IN David Cronenberg's philosophical new film, "Cosmopolis," Robert Pattinson plays a young, emotionless, obscenely rich financial visionary who rides around New York in a limousine as he slowly becomes unraveled.

For the "Twilight" star, who became one of Hollywood's highest earning actors and biggest heart-throbs, his new role may be the greatest test yet of whether he can carry over his young vampire romance fans to the R-rated indie film.

Robert Pattinson was nearing the end of shooting the last "Twilight" film, concluding a chapter of his life that had picked him out of near obscurity and was preparing to spit him out ... where exactly? "Twilight" had made him extravagantly famous, but his next steps were entirely uncertain.

"Out of the blue," he said, came the script for "Cosmopolis" from David Cronenberg, the revered Canadian director of psychological thrillers ("Videodrome," "Eastern Promises") that often pursue the spirit through the body. Pattinson, having never met or spoken to Cronenberg, did a little research: He looked him up on Rotten Tomatoes "and it was like 98 percent approval," he says.

"It was like: OK, that's my next job," Pattinson said.

He now has the unenviable task of releasing his most ambitious movie, his most adult role, into a media storm that instinct would suggest should be run from like a pack of werewolves. Promoting "Cosmopolis" put Pattinson in front of cameras and microphones for the first time since his "Twilight" co-star and girlfriend Kristen Stewart publicly apologized in July for having a tryst with director Rupert Sanders.

Asked how he was coping, the British actor said at a press event for the movie: "There is this whole thing about wanting to know more and more about celebrities. But really, all that everyone wants to do, is they want them to be celebrities again. However ridiculous that is to say, no one really wants to know."

And in giggly television interviews with "The Daily Show" and "Good Morning America" last month, Pattinson repeatedly dodged the topic that made world headlines and shocked millions of "Twilight" fans.

"I've never been interested in trying to sell my personal life and that's really the only reason people bring it up. The reason you go on to TV is to promote movies. That's the only way to do it," he told "Good Morning America."

The awkward circumstance, he said, is "dissociated" from the film, and he's thus far declined to use the attention to make any kind of public response to the scandal. Rather, he's sought to deflect it to "Cosmopolis," a film that, in an earlier interview before it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, he said "changed the way I see myself."

Refreshingly humble

If Pattinson is understandably guarded about his private life, he's refreshingly openhearted and humble about his anxieties as a young actor. At 26, Pattinson may be one of the most famous faces on the planet, but he's still getting his bearings as an actor - a profession, he says, he never pined for, fell into by chance and has always found uncomfortable.

His unlikely trajectory began with "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "Little Ashes," in which he played Salvador Dali.

"Then I got 'Twilight' and it suddenly became a massively different world to navigate," Pattinson said in a recent interview in New York. "Most people who get their big hit have figured out what their skills are, and I hadn't, really."

"Cosmopolis" is a radically different kind of film that would surely confuse not only the hordes of diehard "Twilight" fans who lined up to see it at its premier on August 17, but art house moviegoers, too. Pattinson himself has watched it four times to try to get his head around it.

The first movie adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel, "Cosmopolis" is about a sleek financier, Eric Parker (Pattinson), slowly making his way in the airless sanctuary of his white stretch limo across a traffic-jammed Manhattan with the simple goal of a haircut. But the journey, which includes visits with his new wife (Sarah Gadon), a prostitute (Juliette Binoche) and Occupy-like protesters (Mathieu Amalric), is a kind of willful unraveling for Parker, who dispassionately watches his fortune slide away on a bad bet on the Chinese yuan.

"He's an egomaniac who wants to see some kind of spirituality in his egomania," said Pattinson. "It's kind of like how actors feel about themselves."

Pattinson is in every scene of the film, which relies on his callow, hyper-literate performance to carry the movie through its limited setting and DeLillo's heightened dialogue - much of which Cronenberg transcribed verbatim from the novel. Though some reviews have found the film static and impenetrable (perhaps intended responses), most critics have praised Pattinson's performance, with many citing it as proof that the heartthrob can indeed act.

The stylized language and atypical nature of the film made it a risky and intimidating choice for Pattinson.

"I couldn't hear the voice of the character at all. There was nothing," he said. "It was scary to say yes to something which you didn't know what it was. I knew it was interesting, I knew there was something special but I had no idea how to do it or what I could add to it. But when you start saying no to Cronenberg because you don't think it's good enough, it's a stupid decision to make."

'Twilight' celebrity a burden

It's clear that his "Twilight"-fueled celebrity weighs heavily on Pattinson, who says he knows people watch his films "through a cultural context."

"Every film I did, thinking about it now, no matter what the character is, is just what you were at that time and how you interpret it," Pattinson said in an interview.

"I think every one of the 'Twilight' movies is kind of different. It's not the same character in every one. But obviously, like, once your life suddenly changes - in a lot of ways my life got a lot smaller - after I got famous. And so all the characters, every movie I did, has got bits and pieces of that."

Pattinson hopes "Twilight" fans will crossover to see "Cosmopolis," which was made on a small US$18 million budget.

"I don't think people realize that the 'Twilight' audience is actually older. There are not very many who are even under 18," he said. "Hopefully, they will be the ones who like it."

Early reviews have been mixed, with The Hollywood Reporter saying the film was "lacking a palpable subversive pulse" and "will initially attract some Robert Pattinson fans but will be met with audience indifference."

The story, including scenes of anarchic protests against capitalism, has drawn some easy parallels with the 2008 financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street protests.

But Cronenberg said he decided to adapt DeLillo's 2003 novel more due to the "resonance of the dialogue and the wit and the humor."

"Rob, he's popular," said Cronenberg with deadpan understatement.

"I couldn't have cast Rob without 'Twilight' just as I couldn't have cast Viggo (Mortensen) without 'Lord of the Rings'," says the director whose previous three films - "A History of Violence," "Eastern Promises," "A Dangerous Method" - starred Mortensen. "The fact that somebody who has clout is willing to do a movie that's difficult is a gift to a director because you're not only getting the right guy as an actor, but you're getting financing interest and you get to make the movie. This is not an easy movie to get made."

Pattinson seems energized by the freedom of choice in front of him following the final "Twilight" installment, which will be released in November. He's lined up parts in gritty films far from blockbuster size: "Mission: Black List," a military thriller, and "The Rover" by Australian director David Michod ("Animal Kingdom"), a role he said he fought for more than any before.

Embarking on "Cosmopolis" appears to have been a process of letting go for Pattinson - of self-awareness, of worry, of fear. Asked if he now feels certain he's an actor, he quickly replies, "No."

"As soon as you start existing in a certain world, you feel like you have a tremendous amount of baggage all the time," he said. "You get stuck in this rut where you want people to think you're something else, but you're too scared to do what that is to actually be the other person.

"Then you get a gift like this movie where it's way easier than I thought it was," he said. "You just do it. It doesn't really matter if you fail."