The Guide #267: Robert Pattinson embraced his inner low life and became one of the best actors of his era

In this week’s newsletter: Sandra Hüller and Anne Hathaway might have been in more films this year – but Pattinson’s remarkable run confirms him as one of the best performers of his generation

For prolific actors, 2026 has been a banner year. The roles have kept piling up for a small cohort of stars, the roles have kept piling up, to the point where you wonder how they found the time to do vital things like sleep, shower or scarf down nuclear-fallout-covered chicken wings on YouTube interview shows.

Just look at Sandra Hüller, who by the time December ends will have racked up six projects in 2026, ranging from austere cold war road-trip movies to migraine-inducing Marvel blockbusters. Anne Hathaway, meanwhile, has since January appeared as – deep breath – a psychologically tormented fading pop star, a catatonic popular novelist, a suburbanite fending off hungry dinosaurs, an Ithacan queen fending off hungry suitors and reluctant fashion journo Andy in the belated Devil Wears Prada sequel. (Hathaway did also have time to go on the nuclear chicken wings show, but was unable to partake, due to being heavily pregnant.)

Robert Pattinson’s 2026 output looks almost leisurely compared to Hüller and Hathaway’s, though by normal standards the four films that he will have starred in by the end of year is an impressive haul. More impressive still is the quality of work, a remarkable run of roles that cements his status as one of the best performers of his era. And most certainly the best player of lowlifes: his 2026 has been a true rogues’ gallery, with every shade of scumbag accounted for.

This malcontent tendency is magnificently on display in Primetime, in UK and Irish cinemas now. Directed by Lance Oppenheim – film-maker wunderkind also behind the much-talked-about You Can See Everything – this clammy, queasy drama recalls the heyday (and ultimate demise) of To Catch a Predator, the US network reality show notorious for its stings on putative paedophiles. Pattinson plays the show’s preening host Chris Hansen, famous for his habit of sidling into the middle of an operation and casually confronting his target. Hansen’s slick, nightly news exterior disguises a grubby desire to bend the show’s ethics to breaking point, his motivations complicated by a trauma-inducing incident early in his career, and Pattinson does a great job at showing glimpses of the frayed, angry, fearful figure behind the squeaky-clean veneer. (Hansen, it should be noted, has declared the film “a completely made-up work of fiction” and “an insult to the thousands of men and women who work hard every day to protect children from predators”.)

Before Primetime came The Odyssey, and another oleaginous figure for Pattinson to ooze into. His alpha-suitor Antinous was, by design, a more two-dimensional character than Hansen; a crawling, craven antagonist primarily present for audiences to bristle at and Odysseus to dispatch with extreme prejudice. Still, Pattinson nails the assignment, with a performance that some critics saw as “stealing the show” – some achievement in a gargantuan three-hour epic featuring giants, men transforming into pigs and the like.

Compared to the lowlifes of Primetime and the Odyssey, Pattinson’s character in gleefully black comedy The Drama is positively well adjusted. Indeed, initially gentle art historian Charlie is the recipient of no little sympathy in the early stages of the movie, having been broadsided by a horrifying detail – which, six months after the film’s release, I’m still wary of revealing – from the past of his bride to be (played by Zendaya, another prolific 2026 star, and one who now shares three films with Pattinson). But as Charlie unravels, his cracked decision-making and general brittleness becomes deeply unlikeable. By the day of the wedding itself, you’re half-rooting him to fail miserably – a remarkable turnaround, and testament to Pattinson’s gift for unlikability.

There is of course one more performance to come this year and it’s a big onein Dune: Part Three. Pattinson plays Scytale, a shape-shifting manipulator set on usurping Timothée Chalamet’s space-messiah Paul Atreides. Another antagonist then – though Atreides’ slide into antihero-dom at the end of the previous Dune might complicate things. Still, with his dead eyes and general air of quiet menace in the film’s trailers, it’s hard to imagine Pattinson’s character will be handing out cupcakes and kittens.

But what is it that makes Pattinson so adept at playing sleazeballs? Certainly his playing against type, a former Twilight heart-throb gone to seed, seems effective. It helps too that he picks roles better than just about anyone, often working with auteurs who seem to understand his magnetic/repellent duality. It’s a shame that this sort of role tends to get sidelined for worthier, more outwardly heroic parts when it comes to awards season: no one seems to be including Pattinson in their Oscar best actor prognostications.

Perhaps that suits him fine – his choice of role hardly seems to be an impediment at the box office. The Odyssey is one of the highest-grossing films of the year, Dune: Part Three will probably join that bracket when it arrives in December, and both The Drama and Primetime have massively punched above their indie-film weight. And if you have had enough of him on the dark side, next year he reprises his role as the Dark Knight in the second of the latest Batman films. In the meantime, though, if you want a wrong’un played right, just call for R-Patz.