Robert Pattinson Claims He Can Turn Off His Sense of Smell—Is It a Superpower or Scent Dyslexia?

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When you think about useless superpowers, turning off your sense of smell probably falls under that category, UNLESS you’re in public transport in the middle of a heatwave. If you can do it at will, you share this peculiar trait with the current Batman, Robert Pattinson.

Robert Pattinson recently told Elle he can “weirdly turn on and off” his sense of smell and believes he has a form of “scent dyslexia,” where he perceives smells differently than others.

He explained that certain scents, like the smell of babies, changed for him after becoming a parent, saying it went from thinking they smelled like “genetically modified piglets” to “the best smell I’ve ever smelled.” This is in fact quite common among many parents.

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Since I had a kid, I’ve definitely become more attuned to that. I remember my mom always saying, “Oh, the smell of babies!” And I’d be like, I don’t know, they all smell like genetically modified piglets. But then you have your own kid, and it’s, “Oh, this is the best smell I’ve ever smelled.”

Pattinson also shared a memory from filming ‘The Batman,’ mentioning the smell of the mask. He noted that once he put on the cowl, he was stuck with its scent for the next 12 hours, even recalling that Val Kilmer’s cowl still held a “human scent” when he tried it on.

Another one that comes to mind was the smell of the mask in The Batman. Once you put the cowl on, you have to get someone else to take it off, so there’s something about being locked into it. You’re like, “Okay, I’m gonna be dealing with this smell for the next 12 hours.” It’s funny—when I did the audition, I tried on all the different [cowls] and I wore Val Kilmer’s, and it still held a human scent.

Robert Pattinson joked that Val Kilmer’s cowl still smelled like him, and even mentioned that it had a bit of the scent of George Clooney’s head from 20 years ago. He also shared that his baby has a unique scent, and if there were a group of babies, he’d be able to recognize hers by smell.

I mean, like, if there was a pen of babies, I think I could probably snuffle her out. [Laughs.] Yeah. She’s got quite a unique scent.

This hits far too close to one of Pattinson’s earlier and most notable roles, Edward Cullen in ‘Twilight’ movies.

Twilight’s vampires have a superior sense of smell compared to humans which is their biological advantage that helps them hunt animals – and humans alike. If you’ve read the books and watched movies, you know how often Edward struggled with Bella’s scent and the fact that other vampires couldn’t keep their fangs in their mouths due to the said scent.

Sense of smell is a pretty big plot device in the ‘Twilight’ franchise, but Pattinson is (likely) not a vampire as the actor self-diagnosed with scent dyslexia. Scent dyslexia is when a person smells something differently from how others do. It means they might think something smells like one thing, but everyone else thinks it smells like something else.

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