'It's much more fun when you're an underdog'

Los Angeles: From playing a vampire in Twilight to fitting into the Batsuit as Bruce Wayne, it has been a strange journey for Robert Pattinson, who as an "underdog", isn't worried too much about backlash.

The British actor, 33, in an interview with Variety, said he had been chasing the part from the moment he got to know that Matt Reeves was working on a script that reimagines a younger version of the Caped Crusader.

"I had Batman in my mind for a while. It's such an absurd thing to say. I sort of had an idea to do it, and I'd been prodding Matt. He didn't accept any prods. I kept asking to meet him," Pattinson told the movie magazine.

But things almost blew up at the last moment as the news leaked even before he had auditioned for the part.

Pattinson says he kept Googling himself on a flight from Los Angeles to Cannes, orried that it would spook Warner Bros executives.

But the Twilight actor is calm about the social media storm over his casting.