Culture

This Cursed Photo Of Robert Pattinson In A Tracksuit Has Broken Everyone’s Brains

This photo lives rent free in my mind and I hate it.

by Michelle Rennex  23 September 2020
robert pattinson in a tracksuit meme

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Back in 2008, Robert Pattinson instantly became every tween girl’s celeb crush when he starred as the sparkly, lanky vampire, Edward Cullen, in Twilight. 

Prior to his big break in the so-bad-it’s-good vampire series, Robert Pattinson also had a small part in the Harry Potter franchise as Cedric Diggory before being brutally killed off by human rat, Peter Pettigrew. Since then, Pattinson has managed to star in a number of films that have shied away from the ~teen franchise~ vibe with roles in movies like The Lighthouse, Tenet and the much-anticipated The Batman.

However in 2017, Pattinson played a role with perhaps even more cultural impact than sad icon, Edward Cullen. The role I’m talking about is, of course, Constantine “Connie” Nikas from crime-thriller Good Time. 

Good Time focused on Pattinson playing Connie, a small-time bank robber who had to race through New York’s criminal underbelly to try and get his younger brother out of jail. While his performance in the film was great, with a a critic score of 92% and an audience rating of 81%, it’s actually a behind-the-scenes photo that has taken the internet by storm three years later.

You’ve seen it. You know it. It’s the cursed photo of Robert Pattinson standing in a kitchen wearing an oversized brown tracksuit jacket, hair slicked back, and with his hands by his side. Whether it’s the stance or the lost expression upon his face, the actor looks oddly small and almost child-like in the photo despite being just under 6’1″.

Originally uploaded to Instagram by Josh Safdie, the writer and director of Good Time, the iconic image first surfaced in August of 2017. Sharing the photo to promote the film, Safdie captioned the image with “Proto-Connie (very early on)” and has since deleted the snap.

Somehow looking like the stereotypical white British roadman, an Aussie eshay, every kid that was given a jacket seven sizes too big but told they would “grow into it”, and that one weird cousin your mum forced you to hang out with at family BBQs, it makes sense as to why the Good Time team decided to take Connie’s look in a totally different direction.

For reference, Pattinson’s character ended up with bleached blonde hair and a more disheveled, messy look instead of the “eight year old off to their first mufti day” energy that “Proto-Connie” had. But thankfully for the rest of the world, this stylistic misstep was captured for the world to see.

Floating around on Twitter in late 2019, the ‘Robert Pattinson in a tracksuit’ meme only really took off in the last month with the cursed photo popping up all over Twitter .

While funny on Twitter, when TikTok teens caught wind of the photo, the ‘Robert Pattinson in a tracksuit’ meme jumped to a whole different level.

Between people sharing the believable scenarios you’d most likely find this cursed version of Robert Pattinson in, to others simply professing their love for the image in their own special ways, it was clear that people were again obsessed with R-Patz like the Twihards all were in 2008.

Beyond being declared the “most handsome man in the world” earlier this year, it turns out that Robert Pattinson’s cursed tracksuit photo has made the world fall in love with the actor again. But it’s not just for his looks.

Sure, he’s is very, very attractive but he is also chaotic and gives off such an indescribably weird energy, which obviously bumps Robert Pattinson up about 10 points on the hotness scale.


Nothing but for our tracksuit-wearing king, R-Patz.