Robert Pattinson’s Viral Moments, Ranked

Robert Pattinson is a man of many talents. He’s arguably the best actor working today, moving away from the world of blockbusters in favor of working with some of the world’s greatest directors including Claire Denis, Werner Herzog and David Cronenberg—before surprising everyone by taking on the Dark Knight himself. While Pattinson has reinvented himself as an arthouse thespian, his fans have designated him as their go-to meme. Taking advantage of his lack of a filter and idiosyncrasies, his past public experiences are being dug up for the Internet’s amusement, giving the actor an unintentional second life as a viral sensation—which he probably isn’t even aware of.

Compiling all of Pattinson’s best moments is close to impossible (he says a lot of weird things!), plus not all of them went viral, which meant omitting some of my favorite Rob moments. I apologize now to the Variety interview where he talks about mermaids’ “shockingly large” vaginas, and Josh Safdie’s story about Pattinson buying him a Japanese toilet. Robert Pattinson, please never change, and reader, please do not @ me.

13. Robert Pattinson Desperately Needs a New York City Hot Dog

A.K.A. Fear & Shame. Yes, this is our own video, but this story of one anxious man’s quest to curb his hunger was written by Pattinson himself. According to a Reddit AMA (more on that later), he developed this short film “about being crazy” in 15 minutes and shot it in an hour. It’s indicative of his filmmaking prowess and what a weirdo he is.

12. Robert Pattinson Does a Reddit AMA

Reddit is a terrifying place I know nothing about, so I can only imagine what it was like for Pattinson when he hosted an AMA to promote Good Time. Pattinson famously doesn’t use social media, but at least he knows that self-deprecation is the key to going viral. It’s worth reading the whole AMA, especially because I find it really validating as a no-caps tweeter that he types in all lowercase.

11. Robert Pattinson Forgets Who Emma Watson Is

Like his character Cedric Diggory, Robert Pattinson is handsome, inherently likable, and stayed on my bedroom wall for four years. In a behind-the-scenes video from the set of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pattinson appears as annoyingly aloof as everyone’s most beloved Hufflepuff by pretending to not know who Emma Watson is. An incontrovertible classic in R-Pattz lore.

10. Robert Pattinson Bites Tyra Banks’s Neck

A surreal piece of modern performance art: in an inexplicable British accent, Tyra Banks asks Pattinson to bite her on the neck. He complies, leaving a hickey as Banks lets out an ecstatic shriek. Taylor Lautner, momentarily forgotten, watches it all unfold flabbergasted. This is somehow real.

9. Robert Pattinson Hates Healthy Shakes

Paparazzi are bad, but sometimes they are good for catching an actor in the midst of tasting a nutritious, but disgusting, shake. A relatable king!

8. Robert Pattinson Sleeps

Having the freedom to do whatever he wants has given Pattinson the chance to build quite the resume post-Twilight. His talent and versatility hasn’t gone unrecognized, as he was honored by the Karlovy Vary Film Festival last year. Unfortunately, Pattinson would not witness this monumental celebration of his career because he fell asleep at his own tribute. I feel you, Rob, film festivals are tiring.

7. Robert Pattinson Likes Chick(en) Flicks

An unabashed cinephile, Pattinson’s favorite films include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Exorcist and French New Wave classic Pierrot le Fou. When asked what his favorite chick flick was, he replied, “Chicken Run is the only thing coming into my head.” The only correct answer.

6. Robert Pattinson Has a Lot of Headlines Written About Him

If you watch Robert Pattinson’s talk show interviews as much as I do, you’ll notice that he frequently punctuates his sentences with, “Why did I just say that?” You see, Pattinson clearly has a two-fold problem: 1) He doesn’t know when to stop talking, and 2) Everything he says becomes a story. Such a conundrum has produced an eclectic bunch of articles over the years—to include them all would make this list egregiously long, but the following headlines are just a taste of Pattinson’s gift of the gab:

• Robert Pattinson’s advice to young stars: ‘Get therapy, become a serial killer or kill yourself’

• R-Pattz wants to ‘strangle’ whoever nicknamed him R-Pattz

• Robert Pattinson: I Dream of ‘Beating the S**t Out of Paparazzi

• Robert Pattinson stole and sold porno mags as a kid

• Robert Pattinson Wanted to Put Walruses in Breaking Dawn Sex Scene

• Robert Pattinson Planning a Sexy Alternate Career as a Male Stripper Who Raps While Getting Naked. Basically.

• Send boring people to prison, says Robert Pattinson

• Robert Pattinson Praised by PETA After Refusing to Perform Sex Act on a Dog in Good Time

5. Robert Pattinson Bores His Own Stalker

I don’t know how anyone could find Robert Pattinson boring, but apparently his stalker did. “I had a stalker while filming a movie in Spain,” he said. “She stood outside of my apartment every day for weeks – all day every day. I was so bored and lonely that I went out and had dinner with her. I just complained about everything in my life and she never came back.”

4. Robert Pattinson Thinks Being Spit on Is Pretty Great

Striking up some friendly conversation, Pattinson asks Jimmy Kimmel: “Have you ever had someone spit on you, like, in a kind of erotic way?” Appalled, Kimmel ponders the question for a second before answering with a resounding no. “It’s pretty great,” Pattinson adds. I don’t need to explain why this went viral.

3. Robert Pattinson Hates Twilight (But Not Anymore)

In what might’ve been his first viral video, Pattinson expresses his apparent disdain for the five-film franchise he’s supposed to be promoting. “When I read [Twilight], it was like a book that wasn’t supposed to be published,” he says in one clip. “[Edward] is one of those guys who would be an axe-murderer,” he says in another. But in a true redemption arc, Pattinson has changed his ways, calling the soundtracks “ahead of their time.” He’s right and he should say it! The baseball scene set to Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole did, in fact, invent cinema.

2. Robert Pattinson Preeminently Takes Down Matt Lauer

We probably should stop writing articles on everything Robert Pattinson says, because he notoriously invents stories for talk shows, and admitted as such to Jimmy Kimmel, who still asks him for fun stories anyway. The most baffling of them all happened while he was promoting Water for Elephants on the Today show: Matt Lauer asks if he ever dreamed of running away to join the circus. “The first time I went to see the circus, somebody died,” Pattinson replies. “One of the clowns died.” Compulsive liar Robert Pattinson doubles down on his imaginary morbid tale of clown death, adding that the clown died when his clown car exploded. A week later, he admitted that he made the story up, consequently exposing the futility of the anecdotal talk show format and owning Matt Lauer before the rest of the world would catch up.

1. Robert Pattinson Has Been Memed

Taking the top spot is a video that is not funny at all, but has sent the Internet into a whirlwind. In a 2014 commercial for Dior (which currently has 9.5 million views on Twitter), Pattinson and Camille Rowe stare at each other and imagine making out in an elevator. The connection to Dior fragrances is, let’s say, tenuous, but in 2019, it’s great advertising. I will admit, I’ve watched it a dozen times, and I would buy Dior perfume if I could afford it. The commercial has since become Twitter’s hottest new meme, which is both an honor and a curse—arguably a greater honor than the film festival tribute he slept at. Thank you Robert Pattinson for making everyone horny on main.

An interview with the actor, and the directors who've cast him.

Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe make the year’s best odd-couple in Robert Eggers’s brilliant new movie.

Originally Appeared on GQ