Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner: Two Different Career Paths...

No one in Hol­ly­wood is hot­ter right now than Twi­light actors Robert Pat­tin­son and Tay­lor Laut­ner. Pro­duc­ers are clam­or­ing to put them in movies, and the two actors — Pat­tin­son, 23 and Laut­ner, 18 — can pretty much make any kind of film they choose. So it’s inter­est­ing that their post-Twilight movie careers are shap­ing up to be so dras­ti­cally different.


Laut­ner, 18, has just signed on for an action thriller called Abduc­tion, about a man who dis­cov­ers his own baby pic­ture on a miss­ing per­sons web­site. Laut­ner will also be play­ing a super-powered secret agent fight­ing ter­ror­ists in the film Max Steel, a mar­tial arts fighter who has to save his kid­napped friends on vaca­tion in Can­cun, and the tit­u­lar body-stretching super­hero in Stretch Arm­strong. Notice a pat­tern here? Laut­ner is def­i­nitely gun­ning to be the next big action hero, fol­low­ing a path sim­i­lar to the one Will Smith took in the mid-90s.

Pat­tin­son, on the other hand, is steer­ing away from adrenaline-fueled hero roles and choos­ing small, intense char­ac­ter pieces. Next up is March’s Remem­ber Me, in which the 23-year-old actor plays a tor­tured col­lege stu­dent who finds romance after a fam­ily tragedy. Then, post-Eclipse, he’ll be mak­ing three period pieces: Bel Ami, about a lothario who sleeps his way to the top in 19th-century Paris (co-starring Uma Thur­man); Unbound Cap­tives, about a fron­tiers­man whose chil­dren are kid­napped (also star­ring Hugh Jack­man); and Cir­cus, about a Depression-era cir­cus (with Reese With­er­spoon as the love inter­est). These choices are rem­i­nis­cent of the films made by Johnny Depp ear­lier in his career.

So while Lautner’s new films will show off his abs, Pattinson’s movies will flex his act­ing mus­cles. Both are good strate­gies for stay­ing in the spot­light — and while Laut­ner may emerge the richer man, we see Oscar buzz in Pattinson’s future.

source via ToR