The Stars of Twilight

Charlie Bewley won’t say how old he is.

He also won’t elaborate on the details of his seemingly scandal-heavy past, which he alludes to frequently, nebulously describing it as “erratic, risky, bread-line. High highs, low lows." In passing, he mentions turbulent romances and family dramas, and says he doesn’t really drink anymore, but keeps mum on the reasons why. He is decidedly mysterious.

“I have to be,” Bewley says.

What’s known is that Bewley is a British expat who worked several snow seasons in ski mecca Whistler after immigrating to Canada several years ago. For a time, he supported himself by driving a cab (“I had the most money out of all my friends”) and later moved to Vancouver, a two-ish-hour drive from Whistler, to pursue his acting career. The choice necessitated another move to Los Angeles in September of this year.

This is, of course, because Bewley plays the Volturi vampire Demetri in the upcoming New Moon, the second installment of the culturally permeating Twilight Saga series.

Last year’s Twilight grossed $383 million worldwide and set just as many hearts, mostly female, into hysterics with its story of forbidden human/vampire romance. The Saga’s trio of teen dream leads, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, and especially Robert Pattinson, are suddenly, ridiculously famous, with their faces gracing tabloid covers on an almost weekly basis under headlines like “Rob Risks It All for Kristen.”

The Twilight series is a juggernaut running on the romantic fantasies and babysitting money of its largely teenage audience, a group that literally screams and cries for all things Twilight. The series has spawned dolls, videogames, charm bracelets and (seriously) decorative throws. But it’s the actors, no matter how bit their part, that are the franchise’s most sought after commodity.

Bewley’s role in New Moon is his first professional acting gig, and it thrusts him into the unique position of being at once both fresh to the Hollywood solar system and very, very famous in the alternative universe that is the Twilight subculture. Bewley, however, says he doesn't feel "suddenly famous" and admits he’s long dealt with being well-known, saying, cryptically, that he’s “always been fairly infamous in the circles I travel in.”

Now, he's immensely in demand among the human waves of teen girls who mobbed him while he was shooting New Moon on location in Montepulciano, Italy.

“Italy was a dream. Very surreal,” Bewley says. “I think everyone there, no matter who it was, Rob [Pattinson], Kristen [Stewart], [director] Chris [Weitz] or anyone else would say that it was an experience that they may never go through again. The hospitality of the whole thing, the way they treated us, the whole setting was so magnificent. “

“I was just swamped with 15-year-old girls wherever I went. My inner 14-year-old teenager in my head had a great time.”


While being pursued through the streets of Montepulciano by Twilight fanatics was a magical experience for him, Bewley acquiesces that there is a pressure induced by the immenseness of Twilight‘s popularity that he has yet to experience in the way that the film’s perpetually photographed leads have.

“Rob, I feel sorry for him a little bit,” Bewley says. “I feel for him, because he’s like a paparazzi fugitive right now. He can’t leave his house. He’s the most photographed person in the world.”

Bewley says it’s hard for him to say whether the attention Pattinson receives might make it difficult for the fellow Brit to enjoy his success, but that he, “can’t imagine he would ever say he wishes it didn’t happen, but it is a ridiculous thing to happen to anyone. He’s gone from zero to hero in six months, and his life is just totally turned upside down. I don’t know. I didn’t really speak to him in depth that much about it. But me in that situation, I think I just enjoy the parts of life that he can’t do right now too much.”

Those parts of life include exercising (he’s a diligent runner and also snowboards and plays rugby), not watching TV, enjoying the ability to walk out his front door without being photographed and working on his career.

“I’m not in that kind of like Zac Efron youth zone anymore,” he says, “I’m pushing through … I don’t really have time for anything else while I’m getting where I want to go. And then when I get there, I’ll start enjoying things I used to enjoy.”

The Twilight Saga offers an inevitable surge in visibility, a built-in fan base and an opportunity to work consistently while rounding out the series, making it a new actor's wildest fantasy kind of job -- albeit an intense and somewhat strange world to enter.

Admitting that it’s odd to be adored just by virtue of the (very well-known) character he plays, Bewley says, “It’s ridiculous. Like ‘I love you, I’m your biggest fan.’ How? My mum’s my biggest fan, or my sister or someone like that. They know me. [The fans are] just very not fickle. They look at you like, ‘Wow, he’s attractive.’

KEEP READING: Eclipse and Breaking Dawn secrets!


-- Posted by Ashley from iPhone