Robert Pattinson says taking Valium helped him be 'spacey' and 'detached' at his 'Twilight' audition, 'which must have worked for the character'

• Robert Pattinson said he felt "so glorious" after taking Valium before his "Twilight" audition.
• Pattinson said that he went into the audition "spacey" and "detached."

Robert Pattinson said that taking Valium before his "Twilight" audition may have helped him land the role of Edward Cullen.

"I'd started to develop this absolute terror of auditions, which I'm sure a lot of actors have," Pattinson said while discussing his most iconic roles in a new video for GQ that coincided with his March 2022 cover story. "I could be so enthusiastic about something and then the day of the audition, my confidence would just entirely collapse. The same thing happened on the morning of the 'Twilight' audition."

Pattinson, who was living on his agent's couch at the time, recalled an email exchange between them in which he said that he was "freaking out" and thinking of backing out of the audition.

The actor said that in response, he was told to locate Valium — a prescription medicine used to treat a range of symptoms, including those caused by anxiety — in the bathroom.

"I had never taken a Valium before," he told GQ. "I just remember feeling so glorious in the back of the taxi with the window open and just being like, 'Wow, this is what I've been missing.' I think I had this quite spacey, detached kind of thing in the audition, which must have worked for the character."

Pattinson was 21 when he auditioned for the role of a vampire named Edward Cullen in Catherine Hardwicke's 2008 film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's fantasy novel of the same name.

He previously spoke about taking "a quarter of a Valium" in a cover story for GQ in 2009.

"I tried to do it for another audition, and it just completely backfired — I was passing out," he said.

Pattinson's oft-told audition story involved him meeting with Hardwicke at her home in Venice, California the following day for "Twilight," which was in the screen test stage.

The actors contending for the role of Edward auditioned with Kristen Stewart, who had already been cast as an ordinary teen named Bella Swan who falls in love with the vampire.

Hardwicke previously told Vulture that she had the actors work on three scenes with Stewart: the biology scene, the meadow scene, and the kissing scene. She told the publication that Pattinson and Stewart had "sexual chemistry."

"With Robert, it was abundantly apparent that they had sexual chemistry," the director told the publication. "It was like the first moment they met, you could just feel it."

For her part, Stewart told GQ in the aforementioned feature that Pattinson stood out because he took the role seriously and wasn't "doing something empty and shallow and thoughtless" like the others who had auditioned.

She was confident that he was the right actor for the role and Pattinson was cast after Hardwicke reviewed his audition tape.

Pattinson previously told Jennifer Lopez during an interview for Variety's Actors on Actors series that he thought "Twilight" would be a small, indie movie because of the involvement of Hardwicke, who directed "Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown," and Stewart, who starred in "Into the Wild."

Instead, the movie became a global phenomenon that's still referenced in pop culture more than a decade later.

Pattinson and Stewart went on to star in four more sequels released between 2009 and 2012, based on Meyer's novels: "New Moon," "Eclipse," "Breaking Dawn: Part 1," and "Breaking Dawn: Part 2."