Robert Pattinson's Agent Was Surprised By His 'Obsessive' Interest in Playing Batman

Robert Pattinson says his latest role came as a surprise to his inner circle.

In a Monday interview with Total Film, the 35-year-old actor said that his interest in playing the titular superhero in The Batman came as a shock to his team.

After auditioning for the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Pattinson told the magazine, "I just kept obsessively checking up on it for the next year or so. Even my agents were like, 'Oh, interesting. I thought you only wanted to play total freaks?' And I was like, 'He is a freak!' "

Pattinson's last few film appearances have included roles in The Lighthouse alongside Willem Dafoe, Netflix's The Devil All the Time and the Safdie Brothers' Good Time. With The Batman, he's returning to the blockbuster territory that first made him famous back in 2008 with the Twilight films.

On the allure of the caped crusader, Pattinson told Total Film he's been a fan of Batman for ages, explaining, "Out of all the comic-book characters and that kind of movie, I've seen every single one of the [Batman] movies in the cinema, which I can't really say I've done for any other series."

He added, "I was always really looking forward to them coming out. There was the combination of just being so attracted to it, but also feeling like it'd had a lot of movies made about it, and none of them are bad movies.

"People kind of s--- on some of them, but they're not actually bad," Pattinson continued. "They all kind of completely achieve what they set out to achieve, and they're all really interesting, according to their time and place. I don't know. I just had a weird instinct about it. But I've always loved the character."

Pattinson teased his Batman character as someone who has "got this enormous trauma inside him, and he's built this intricate, psychological mechanism to handle it."

He joked, "It's like a really, really, really bad self-therapy, which has ended up with him being Batman at the end, as self-help."

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Along with Pattinson, the latest Batman film also stars Zoë Kravitz, Barry Keoghan, Peter Sarsgaard and Colin Farrell. Kravitz, 33, who plays Selina Kyle/Catwoman, praised Pattinson's turn as the superhero in an interview with Variety late last year.

The actress, who said she'd seen "a little" of The Batman ahead of its release, described Pattinson as "perfect" in the film.

"Rob is perfect for this role. He was incredible. His transformation was out of this world," she said.

"[Director] Matt Reeves has a lot of heart, and he cares so much for these characters. I'm just very excited for him to be able to go on vacation because he deserves it," Kravitz added. "I hope the fans love it because we put a lot of work into this."

The Batman premieres in theaters March 4.