I feel like a jackass every time I admit this, but I’ve always found both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson to be very underrated models. Like, put either of them with professional hair and makeup people, stylists and a good photographer, and you’re always going to get a great editorial. Rob covers the September issue of GQ, and if I was a tween Robsten 4 Eva fan, I would be so into this. The GQ editorial is, at turns, very high-fashion and then very lovely and Teen-Beat-esque. It’s great. As for the interview… Rob is also pretty underrated when it comes to long-form interviews. You can read the full piece here (it’s long, just FYI, and written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the same woman who did that infamous Tom Hiddleston cover story several months ago). Some highlights:

On iced coffee: He used to drink “a million” cups a day, but lately, since he turned 31, he finds that it’s making him crazy. “Yeah,” he says, “if I have a little bit too much, I’ll suddenly think the trapdoor in the bottom of my life is falling.” Plus, too much coffee is like truth serum for him, but he still loves coffee. So far he’s had maybe one and a half fingers of a regular-size cup. He puts his fist up to his heart. “I already feel like I had a speedball.”

How he decides to work with filmmakers: “When I find someone who I have an instinct about, who’s going to just push forward, I find it quite easy to completely give myself to that person. And I can commit so wholeheartedly because I think it’s so stressful being in a thing where you’re just constantly second-guessing everything all the time.”

Becoming a paparazzi target: “People were like, ‘It’s fine, who cares?’ ‘They’re just photos or whatever.’ They’ll say, ‘Just live your life.’ But that’s not life for me, if someone’s observing it.”

How he finally shook off the paps: “As soon as I saw a tail, I would just disappear again. It worked after a while. They’re just like, ‘Oh, the guy is just a hassle.’ There are ways to disappear, like, fairly easily. But you have to be living a quite strange life. It just involves effort, and most people can’t really be bothered to put the effort in.” He thinks Instagram has taken the heat off of him; it’s taken some of the fire out of the tabloids’ pursuit of movie stars. Now they chase the Insta-models and reality stars. Sometimes they chase one another. But he has no animosity for any of them, he says. “They’re just losers trying to do their jobs.”

He hates doing press: “It’s technically part of my job, but I’ve never been very good at it… I’ve never been that concerned if someone sees the movie.”

His beloved Waterworld: “We live in very sensitive times,” he says. One false move, he says, and it becomes the story of the movie, undoing a lot of good people’s hard work. I surmise, but he will not confirm, that he is referring to several bits in the movie that might go over some p.c. line that the Internet has drawn. I ask him to give me an example—one example—of a movie where this happened, where a single remark or bit of gossip derailed the whole thing. He looks at me searchingly, shaking his head. He doesn’t want to name anything because he assumes that will get him into trouble, too, sh-tting on someone else’s movie. But I sit quietly and wait. I can wait all day. Finally, he’s got one. “Like Waterworld, for instance.” I look up from my notebook and squint. The Kevin Costner movie? “It’s one of the greatest movies ever made,” he continues, “and everyone said it was bad. And for years everyone was like, ‘This is a terrible movie.’ And now people are watching it and the veil is being taken away.” I am momentarily speechless. Then I confirm whether he’s actually seen Waterworld. He has. Later, I will check to make sure there isn’t a Sidney Lumet movie that’s also called Waterworld. There isn’t. Already he regrets saying this, invoking his beloved Waterworld.

He wants to be misunderstood: “I want to be misunderstood. People are always changing, and the more you put something down in print, people form opinions and they’re constantly creating who they think you are. If you do something that contradicts that, or if you do something which goes out of that box, then you can look like a liar or something like that.”

[From GQ]

The whole article is sort of funny, but only because Taffy makes it funny – he keeps making weird suggestions about what they should do on their interview-date, and at the end of the day, they just sit in his favorite cafe, then they golf for a few minutes, then they eat hot dogs and he complains endlessly about the paparazzi. He’s actually gotten a lot better at withholding, and at one point, he does confess that he’d been in therapy and his therapist even said he was good at speaking without actually saying much of anything. He also refers to FKA Twigs as “Twigs,” as in, he calls her by her stage name. What else? He reads everything. He’s neurotic. He hates talking about himself. That’s about it.

Photos courtesy of Daniel Jackson for GQ.