Robert Pattinson forced to 'rub one out' for sex scene because faking it didn't work

Whilst many celebs tend to stay clear of the topic, Robert Pattinson is clearly not shy to talk candidly about his on-screen sex life.

Before the British actor rose to fame in 2008's Twilight, he actually shot another film that same year.

Titled Little Ashes, the film set in 1922 saw Pattinson take on the role of young artist Salvador Dali who arrives at university in Madrid, where he befriends filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.

Dali soon feels a strong attraction towards Lorca, with a passionate romantic relationship taking place.

Although Pattinson was naked for a lot of the movie, his biggest obstacle was filming a sex scene.

To make the scene convincing, the Batman actor needed to really look like he was having an orgasm.

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In all fairness, the Batman star decided to be the ultimate professional and opted to actually masturbate instead of faking it.

Deciding to 'rub one out' on set, the young actor was concerned that the moment could ruin his career.

In a 2013 interview with Germany's Interview magazine, he explained: "If you google something long enough you will soon know everything there is to know about me: what I eat, what my poop looks like, with whom I’m sleeping, what my d**k looks like, even what I look like when I masturbate.

"Well, that might be a little exaggerated. But my orgasm face is recorded for eternity."

Unable to fake it in the moment, Pattinson added: "Try it. I can tell you right now, no chance. It just doesn’t work.

"So I rubbed one out in front of the camera."

Despite being unsure of the outcome (no pun intended), the actor admitted that it all worked out in the end.

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"Something like that, yes. After the end of the shooting I thought for a couple of days that this would be the end of my - at the time really short - acting career," he said.

"But then I got the phone call that said 'You got the role.' And then Twilight started."

It turns out Little Ashes was pretty well received after it won the GLAAD Media Award for 'Outstanding Film−Limited Release' during the 21st GLAAD Media Awards.

But although the film has a solid 6.4 rating on IMDb, its Rotten Tomatoes score falls a little short at 24 percent.

"It has a beautiful cast, but Little Ashes suffers from an uneven tone and a surplus of unintentionally silly moments," the critics' consensus read.