Interview With "The" Vampire

Ask Robert Pattinson how he's handling the global hysteria that now surrounds him and he says: "All right, I hope." Then he runs his hand through that tousled mop of his (a sign that he's anxious) and adds: "It's still sort of new."

It's almost 12 months since the first Twilight film was unleashed on the world. Twelve months since we clapped eyes on the sensitive, tortured and fiercely handsome vampire named Edward Cullen from Stephenie Meyer's massively popular novels. Twelve months since Pattinson, the 23-year-old British actor who plays the red-blooded teenage vamp, became an international heart-throb.

"To be honest, I still don't really understand what's going on," he says. "Like yesterday, I was having lunch down the road. We were in this place for a couple of hours and suddenly there was like 400 people outside on the street. It was just so nuts and it's like that all the time now."

"When the second one comes out, then I'll see how I am. Mostly I can ignore things to quite a big extent and kind of pretend they're not really happening," he says, sounding eerily calm.

"I just don't take any of it seriously. It's just a job and while it's a job I love, girls scream out for Edward, not Robert. I still can't get a date."

The real reason Pattinson is so calm is simple: "I'm not the lead in the second film. Taylor [Lautner] is." He grins idiotically. "I appear in Bella's dreams. So I'm in it but the focus is not on me. I just have significant moments at the beginning ... and the end. So I'm more of a supporting role in this one, which is why I felt so free. I didn't have to deal with any of the crap (edited) of the first one. I don't have to hold the movie or worry about the fans. I think I did it better without all those pressures."

You can read the complete article here from The Sydney Morning Herald.