Robert Pattinson has apparently reached the age where watching a horror movie can turn into a full-scale home-invasion drill.
The actor recently recalled an especially bizarre night during a conversation with Mickey 17 director Bong Joon Ho for GQ. Pattinson said he had to watch a horror movie before meeting its director, and the experience left him so rattled that he became convinced someone was breaking into his house.
So he did what any completely rational person would do after watching a scary movie: he grabbed two kitchen knives and waited for the intruder.
“I was sitting on my sofa with two kitchen knives, waiting for the person to come in,” Pattinson recalled.
There was just one problem with his security strategy: Pattinson eventually fell asleep.
And he apparently didn’t put the knives down first.
“I fell asleep with them basically, like, in my neck on the couch,” he said.
His girlfriend, Suki Waterhouse, subsequently walked in and found him asleep on the couch with two knives positioned near his neck.
Naturally, she had questions.
“What is happening? Why do you have two knives in your face and you’re sleeping?” Pattinson recalled her asking.
The funniest part may be that Pattinson himself eventually came to the conclusion that there probably wasn’t an intruder at all.
“I was probably a squirrel,” he joked, referring to whatever noise had convinced him someone was breaking into his home.
Pattinson said the experience was evidence of how much his relationship with horror movies has changed as he’s gotten older. He told Bong that he used to watch “dark stuff” when he was younger and enjoy it, but now he’s “too sensitive” to horror.
“You’d think it would go the other way round,” he said, noting that you’d expect to become less frightened as you get older. Instead, Pattinson said, “I can’t watch horror movies anymore.”
Unfortunately for Pattinson, being an actor means he sometimes has to watch movies he otherwise wouldn’t choose to see. In this case, the horror screening was part of preparing for a meeting with its director—not a voluntary attempt to scare himself.
And apparently it worked a little too well.
The actor’s story came up while he was speaking with Bong during the promotion of Mickey 17, the director’s 2025 sci-fi film starring Pattinson as Mickey Barnes, a man whose job involves repeatedly dying and being reprinted.
So perhaps the lesson here is simple: if Robert Pattinson ever invites you over to watch a horror movie, check the kitchen first.
