'I just don’t know about fame. I have never figured it out'

Robert Pattinson: 'I just don’t know about fame. I have never figured it out' Photo: Richard Mowe

Looking completely unlike the dishevelled and bearded character he plays in the Safdie Brothers’ nocturnal odyssey Good Time Robert Pattinson turned up for special career tribute and screening at the Deauville Festival of American Cinema tonight sporting an uncharacteristic buzz cut.

Robert Pattinson: 'I was always quite happy being left on my own when I was a kid and that has ended up being a benefit in the end' Photo: Richard Mowe

He offered no explanations but appeared distinctly exposed alongside the much more hirsute brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, the guerrilla film-makers who made it in to the Cannes Competition earlier in the year.

Pattinson, 31, posed obligingly in front of his named beach front locker on the Deauville sea front - a tradition of the Festival for its star guests with names from Harrison Ford to Lauren Bacall.

Never the most forthcoming of interviewees the Twilight star let the brothers do most of the talking but he did expound on the mystery of popularity.

“I just don’t know about fame. I have never figured it out,” said Pattinson, looking perplexed. “It has always seemed like an accident or a side dish to the main course. I do not understand how I have ended up with this life. I have always really got on with the job which I enjoy more and more every year.

“As someone who has always liked solitude that helps a lot in a life where you are alone much of the time. I was always quite happy being left on my own when I was a kid and that has ended up being a benefit in the end.”

Dishevelled and bearded: Robert Pattinson in Good Time

In Good Time, Pattinson’s character Connie breaks his brother Nick (played by Benny Safdie) out of a psychiatric treatment centre and immediately puts a protective cloak around him before the action spirals out of control with a bank robbery and a night of escalating chaos.

Josh Safdie revealed that the sibling bond worked in the film’s favour. “How we work together and the nature of being brothers and having a chaotic upbringing and having a constant between each other has allowed us to fight and to fight and then make up.

“There is an unbreakable bond there, but we are always keen to get to the ideas of the situation. When we work together there is this kind of black hole - in a good way - in to which everything collapses as one voice, hopefully.

“Our father said to us when were kids that you only have each other and you are partners in crime. He said that explicitly. He gave an almost fatalistic outlook on the world and basically said it is you two versus the world. He made that clear to us when were very young.”

Robert Pattinson: 'I have always really got on with the job which I enjoy more and more every year' Photo: Richard Mowe

Benny concurred, adding: “There is a beauty to know in fraternal relationships that no matter what your differences are you can see your brother and sister as an extension of yourself in some regard. I think Rob’s character Conny in the movie shields his brother and feels offended that society wants to outcast him because he is disabled. There is an inner music to the soul of everyone and Conny sees that there is the same kind of sound in both of them.”

Pattinson who does not have brothers but has two sisters Victoria and Lizzy thought his sibling relationships were “just fine” - and Victoria standing discreetly to one side could only agree.

Good Time is released in the UK on November 3 and is now on release in France and the US.