Robert Pattinson has opened up about his breakthrough performance as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, noting the surprising point of reference he used for the role.
Pattinson portrayed Diggory back in 2005 for the fourth film in the Harry Potter franchise when he was just 19 years old. Admittedly, no one would go out of their way to dub Pattinson’s portrayal as transformative, but the actor was charismatic enough to invoke enough interest that, almost 20 years later, he’s become one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
In the grand scheme of things, Diggory is a minor character in the Wizarding World, but that didn’t stop Pattinson from imbuing a few quirks of his own into the role. In an extensive profile on GQ, Pattinson explained why he held the wand different from other actors, channeling the action classic Die Hard, claiming it helped him feel less “dorky”.
“I remember holding a wand and thinking that it felt so dorky to hold it like a magic wand,” he said.
“So I’m holding it like a gun with two hands, thinking I’m in, like, a Die Hard movie. I think I even have one eye closed when I’m looking down like it’s got a viewfinder.”
Of course, post Harry Potter, he was cast as the lead in arguably the franchise’s biggest rival at the time, Twilight. From there, he earned an impressive number of critical hits and he might reach more audiences than ever when his portrayal of the Caped Crusader himself in The Batman hits theaters on March 4.
