Twilight fans know that the second book of the series, New Moon, is light on Edward Cullen and heavy on Jacob Black. But Robert Pattinson has such a massive fan following, and Edward is such a popular character, that director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg found a way to work the character in more than he is in Stephenie Meyer's bestselling book. In the book, Bella hears Edward's voice whenever she's doing something dangerous. But in the film, we get to see Pattinson as Edward telling Bella (Kristen Stewart) to be careful.

At the LA press conference for New Moon, Pattinson talked about the decision to include more of Edward in the film and how he's really embraced the role of a passionate, sensitive vampire who doesn't feed on humans:

• Robert Pattinson on New Moon, the Break Up Scene, Italy, and His Career

More on New Moon:

• New Moon Trailer and Clips
  
• New Moon Photo Gallery
  
• Robert Pattinson Biography

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17 year old Taylor Lautner plays Jacob Black, a member of the Quileute Tribe, in the Twilight movie series based on the bestselling books by Stephenie Meyer. Because Jacob undergoes an incredible physical transformation between book one, Twilight, and book two, New Moon, Lautner had to also undergo a massive weight change, bulking up and packing on muscles to fill out the role. And while Lautner had no problem hitting the gym, he didn't want to grow out his hair to the length required of him in Twilight and New Moon. So, just as he did for Twilight, Lautner wore a long black wig. But, thankfully, it was only for half of New Moon.

"It not only was uncomfortable...one, I'd look at myself in the mirror and I wouldn't even be able to recognize myself. It was so weird just to see that hair on me. Two, it was very itchy, hot, whatever, annoying. Also it slowed down the filming process. Whenever it got caught in my eye or whatever, we'd have to cut and start over. It got caught in my mouth and I'm spitting hair out in the middle of the scene. I'm coming this close to kissing Bella and, 'Sorry, I've got to spit my hair out.' It was annoying," said Lautner at the LA press day for the Summit Entertainment film.

"So the day we were able to...we actually had a picture wrap on the wig. The crew claps for you at the end or whatever. My last day of filming with the wig, we ripped it off, held it up in the air, like, 'That's a picture wrap on Taylor's wig!' The whole crew gave it a standing ovation. It was amazing. It was great to chop that thing off."

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Native American actors were cast in the roles of the Quileute tribe members who transform into wolves in the second Twilight film, New Moon. Chaske Spencer plays Sam, leader of the pack, with Alex Meraz as Paul, Bronson Pelletier as Jared, and Kiowa Gordon as Embry. Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob Black and Edward Cullen's rival for Bella's heart (and is not a Native American), is a latecomer to the werewolf party. Together, the 'wolfpack' protects their fellow tribe members from their only enemy - vampires - while showing off a whole lot of skin (yes ladies, they're shirtless throughout the film).

In this press conference for the second Twilight movie, four members of the Wolfpack discuss being a part of this huge film franchise:

• Interview with the Wolfpack of New Moon

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And it's a real doozy. Seriously, why would any media outlet - even as a joke - write a story stating Robert Pattinson, Twilight's brooding vampire, is pregnant? At the LA press junket for New Moon, Pattinson says that particular news item is the strangest thing he's ever read about himself, and there have been a lot of bizarre things said about the hunky British actor.

"Recently, some magazine had on the cover that I was pregnant," said Pattinson. "I was just like, 'Wow!' And, it was without a hint of irony or anything. I didn't really know what to make of that one. I don't even know if that qualifies as libelous because they can just say, 'Well, it's obviously fiction,' but it's written in a non-fiction magazine. I saw a couple comments under the article saying, 'That's why he always wears jackets. He always wears layers to hide it.'"

Pattinson's private life is also fodder for stories, and the actor says that just comes with the territory. "I think you just do it through doing jobs. It's such a risky thing, doing interviews. I try to limit the amount of interviews I do. No one is that interesting, especially when you're not really saying anything. And, I don't particularly want to be some kind of character in society. So, I guess the only thing you can do is do jobs and see if people respond to that. But, I'm always holding onto the fact that I don't really know who I am, so hopefully I won't compartmentalize myself because of that. I'm just completely ignorant of the whole thing. I've never really struggled with anything, up until recently. I've got to stop being so self-depreciating because people are starting to believe it. They'll be like, 'That guy is an idiot,' so I've tried to stop doing that."
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I do believe I'm a jinx. When it comes to picking new TV shows, if I like it, it's almost certain to get cancelled before it has a chance to catch on. Take Eastwick, for example. I Tivo it, and so of course it's on the chopping block. At the LA premiere of Columbia Pictures' action epic, 2012, Eastwick's news photographer/firefighter hottie, Johann Urb, talked about the possibility of Eastwick's early demise as well as his role in the disaster film, 2012:

• Johann Urb 2012 and Eastwick Interview

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Disney's 3D performance capture version of Charles Dickens' classic holiday tale opened with good, but not great, numbers. Coming in at the low end of pre-release estimates, Disney's A Christmas Carol easily earned the top spot at the box office. But the weekend's big surprise was Lionsgate's Precious. It didn't crack the Top 10, but Precious' $1.8 million take came while only being screened in 18 theaters.

Top 10 Films for the Weekend Ending November 8 (Estimates)
1) Disney's A Christmas Carol - $31,000,000
2) Michael Jackson's This Is It - $14,000,000
3) The Men Who Stare at Goats - $13,300,000
4) The Fourth Kind - $12,500,000
5) Paranormal Activity - $8,600,000
6) The Box - $7,800,000
7) Couples Retreat - $6,400,000
8) Law Abiding Citizen - $6,100,000
9) Where the Wild Things Are - $4,200,000
10) Astro Boy - $2,500,000

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Director Chris Weitz stepped into the second film of the Twilight series with the main cast in place. Kristen Stewart as Bella, Robert Pattinson as Edward, and the actors playing the Cullen family were all pretty much set in stone. And everyone thought Taylor Lautner was all but certain to reprise his role as Jacob Black. But as director Chris Weitz and producer Wyck Godfrey acknowledged at the New Moon press junket, Lautner's return as Jacob was in fact an uncertainty for a while. Of course everyone who follows the Twilight films knows this is old news, but hearing Weitz and Godfrey now talk about the reasoning behind the possible recasting was, nonetheless, interesting.

"I'd say there was a big possibility that could happen, but I was always convinced that he was going to be able to do it," said Weitz. "The doubts came up because he had very few scenes in the first movie. Also because he's described as being 6'5" in the second book, some reasonable facts that we had to come to grip with. But I like the sort of sweetness of this character in the first movie and I knew that it was easier to take an actor in the direction of anger and rage than it was to find someone who is kind of a hunk or 6'5" Native American and somehow turn him into that very sweet-natured persona that Taylor brings out so well to boot."

"It also became less of an idea once audiences identified with Taylor when they saw Twilight," explained producer Godfrey. "He's in their minds. He is Jacob, you know? So it became less of an idea to recast once people really identified, once the movie opened and people were like, 'Taylor is Jacob.' It certainly helped that he had spent the last eight months really working very hard to kind of physically adapt himself to the role."

As for Lautner, all he could do was work on portraying Jacob to the best of his abilities. "Honestly, I knew where my character went in New Moon and that's all I tried to stay focused on. I couldn't control things outside. I couldn't control the media. But I could control what I was doing to portray Jacob Black correctly. So that's what I stayed focused on the whole entire time."

_{(Photo © Summit Entertainment)}

Name the two biggest film franchises currently in production. Now name one actor who's in both. Jamie Campbell Bower (best known for his role alongside Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd) is fortunate enough to be a supporting player in the second Twilight movie, New Moon, and in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2. Bower plays Caius, a member of the Volturi, in New Moon, a role he'll reprise if/when the final Twilight book, Breaking Dawn, is made into a movie. And in Harry Potter #7 and #8 Campbell Bower portrays Gellert Grindelwald, a character who makes his first appearance in the series as the Harry Potter franchise winds to a close.

"He's an old friend of Dumbledore's, a possible lover," offered Campbell Bower at the LA press day for New Moon.

Asked to compare the experience of working on Twilight with working on the Harry Potter franchise, Campbell Bower said, "The Twilight phenomenon cinematically is relatively young so there's still a lot of growth there to go with the film, and there's still a lot of connections to be made between cast and crew and stuff, whereas with Potter they've been going for 10 years now. It's a machine, Potter. You go in, you do your thing, and then you go on. Whereas with this, it's a lot more finding out about everything and a lot more exploration to do in general."

Campbell Bower's not quite done filming his scenes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet. "At the moment, I've only worked on it for about a week. I think I've got another week and a bit to go," revealed Campbell Bower. "They're still working on it. They're shooting simultaneously because they've obviously got lots of time scheduled and they have to do both side by side. Whenever they can, they will do that, I think."

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Yes, I know New Moon (the second film of the Twilight series) hasn't even hit theaters yet, but it's not too early to start talking about Twilight movie #3, Eclipse. Filming just wrapped on the third movie of the franchise, and while taking part in the LA press day for New Moon, Kristen Stewart ('Bella Swan') talked about slipping into character for the third time and working with David Slade, yet another director new to the franchise:

"Eclipse is such that, just like New Moon, it sort of starts and becomes a completely new movie. Just as soon as you think you're going to get the same story, it's sort all of a sudden that it completely changes. Bella is much more back to herself. She's content now. She's comfortable and self-assured in a way that she wasn't in New Moon. I think what I really love about Eclipse, what was interesting for me to explore, was different levels of love and acknowledging that the ideals that you maybe had a little while ago aren't true. Bella is innately honest. That's something that I feel she is. In Eclipse she lies to herself and she lies to everyone around her about the fact that she's in love with Jacob, just not as much. It's not that extra thing that you can't really even describe. I loved watching the three of them. I loved playing with the three characters together. There's literally a scene where Edward and Jacob, who are mortal enemies, are in a tent with a sleeping Bella in between them. It's a ridiculous circumstance to find yourself in."

Stewart added, "We had so much to work with. Then the effects as well were even more. There's a big battle that happens and that was more than we had to deal with on New Moon. So it was cool. I've always gotten to do things for really short periods of time. To follow a character this long surprises me every time. I can't wait to do the fourth one because I'm sure that I'm going to come in and say that everything I said this time was wrong, that I actually know Bella more now. And actually we have such established dynamics. The way that I know Bella deals with Edward, you sort of can't mess with that. I know how she deals with him. I know how she deals with Jacob. I know how she deals with Charlie, her dad, and to have people come in and help that process out is only cooler. You always get a different perspective. So working with David [Slade] was like, 'Okay, let's see what you've got,' because he came up with a lot of stuff that I would've never thought of, and he's quite good at the whole technical aspect of movie-making which is so completely over my head. So I got to feel safe that he had that handled and me and Rob [Pattinson] and Taylor [Lautner] just sort of did our thing."

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Robert Pattinson's never had his heart broken the way his character, Edward Cullen, in New Moon breaks Bella's heart. And the British heartthrob admitted at the film's LA press day that thus far he hasn't been the most romantic guy around. "I haven't done that many romantic things, in my life," said Pattinson, laughing. "I actually can't think of a single romantic thing I've ever done. That's terrible!"

Pattinson hasn't even taken advantage of his vocal skills to serenade a woman. "Oh, no! I don't think that would ever be romantic," said Pattinson. "You need to have so much balls to do that. Jesus Christ!"

But he did once give a girl a flower with disastrous results. "I put a flower in someone's locker when I was 15 years old. This girl, called Maria...maybe I was 14. She actually thought it was from someone else, and the other guy claimed it as well, which was just great."

However, Pattinson had no problem tackling the romantic scenes in New Moon. When asked what goes through his head while filming them, Pattinson replied, "It's weird. I keep getting told by people, 'Pump up all the stuff about the action so the guys will go and see it,' but it's ridiculous. It's like saying that guys can't appreciate romance. I don't think you can say that about Gone with the Wind. I've watched Titanic and I didn't think, 'Oh, this is a girl's film.' Especially in New Moon, and actually in the whole series, I've never played it thinking, 'Oh, I'm in a series of girls' films and I'm doing something just for girls.' I don't feel like I'm doing an animated Tiger Beat every week. I like doing romantic scenes. I felt like a lot of the storyline in New Moon is very heartbreaking and true. I didn't think I was doing something, just for the sake of romance. I thought, in a lot of ways, that it was a really sad story."

More on New Moon:

• New Moon Photos
  
• Trailer and Clips from New Moon

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