He’s about to appear in what might be his best film yet. So why is one of Britain’s finest actors so convinced he can’t act? Robert Pattinson talks to Alex Moshakis about stage-fright and why he couldn’t say no to a role in The Lighthouse

Do you want to hear a funny thing about Robert Pattinson? Robert Pattinson is convinced he doesn’t know how to act. Willem Dafoe can act, Pattinson thinks. Willem Dafoe can act the socks off anyone in the business. And Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin Phoenix could tie his shoelaces on film and be nominated for an award. And Bruce Willis – Bruce Willis! – now there’s a leading man. But Robert Pattinson? Nope. “I only know how to play scenes, like, three ways,” he says. Three! That’s all. Despite more than a decade in the industry. “I’m nervous on, like, every single movie.”

Pattinson, who is 33, is sitting in a booth in a low-lit restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, dunking table bread into a pot of something. It’s the early evening, dark and cold outside. He has arrived from rehearsals for The Batman, which started not long ago and which are taking place, to his delight, in the studio in which he filmed Harry Potter in the mid-aughts. The Batman is the first time he’s worked in a studio in “like, forever,” and his first mainstream leading role since he retired his best-known character, Twilight’s Edward Cullen, sexy vampire. That was in 2012.