And I feel that an actor has the power to change, even if it’s just a little bit, the story of a character. Whether it’s by changing the voice, the attitude, the way you move, because you not only have to follow the instructions of a director. You have to put a lot of effort on your own. I think it would be so stressful for directors to have actors who ask them ‘What do you want me to do? ‘ I think it’s ridiculous, an actor shouldn’t act like a puppet, especially if he’s being paid so much to do his work.

I doubt that I can ever reach such level of tragedy in my career. I didn’t have any idea of who Dalí, Lorca and Buñuel were, until this film. And the more I found out about them, the more obsessed I became. Specially, with Dalí’s literary compositions. Many people don’t know this, but he was an incredible writer. I found that I had many things in common with him.

He [Dali] had a fanatical control over how he was perceived. But now it’s really out of control – out of your control. Your public image just seems to be in the hands of faceless strangers. You see these stories come up all the time and you’re like, ‘Jesus. How do you know…?’

Just hyper-consciousness and stuff… I guess I do relate to that quite a lot. What I really related to is this idea of ambition. Just being so concerned about being the best and being known for being someone important… he keeps continually forgetting that it doesn’t really mean anything at all. And I always found that idea interesting. But I think Dali has a lot of shame – and I don’t really have that!

I guess in a lot of ways, it’s the story about him putting a mask on. In the rest of his life, a lot of the time he forgets he’s wearing the mask. Or he’s aware he’s wearing the mask but he can’t get it off. I found that the most interesting part of him. Someone who’s wearing this mask, which is destroying everything in their life… they can’t get it off and they can’t remember how to get it off. They can’t remember who they were before. And if they go back to who they were before, it’ll probably destroy them too.

I thought I’d never get another acting job again. So I was like, ‘Yeah—why not try to do something weird?’ There’s all these gay sex scenes. And y’know, I haven’t even done a sex scene with a girl, in my whole career.

In a lot of ways, I was kind of crossing lines of what I thought I was comfortable doing. I had to do all this naked stuff.

I want to bring that intensity to every job, including Twilight. Even though it’s essentially a teen movie, I was determined not to make it too cheesy, as if I were only cashing a paycheck.

Actually, I did that movie [Little Ashes] before Twilight, and it was a defining moment for me. I’d been disinterested and thinking about giving up acting before that role came along, and I mainly took it because it seemed like an excuse to take a three-month vacation in Spain.

There was tons and tons of letters. There’s a book of letters between [Federico] Lorca and [Salvador] Dalí, where they make obvious references to their relationship, which is obviously more than just a friendship. Dalí says, like, ‘Lorca tried to have sex with me.’ It’s a very complicated script, and before anyone would see it, I recommend that you read a biography of Dalí. Otherwise, you wouldn’t get too much out of it.

It was the first job I had where I had an opportunity to really obsess over something, and I brought that mentality into ‘Twilight,’ doing that as well. I realized that if you fight enough to find what the story is, it will start to form how you want it to form. So many actors are so subservient to their directors, they forget they are human beings. A director can’t know everything.

Playing [Salvador] Dali has been a complete turning point for me. It’s the first part I’ve had that has required really serious thought. I became completely obsessed with Dali during the filming, and I read every biography I could get hold of.

I was rehearsing with the guy who was actually going to play [Federico] Lorca, who’s a Spanish guy who didn’t know how to speak English, and pretty much the entire cast and the entire crew were Spanish. I think we had one English person in it. And I can’t speak Spanish.

I was initially going to play [Federico] Lorca. And somehow… I don’t know what happened. They asked me to read for [Salvador] Dali, and that was about a year after. It took ages to get this film made. It was a really interesting script, and about a year after I was in mind for Lorca I read for Dali, and about a year after that they suddenly said, ‘Oh, we’ve got money, we’re doing it in Spain, and it starts in four days!’ So I came and I just thought it would be kind of fun. I mean, you know the stuff Dali makes, kind of crazy, and I thought it would be quite fun to do.

I couldn’t speak to anyone the whole time. And so I just sat over this [Salvador] Dali stuff. I just read and read and read, and it was one of the most satisfying jobs I’ve ever done because it was the one time that I really had zero distractions. It really changed my whole attitude toward acting. And it was a tiny, tiny, film, which I don’t think anyone will ever see it, probably! But it was very interesting. Especially since I don’t look anything like Dali. But at the end of the job, I kind of did look like him.

I guess that Edward [Cullen] is an iconic character too. But I just did the same thing, breakdown what you know about him. Also, there’s a ton of literature which he wrote and about him and then you just kind of build that back up again. Also, when I was playing him it was when he was very young, 18 to 26 and the story is about his descent or assent into this caricature of which everyone knows. He was this chronically shy kid when he was younger. So it’s really not playing [Salvador] Dali, per se, apart from towards the end of it and I’m still not really playing him. It’s more the mood of Dali I think.

There was so much about him [Salvador Dali] that I found fascinating. It’s depressing how he did it himself and yet everyone sees him as this mask. He wanted that, but it’s so funny how he was so much more than just this bizarre clown that he was at the end of his life who only cared about money. He was an incredibly complex person. I’m not saying that I am. I’m not at all.

Someone said to me the other day, ‘I had no idea it was about [Salvador] Dali until you had the mustache at the end.’ I was just like, ‘Oh, great.’ I think it’s a kind of homage to him, I guess, in that performance. I’ve never related to a character more than him, which is really weird because everyone thinks that he’s some nut job.

I just researched tons and tons of stuff because everyone spoke Spanish on the set and so I just read all day. It was the first time that I ever really got into characterization, trying to work on movements. There was a photo of him [Salvador Dali] pointing and I kept trying to figure out how he pointed for like three days. I’ve never done that for any job. I was doing tons of stuff on his walk and such.