Robert Pattinson’s fear of fame

Robert Pattinson is at the center of a maelstrom, says Chris Sullivan in the London Daily Mail. Six years ago, he was just another good-looking private schoolboy from southwest London, trying his hand at acting. Now, thanks to his role as Edward Cullen, the Byronic vampire in the massively successful Twilight series, the 23-year-old is experiencing something akin to Beatlemania. “I get a lot of crying from teenage girls, but lately a lot of them actually want me to bite them, which is a bit worrying,” he says. “Another girl started undressing in front of me in the street. She’d asked what she could do to get my attention, so as a joke, I said, ‘Take all your clothes off.’ But then she started to take all her clothes off right there!”

Pattinson, who first became a teen heartthrob in the Harry Potter films, does not find the attention enjoyable. He says he’d rather give up acting entirely than end up cast in a slew of similar “pretty boy” roles. “If it all just went away, I’d think, ‘All right. I don’t really care.’ That’s probably a daft thing to say. But I think it’d be much worse to do a load of stuff that’s really awful. Because then you can’t go into another career. If you’ve made a fool of yourself, if you’re a joke actor, then you’re never going to be taken seriously. The only thing I want from anything is not to be embarrassed.”

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