R-Pa ..., sorry, Pattinson, also says that his role as Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise has tainted people's perception of him.
"It is surprising the amount of people who think I'm going to be really dumb," he explains. "I think they think anyone who has done teen movies is just an idiot. I don't know, maybe I am.
"Some of the best actors, if you talk to them, they're not the smartest people in the world."
Pattinson stars in Cosmopolis as Wall Street billionaire Eric Packer who is chauffeured through Manhattan on his way to get a haircut.
Inbetween lengthy monologues, his journey is punctuated by sexual encounters, violent street protests and a back-of-the-limo prostate examination.
The film, based on the novel by Don DeLillo, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Pattinson admits he was anxious about the critical reaction to the movie.
"I don't really know how accepted I am," he says. "Nothing ever matters to me apart from the people with negative opinions. That's literally it. That always drives me on to the next thing. It's funny, you just focus on them and then the next movie. That's the only thing you're thinking about when it comes out.
"It's funny. It got such divisive reactions in Cannes," Pattinson, 26, says. "I was sitting in the car on the way back from the press conference, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing [the internet] on my phone.
"I've never really done anything where people have hated it, or really, really read into it. It's so different to other films, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to do it," he adds.
"But the first few reviews were pretty good, and I've never really felt like that with a movie. It's definitely the best-reviewed thing I've ever done. Most of the time, I don't read them, especially with the Twilight films, where people are overwhelmed by what their opinion of the cultural relevance of it is. But with this, I read a lot, and I was terrified."
Asked about taking on the role in the movie, the actor says: "It's like nothing I'd really done before, and I didn't really understand it.
"I kept asking David, 'What have you seen?' I just thought, 'Please don't let this be a financing thing.'"
He continues: "But you need to piggy back on other people's credibility, because people are so judgmental. Once you've made one impression, that's it. I planned for it to take ten years for that to dissipate, so to get into Cannes the year that [Twilight] is finishing was fairly ridiculous."
Pattinson also says that bagging the role in Cosmopolis gave him confidence to audition for other roles.
"I was always sh*t at auditions," he says. "Since Twilight, I've done two. One of them was for a job I'm doing now and it was really hard. Two really, really long auditions that everybody was going up for. I was so happy afterwards when I got it.
"And it was purely because of Cosmopolis that I was thinking, 'You can go and do this as an actor, rather than just as the guy from Twilight, because you've got some foreign value now.'"
Check out the Cosmopolis trailer below:
The movie hits New Zealand cinemas on November 1.
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