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Robert Pattinson’s 15 Favorite Movies Are Exactly as Strange as You’d Expect

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - August 27th 2026, 23:55 GMT+2

Robert pattinson the odyssey — About This Gallery:

For this list, we combed through the many interviews Robert Pattinson has given over the years, gathering the movies he has mentioned most often and personally named among his favorites. And, as you might expect, they’re a little... strange. | © Universal Pictures

Cropped one flew over the cuckoos nest 1975 — 1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Jack Nicholson’s Randle P. McMurphy did more than entertain a teenage Robert Pattinson; he became a personality Pattinson could temporarily borrow. The actor has said McMurphy’s middle-finger-to-the-world attitude helped him push against his own timidity at 15 or 16, even if he quickly clarified that he had never lived in a psychiatric hospital. That makes *One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest* the clearest origin point for Pattinson’s fascination with charming, self-destructive outsiders. Sweeping the five major Oscars was apparently only its second-greatest accomplishment. | © Fantasy Films

The Exorcist 1973 — 2. The Exorcist (1973)

Robert Pattinson does not merely like *The Exorcist*; he has called it flawless, endlessly rewatchable and proof that CGI should never have been invented. His first explanation was considerably less academic: he loved Linda Blair and jokingly described her as his ideal woman. William Friedkin’s horror landmark still earns that devotion, grounding demonic possession in such grim domestic realism that every obscenity and bodily contortion feels indecently close. For Pattinson, it functions as a technical manifesto, a comfort watch and possibly the strangest celebrity-crush confession ever recorded. | © Warner Bros.

3. Breathless (1960)

*Breathless* introduced Pattinson to Jean-Luc Godard and gave him a problem familiar to generations of young men: Jean-Paul Belmondo looked impossibly cool doing almost nothing. Pattinson loved the film’s final exchange and its sour little summary of relationships, but admitted that copying Belmondo’s clothes would only make him look ridiculous. Godard’s jump cuts, street photography and casual rule-breaking turned a modest crime story into the birth certificate of the French New Wave. Pattinson imitated plenty of his cinematic heroes; here, even he knew surrender was the dignified option. | © Les Films Impéria

Headhunters 2011 1 — 4. Headhunters (2011)

Corporate recruiter Roger Brown funds his luxurious life by stealing art, which already sounds like enough plot for a sensible thriller. *Headhunters* then adds a former mercenary, a spectacularly failed robbery and one of cinema’s filthiest hiding places. Pattinson called it an “insane chase movie” that becomes extremely dark, but what delighted him most was Roger’s crippling belief that he is too short for his glamorous wife. A ridiculous insecurity becomes the engine of an increasingly vicious nightmare. The chase is thrilling; the wounded vanity is what makes it personal. | © Yellow Bird

Pierrot le Fou 1965 — 5. Pierrot le Fou (1965)

*Pierrot le Fou* follows a bored husband who leaves his respectable life and races toward disaster with Anna Karina’s mysterious Marianne, while Godard interrupts the getaway with politics, poetry, pop art and whatever else wandered into his head that morning. Pattinson absorbed its cool so enthusiastically that he began repeating one of Belmondo’s drink orders in real life: two beers, one waiting for when the first was finished. It is not conventional role preparation, but it does explain his lasting affection for beautiful men making catastrophically impulsive decisions. | © Films Georges de Beauregard

Arizona Dream 1993 — 6. Arizona Dream (1993)

*Arizona Dream* contains a flying fish, Johnny Depp counting fish in New York, Faye Dunaway dreaming of flight and Vincent Gallo performing *North by Northwest* with more commitment than most people bring to their jobs. Pattinson particularly remembered Gallo ordering “two shots, two beers,” a line he cheerfully adopted for his own trips to the bar. Emir Kusturica’s English-language oddity treats America like a half-remembered carnival, where every character is funny until the sadness catches up. No wonder it lodged inside an actor who later built a career from elegant confusion. | © UGC

Corky Romano 2001 — 7. Corky Romano (2001)

Yes, Robert Pattinson sincerely loves *Corky Romano*. He has described Chris Kattan’s critically mauled gangster comedy as one of the very few movies that made him laugh hard enough to wet himself, and he was still rewatching it almost a decade later. The cocaine-fueled FBI presentation receives most of the attention, but Pattinson also treasured DVD footage in which a visibly desperate production struggled to generate laughs from the crew. This is not ironic appreciation polished for an interview; he relates to Kattan’s bulging forehead vein. Cinema contains multitudes, apparently. | © Touchstone Pictures

The Devils 1971 — 8. The Devils (1971)

Ken Russell’s *The Devils* transforms a case of alleged demonic possession in 17th-century France into an assault on religious hysteria, political opportunism and institutional power. Warner Bros. cut it, censors banned it and decades of restricted availability only strengthened its reputation as forbidden cinema. Pattinson singled out Oliver Reed’s swaggering, doomed performance as Urbain Grandier, arguing that the film could play now and remain subversive. That is high praise from an actor drawn to provocation, although Vanessa Redgrave’s sexually tormented Sister Jeanne hardly needed Batman’s endorsement to remain unforgettable. | © Warner Bros.

The Lovers on the Bridge 1991 — 9. The Lovers on the Bridge (1991)

Paris’s oldest bridge becomes a stage for fireworks, addiction and ferocious romance in *The Lovers on the Bridge*. Denis Lavant plays a homeless street performer who falls for Juliette Binoche’s painter as her eyesight deteriorates, and Leos Carax shoots their desperation with the scale of an apocalypse. The production famously spiraled through injuries, delays and a life-size recreation of the Pont-Neuf that helped turn a modest idea into an enormously expensive ordeal. Pattinson named it his favorite Carax film; moderation was never going to win that contest. | © Gaumont

The Beat That My Heart Skipped 2005 — 10. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Violence and piano practice occupy the same pair of hands in *The Beat That My Heart Skipped*, Jacques Audiard’s remake of *Fingers*. Romain Duris plays a thuggish property enforcer who attempts to reclaim his abandoned dream of becoming a concert pianist, only to discover that artistic discipline cannot politely wait outside while his criminal life finishes exploding. Pattinson called it the best modern movie he had seen in a long time and singled out Duris’s grief after finding his father as one of the finest performances he knew. That admiration feels visible throughout Pattinson’s later work. | © Why Not Productions

White Material 2009 — 11. White Material (2009)

Maria Vial hears that civil war is closing around her African coffee plantation and reacts with the confidence of someone certain catastrophe will respect her property rights. It does not. Claire Denis’s *White Material* turns Isabelle Huppert’s refusal to leave into a frightening study of colonial entitlement, denial and survival, refusing to flatter its heroine simply because she is determined. Pattinson called it one of the films that mattered enormously to him, then spent years pursuing Denis until they made *High Life* together. Sometimes a favorite movie becomes a career plan. | © Why Not Productions

First Name Carmen 1983 — 12. First Name: Carmen (1983)

A bank robbery collides with doomed romance and rehearsals of Beethoven’s late string quartets in *First Name: Carmen*, because Jean-Luc Godard had abandoned the obligation to make only one movie at a time. Pattinson considers it Godard’s best, admiring how its deliberately silly farce mutates into a painful story of unrequited love without requesting permission from the audience. The parallel musicians may appear unrelated, yet their stops, arguments and repeated passages become the film’s emotional rhythm. Pretentious on paper, thrilling in motion—and Pattinson knows exactly how that sounds. | © Sara Films

Julia 2008 — 13. Julia (2008)

Tilda Swinton spends nearly two and a half hours making terrible decisions in *Julia*, beginning as an alcoholic disaster and graduating to the poorly conceived kidnapping of a child. Erick Zonca borrows the rough outline of John Cassavetes’s *Gloria*, then strips away the competence and maternal reassurance until only panic remains. Pattinson called Swinton’s work one of the great screen performances and complained that the movie was criminally underseen. He was right on both counts: *Julia* is abrasive, exhausting and impossible to stop watching once her latest plan begins disintegrating. | © Le Bureau

Ivans xtc 2000 — 14. ivans xtc. (2000)

If repeat viewings determine a favorite, *ivans xtc.* may secretly outrank everything here. Pattinson said he watched Bernard Rose’s digital-video adaptation of Tolstoy around 50 times in a single year, mesmerized by Danny Huston as a powerful Hollywood agent responding to a cancer diagnosis with drugs, parties and increasingly hollow dealmaking. The production was largely improvised and visually abrasive, turning the entertainment industry into a fluorescent waiting room for death. Pattinson believed Huston deserved an Oscar; the movie barely received a proper American release. That imbalance probably made him love it more. | © Enos/Rose Productions

Deep Breath 2001 — 15. Deep Breath (2001)

A sweltering afternoon on a rural French farm supplies all the plot *Deep Breath* needs. Fifteen-year-old David joins his uncles and their friends for a drunken feast, then stumbles through humiliation, masculine posturing and violence as the black-and-white imagery grows increasingly feverish. Pattinson called Damien Odoul’s feature “f—ing amazing,” drawn to a coming-of-age story that treats adulthood less like graduation and more like contamination. The film won two prizes at Venice but remained genuinely obscure, making it a suitably difficult final stop on Robert Pattinson’s aggressively unhelpful movie night. | © Morgane Production

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Robert Pattinson’s favorite movies are every bit as unpredictable as the career that took him from Twilight to The Lighthouse and Batman. His personal canon jumps from punishing arthouse dramas and French New Wave landmarks to The Exorcist and, somehow, Corky Romano. Collected from interviews across the years, these 15 picks reveal a genuine movie obsessive with no interest in performing respectable taste for the cameras. Apparently, wearing the Batsuit does not disqualify a man from sincerely loving Chris Kattan.

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Robert Pattinson’s favorite movies are every bit as unpredictable as the career that took him from Twilight to The Lighthouse and Batman. His personal canon jumps from punishing arthouse dramas and French New Wave landmarks to The Exorcist and, somehow, Corky Romano. Collected from interviews across the years, these 15 picks reveal a genuine movie obsessive with no interest in performing respectable taste for the cameras. Apparently, wearing the Batsuit does not disqualify a man from sincerely loving Chris Kattan.