Twilight: How Old Is Robert Pattinson's Edward Cullen & Why Is It Creepy?
How old is Edward Cullen in the "Twilight" movies? Way too old to be dating a high-schooler.
The sparkly vampire, played by Robert Pattinson, first meets Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) after she moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father and the two end up at the same high school. To say they fall in love at first sight, though, isn't exactly accurate — when Bella walks into biology class, Edward ever-so-subtly claps his hand to his face as if she's just been sprayed by a skunk. Later on, Bella learns a few key things about Edward — namely, that he's a vampire and her blood smells especially delectable to him.
As for his age, Edward Cullen — born Edward Anthony Mason — entered the world as a human on June 20, 1901 in Chicago and was turned into a vampire at 17 years old in 1918. The events of "Twilight" take place in 2005, meaning that when Edward meets a teenage Bella, he's 104 years old. Edward might be a mythical being who looks eternally youthful, but he also should probably figure out a way to date women who can legally vote or order a drink.
How did Edward Cullen become a vampire in the first place?
Let's rewind a little bit and talk about how and why Edward Cullen became a teenage vampire in the first place. In 1918, Edward, a bright young man close to his mother, Elizabeth Mason, contracts Spanish influenza after his relatively absent father dies from the disease. Elizabeth, also sick with the flu and desperate to save her son, reaches out to a local doctor named Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli). In her dying moments, likely unaware of Carlisle's status as a vampire — one who has trained himself to not desire human blood, so he's able to work as a physician — Elizabeth asks Carlisle to save Edward by whatever means possible, which means Carlisle turns Edward into a vampire shortly before he succumbs to his illness.
Edward becomes the first member of the Cullen family that "Twilight" fans know and love — followed shortly by Esme (Elizabeth Reaser), who instantly becomes a beloved maternal figure to Edward. Though Edward has a brief period where he seeks revenge against humans by killing them (specifically, Esme's cruel ex-husband), he returns to the Cullen's "vegetarian" lifestyle and is later joined by his "siblings" Rosalie (Nikki Reed), Emmett (Kellan Lutz), Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), and Alice (Ashley Greene). The family spends their time moving from location to location as the "kids" graduate high school over and over again ... but when Edward meets Bella and falls in love with her despite her delicious-smelling blood, the family apparently decides to settle in Forks.
Everything about Edward Cullen feels weird, to say the least
Edward Cullen's history notwithstanding, it's hard to overlook how blatantly weird it is for him to fall in love with and date Bella. Not only does he find the scent of her blood particularly tantalizing, but as a telepathic vampire, he also finds himself unable to read her mind, which infuriates him. In Stephenie Meyer's "Midnight Sun," which presents "Twilight" from Edward's perspective, he toys with the idea of murdering every other person in his and Bella's biology class to get to her. Even after some time away from Forks, he's still drawn to Bella, going so far as to watch her while she sleeps.
Even after Edward reveals to Bella that he's a vampire with telepathic powers and sparkly skin, she's not deterred, and the two kids — or rather, the one kid and the one vampiric centenarian — strike up a relationship. Throughout their time together, Bella struggles with the knowledge that, unlike Edward, she'll age naturally and ultimately develops an Edward-adjacent obsession with becoming a vampire. Edward tries to talk her out of it for a while but eventually agrees that if they get married, she can join the Cullen coven in earnest. When Bella falls pregnant with a half-vampire, half-human baby after they get married right out of high school, and Edward turns Bella into a vampire during her harrowing, dangerous childbirth, Edward is still 86 years older than Bella.
What did Robert Pattinson think about playing Edward Cullen?
Initially, Robert Pattinson didn't have particularly kind words about his "Twilight" character. In 2008, the star sat down for an Empire Magazine cover story (reported on by outlets like Gizmodo) and said, "He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year-old virgin, so he's obviously got some issues there." (Pattinson's math is off by a few years here, but that's forgivable.)
These amusing comments aside, Pattinson managed to escape a fate where audiences only knew him as the sparkly vampire, going on to star in Matt Reeves' blockbuster hit, "The Batman," and edgier fare like Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse." Still, as recently as 2019, he was still ragging on Twilight; in an Actors on Actors chat with Jennifer Lopez for Variety, Pattinson said, "I guess the books are very romantic, but at the same time ... 'Twilight' is about this guy, and he finds the one girl he wants to be with, and he also wants to eat her. I mean, not eat her, but drink her blood or whatever. It's not that other people are telling them they can't be together, it's his own body telling him that."