Robert Pattinson’s Dance Nightmare: Why He Almost Had a ‘Mental Breakdown’ with Jennifer Lawrence!

Robert Pattinson recently opened up about his intense fear of dancing, revealing that he almost had a “mental breakdown” while filming a dance scene with Jennifer Lawrence in their upcoming horror comedy Die, My Love. The film, which also stars Lawrence as a mother battling psychosis and Pattinson as her husband, includes a scene where the two characters freestyle dance around their home—a moment that left Pattinson panicked.

In a candid conversation with his Mickey 17 director Bong Joon-Ho for GQ, Pattinson recounted how he found the dancing scene particularly challenging. Both Lawrence and the film’s director, Lynne Ramsay, are skilled dancers, and they encouraged Pattinson to just “dance, it’s just music playing, just dance.” However, the British actor was far from comfortable with the idea.

“I’m telling you I’m going to have a mental breakdown when this happens,” Pattinson recalled telling Ramsay. “We need to either choreograph it or cut it.” But despite his protestations, the scene went ahead with Lawrence and Ramsay pushing him to embrace the moment without overthinking it. “They’re like, ‘No, just dance, stop being all freak,'” Pattinson said, still laughing at his initial panic.

The actor admitted that his anxiety about the scene was so overwhelming that he was sweating profusely during filming. “I was sweating so much, the insides of my trousers, with sweat, were wet… That’s a little exaggeration,” he joked, lightening the mood.

Pattinson, who seems to find himself in dance scenes with surprising frequency, confessed that he feels as though he’s “living a hell” whenever he’s required to show off his moves on screen. He pointed out that in many cases, a script will simply include a moment where characters start dancing, and it feels “totally normal” for everyone else except him.

“Especially if it’s a writer-director and they’ve just written (in the script), ‘Then they dance,’ and it just seems totally normal, if you’re a person who dances,” Pattinson explained, highlighting how alien dancing is to him.

Despite his discomfort with dancing on camera, Pattinson’s new films, Mickey 17 and Die, My Love, are generating a great deal of anticipation. Mickey 17 will be hitting cinemas this Friday, while Die, My Love is slated for release later this year. As for Pattinson, it seems he may need to brace himself for more dance scenes ahead—but hopefully, with fewer breakdowns.