the shoot, mentioning a scene in which a lion had to bite his arm and another where he had to spend hours shoveling horse manure — an unsettling detail given the grimy condition of his fingernails. “It feels like everyone is an Oscar winner except me,” he said of the cast and crew.

On playing a character that doesn‘t age: “I hope it doesn’t start looking ridiculous.”

[From The New York Times]

The piece quotes various producers and Hollywood experts extensively, asking them if Pattinson is going to have much of a career beyond Twilight. The experts seemed to think he would, if he tried to fashion his career after Leo DiCaprio, which makes me sad that the “experts” can’t think of another star who was youngish tween-friendly star who transitioned into a full-fledged adult career. I like Pattinson’s suggestion of Joaquin Phoenix, although in Joaquin’s defense, he was always a gritty, independent kind of actor before he got Gladiator and changed the face of his career. Do we really want to see Pattinson dirty it up? I don’t know. He’s just so pretty and sparkly. Even though I didn’t see Remember Me (yet – I will see it at some point), I think that was probably a good character for him, it was modern and he got to be a romantic lead without it being about sparkles and colored contacts and sh-t. And I actually think the fact that he’s English will work well for him, honestly. The British actors think about their careers differently, and I’ve always felt it’s less about ego for them, they just work because they get offered projects and why not? It’s only in Hollywood that actors obsessively “plan” their career paths, I think.

NYT photos & TV Watch photo courtesy of robertpattinson.org.