Times Online Interview

Rob rehashes his doubts and fears in this interview with Times Online:

Twilight star, Robert Pattinson, finds fame hard to digest

He’s the heart-throb for a zillion teenage girls but the British actor Robert Pattinson, star of the vampire Twilight films, is far from relishing his new-found fame, according to an interview he granted Vanity Fair. With New Moon, the latest instalment of the vampire saga released in cinemas later this month, the 23-year-old is “trying not to drown”.

Confined to his hotel room at the San Diego Hard Rock hotel because of the legions of screaming girls who mob him everywhere he goes, he says: “I’m not much of a crowd person.” In fact his biggest worry is whether his “ass crack is showing” when he’s being pursued by paparazzi. “I’m unbearably self-conscious about stuff,” he says.

Of course, none of this would have happened to Pattinson had it not been for the novelist Stephenie Meyer’s blockbusters, a series that tells the story of Bella Swan, who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a vampire since 1918, who will be a 17-year-old for eternity. Were he to bite her she would turn into a vampire as well.

The films, like the books, look set to be a money-spinning, rip-roaring success. But Pattinson’s road to stardom was far from smooth. He grew up in Barnes, London, son of a father who had a car importing business and a mother who worked at a modelling agency. Briefly he tried modelling but “I was terrible”, he says. “I was really tall but still looked like a six-year-old.”

His passion for acting started at the Barnes theatre club, where he acquired an agent, who landed him a part in a film adaptation of Vanity Fair. Next came a role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and then a part in a West End play from which he got fired. Specialising in playing “weirdos” he picked himself up and compiled an audition tape that he sent off to the casting directors of Twilight.

The rest is history. Except that he still hasn’t worked out how to capitalise on his dreamboat status. His Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner, who plays his love rival Jacob Black, is “completely handling it”, said Pattinson. “I’m just freaking out all the time. I’m going to end up hitting people and stuff and looking like an idiot.”

(source)