Small roles in Vanity Fair and European epic The Sword of Xanten will have offered some preparation for 19-year-old Robert Pattinson for the challenges posed by playing a key role in the latest Harry Potter adventure. But he admits that he was not a massive fan of the series going into the film.
"I'd never read any of the books," he shrugs, "or saw any of the movies before I started. I knew of them, it's impossible not to, but when I heard I had the audition I read Gobet of Fire in a day and knew straight away that I'd like to do it."
Once familiarized with JK Rowling's world Pattinson faced the more daunting challenge of getting himself into shape for challenges that lay ahead. " I was pretty sporty in school," he explains, almost apologetically, "but I'd been doing movies for six months and in that time hadn't done much exercise. I had'nt even run for a bus for about six months before I started doing Harry Potter. So I went into a little unfit. The costume designer said something, when I was trying on the swimming trunks at the beginning, and she said 'aren't you supposed to be fit?".
"Then I got a call the next day from the assistant director saying that they were putting me on a personal training programme. I thought that would be pretty cool, because it would make me take it seriously. It was run by one of the stunt team, who are the most absurdly fit guys inthe world. I can't even do 10 press ups. I did about three weeks of that, and in the end I think he got so bored of trying to force me to do it that he wrote it all down so that I could do it at home."
