Actor Robert Pattinson is famous the world over for his role in the Twilight series as dreamy vampire Edward Cullen. Recently in London with his co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner promoting their new film, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Robert talks about how Twilight compares to Harry Potter, whether he’d like to be immortal and how he compares to a shirtless Taylor Lautner.

How much interaction did you have with the Twi-hards [hardcore Twilight fans] while you were making the film and also since you've wrapped? It must be easy for you because they all love you, right?
Robert Pattinson (RP): Arguably. No there has never been any pressure, from anyone I don't think, other than right at the very beginning before the first film came out. I think they like being part of a club and they mobilise against people who criticise the whole series anyway, so they like the films and are very supportive of anyone who has anything to do with the films.

The new Vanity Fair paints this picture of your life as being trapped in hotel rooms and unable to go anywhere. Is that greatly exaggerated?
RP: It's funny because I never have a huge amount of foresight in interviews so I end up describing my day rather than the surrounding months. So when I did that (interview)... I was kind of trapped in a hotel room when we did the last one in Vancouver but there are always ways and places you can disappear to, it just involves a little bit more thought. You can't just wander around willy-nilly.

Do you mind that?
RP: It's such a novelty to me still. If I'm still stuck in hotel rooms in 10 years and I haven't figured out any way to deal with it other than hiding then it probably will annoy me a little bit but if you're just working the whole time you don't really think about it, you go from press trip to movie to press trip the whole time. I guess I'll see what it's really like in the next two or three years.

Having been part of both Twilight and Harry Potter, two massive franchises, is it possible to compare the experiences? And does being the male lead in Twilight make things very different?
RP: When I went into Harry Potter it was the fourth one so everybody knew each other and people had moved to Leavesden, the crew have been working on it for ten years, so that was their full-time job, everybody knew each other, people had married each other on the crew, and everything was so well-oiled. So coming to Twilight, I don't know if it was like the first Harry Potter but it was interesting to see there were so many different warring energies. I think the studio knew they had a trilogy at the time and people think certain criteria had to be met to set up that sort of franchise and Catherine [Hardwicke, director of the first Twilight film] obviously had an indie background. She wanted to do that, me and Kristen are pretty headstrong people, so it was kind of a volatile set in many ways but I think the success of the first one made everything very clear for the second, so it was weird, being in a franchise at an embryonic level.

Everyone says, “Oh, you must have know what you were getting into because the books had sold so many,” but it was hard to find someone who had heard of Twilight before the movie came out. You couldn't buy it in London. Well, maybe you could have bought it somewhere but I remember looking for the book in London and it was difficult to find. So even though we did a multiple picture deal at the beginning, I had no idea they were going to do sequels. It was interesting to see what happened afterwards.

You've done some open mic nights. Is music something you want to pursue in the future and are you concerned Twilight might overshadow that?
RP: Yeah, I do want to, mainly because I want to do gigs again. But I guess the only way to do gigs is to do an album to kind of silence everyone first and then you can do as many gigs as you want. But I do, I really miss it. But I am afraid of it being overshadowed by this. That's why I haven't done any gigs or released anything for ages. But I think it also makes you set your standards higher because you need to overshadow this massive thing, so you've got to be winning Grammys and stuff before you do another open mic.

What do you do in your downtime and have you had to give up anything?
RP: I never did much in the first place so that has probably helped me out a little bit. When you're working all the time you're just doing the same thing, it doesn't matter what your status is like outside of the job, you're waking up at 5.30am and going home too tired to do anything, you just want to go to bed so it doesn't make any difference really what is happening outside the hotel. I really miss driving – I never had a car in London and I got my car in LA last summer so I only really had a few months driving without having ten cars following me around so I'm too scared to drive now, so that's a little annoying. But I don't really do much on my downtime, I do very basic, standard things.

If you were immortal, would it be a good thing or a bad thing?
RP: If I stayed at my exact same state and mental capacity then I wouldn't want to be immortal. I wouldn't want to be considered young forever. I like the kind of innate wisdom that comes with getting old, people just think you know more and tend to give you a bit more respect. I would quite like to be able to choose however old I am on any given day, today, if I was 96 years old... this is completely not answering the question.

There are lots of topless scenes in the movie. What was it like doing those?
RP: There's a lot of nipple shots in this movie! I was terrified because I hadn't worked out at all and then I saw Taylor at the beginning of the year. It was quite good for the movie, because I did feel incredibly inadequate and emasculated next to him with my pre-pubescent teen girl's body and kind of A-cups.

How do you deal with the fans and their mass hysteria and screaming?
RP: I wear a lot of layers so they can't see you hyper-ventilating. That's a good preparation technique.

How have your family reacted to the enormous success of the films?
RP: My family are kind of, not clueless, but I don't think they've fully realised what has been going on in America. I don't think they really know what I'm doing, they have trouble understanding that I'm supposed to be an actor - in the same way I do. It is a very confusing thing to see, even something like someone coming up to you on set and asking if you want a coffee, they think “Why are you asking him, he should be getting his own coffee?”

Whose role would you like to play other than your own?
RP: I've always wanted Taylor's part, even when we're doing scenes together.