Robert Pattinson Claims He Can Turn Off His Sense of Smell

By
Jennifer Zhan,
a Vulture news blogger covering music, internet culture, and TV.

Photo: Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate

Ooh, Edward Cullen, don’t make that face. Robert Pattinson may have played a vampire whose girlfriend’s blood smelled irresistible to him, but that scenario wouldn’t be a problem for the actor in real life because … his nose is built different? At least if the self-confessed liar’s latest interviews are to be believed, anyway. “I can weirdly turn on and off my sense of smell,” Pattinson recently told Elle, noting that he thinks he has “a scent dyslexia,” where he thinks “something smells like something that no else thinks it does.” The current face of Dior Homme echoed that idea while speaking to Harper’s Bazaar about the latest fragrance campaign (which he incidentally thought smelled like pencils). According to Pattinson, when he was asked to describe the scent of the new eau de parfum for a behind-the-scenes video, “every single ingredient I said had nothing to do with the scent — at all.”

Fatherhood apparently taught Pattinson’s mysterious nose a lesson. While he used to think that all babies smelled like “genetically modified piglets,” he changed his mind after welcoming a daughter with Suki Waterhouse last spring. “My baby smells great! I really still don’t really like the smell of other babies,” he explained to Harper’s Bazaar. “I think my baby smells different from other babies. It’s not a generic baby smell.” He acknowledged that opinion might just be “wishful thinking,” but was still confident enough to suggest to Elle, “[I]f there was a pen of babies, I think I could probably snuffle her out.” Maybe she got it from her mother? Pattinson named Waterhouse as the best-smelling person he’s ever met and said that she smells like happiness. But we now know that if that ever stops being the case, he can just use his ability to turn his nose off! There’s always so much to learn from a Pattinson press tour, isn’t there?

Robert Pattinson Claims He Can Turn Off His Sense of Smell

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