Twilight studio executives found Robert Pattinson while looking through Harry Potter cast photos. The English actor began his film career in 2005 with a role in the fourth movie in the wizarding series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. At 18 years of age, Pattinson played the young wizard Cedric Diggory, the boy who competes for Hogwarts in the Triwizard Tournament alongside Harry and is murdered by Peter Pettigrew on Voldemort’s orders in Little Hangleton.
After playing the relatively minor Harry Potter character in limited screen time, Pattinson went on to gain further recognition for his portrayal of the brooding vampire Edward Cullen alongside Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan in the Twilight film saga from 2008 to 2012, a series that ended up grossing over $3.3 billion worldwide. Pattinson has since starred in a number of independent projects from auteur directors, from David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis to Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, before returning to the mainstream for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Matt Reeves’ The Batman. However, he has struggled to shed the personas of Cedric Diggory and certainly Edward Cullen.
