By James Mottram
As I arrive for my interview with Robert Pattinson, the air is awash with hormones. Hordes of autograph book-brandishing adolescents have gathered on the street, desperate to catch a glimpse of the British-born star. We are in Cannes, where Pattinson has jetted in to promote New Moon, the sequel to last year's teen vampire sensation Twilight.
After pushing my way through the crowds, I'm ushered down some steps to a beachside restaurant where Pattinson is just finishing off another interview. The moment he leaves his chair hysteria breaks out as the pubescent pack looking down from street level spy their heartthrob.
Even by the standards of Pattinson's last year, which has seen him go from a relative unknown to a massive star, this is something else. "It's embarrassing, doing interviews," he confides when he sits down in another chair out of view and the cries subside. "I've never really done this before – people screaming in the background. Except at a premiere." You'd think he'd be used to the attention by now. Even before Twilight was released, taking nearly 400 million in cinemas around the world, girls were leaving notes under the windscreen wipers of his car. By the time he toured a series of shopping malls to promote the film, it had morphed into something akin to Beatlemania as girls fainted, screamed and asked him to bite them. Not even Brad Pitt gets that kind of attention.
Admittedly, this sort of adulation was always on the cards. Stephenie Meyer's quartet of Twilight books has already proved a literary sensation to rival JK Rowling's Harry Potter franchise. The most recent book, Breaking Dawn, sold a staggering 1.3 million copies on its first day of publication. And with the novels primarily aimed at teenage girls, it's Pattinson – who plays Edward Cullen, the impossibly handsome vampire from a family of neck-biters – who attracts most of the fans. His co-star Kristen Stewart – who plays Bella Swan, the mortal Edward falls for – must be relieved. "You do tend to start getting a little bit paranoid about stuff," Pattinson confesses, shrinking further into his chair, "looking around when you're walking down the street, in case you get mobbed by teenage girls!"
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