Blog Challenge Day 23: My celebrity crush

Do I have a celebrity crush? Yes, I do. Though, it’s not, as some of you may think, Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys. Not anymore at least. For years, I thought he was the cutest thing to have ever graced this planet. Looks wise, of course. Whether he’s actually cute in person, I wouldn’t even dare to guess. A little over a year ago, though, I read this book called Twilight and watched the accompanying movie. To say I instantly fell for ‘Edward’, would be totally misinterpreting what actually happened. But what did happen was: Nick Carter was out, and Rob Pattinson stepped on the scene.

Rob Pattinson as Edward in The Twilight Saga: New Moon

I only read Twilight in the first place, because a friend of mine had been nagging at me to read it for months on end. I eventually caved, loved the book and watched the movie. My friend was going to great lengths trying to convince me of all things Twilight: sending me behind the scenes pictures of movie sets and giving me information about the actors. I couldn’t be any less interested in it. However, eventually I caved and went through the process of reading the book and watching the movie. After watching the movie, the only thing I could think was: but wait a minute, wasn’t that guy British?

See, Rob assumes an American accent for his role as Edward, but he grew up in South West London. I, of course, did not know this at the time. Yet, he sparked my interest, not because of his stunning good looks (though, I have to admit, it helps), but because of his accent. There is a line, literally one line, in Twilight that had me go: huh?! That doesn’t sound right. For most of the movie, Rob’s American accent is pretty much spot on (gave or take the occasional glitch in intonation), but there is one line where he just sounds like a Brit doing and American accent. It is this one line, which made me google him. What line? This line:

Listen carefully to how he says: “So you’re worried, not to be in a house full of vampires, but because you think they won’t approve of you”. Especially the ‘worried’, sounds, well, odd, to say the least. And it’s a ‘thing’ that he can’t seem to get right. He makes the same mistakes with similar vowel + ‘r’ combinations. For instance, he has the hardest time saying ‘birthday’ in New Moon. However, most of his mistakes have to do with his intonation. He’s often way too sing-songy for an American accent. Plus there’s some nasalisation and other vowel quality things he gets wrong. On the brightside: what mistakes he makes are few and he’s improving.

To me, it is not so much annoying as it is endearing. He’s my private, little linguistic experiment and I can’t wait for a new movie just so I can dissect it and hit rewind and play continuously, to hear whether he gets it right. Of course, only someone with my type of linguistic background would even know about these things, let alone notice them. Most girls run after him, screaming ‘Edward’ while they are trying to tackle him. The poor soul.

My celebrity crush on Rob Pattinson made me realize another thing. I’m getting old. No really. After watching my first Rob Pattinson interview (which made me realize he speaks with a neat Standard British accent in real life), I googled him some more and went to look for a good fansite. I once again encountered forums where drama was part of every day goings on or where horny housewives would post what it was they would do to him if he’d show up on their doorsteps. Pretty much like all those BSB sites I used to visit back in the day. I decided that wasn’t for me, found one website, Robsessed, and that’s what I check regularly. Other than that one website, I could care less about the Twilight or Rob Pattinson fandom. Been there, done that, yada yada.

On that note, I would like to close off this post with a little pic spam to show you the many faces that is/ can be Rob Pattinson (cuz there is more to him than Edward!). Enjoy!

From delectable in plaid

To a nice cleaned up look for formal events

To cropped hair & mustard colored shirts

To period looks for his movies

To dreamy-eyed in photoshoots

To the first picture I saw when I googled him

To scrumptious looking for the paparazzi

And of course don’t forget that entertaining accent!

Image source: I got these pictures from all over the place, but can’t remember where. I think they’re all from Robsessed. If not, I’m sorry but I didn’t intend to infringe any copyrights.

Who is your celebrity crush?