Twilight Coven Philippines

Teen Hollywood has a long (and great!) interview with Kellan Lutz.

TeenHollywood: You have a great ensemble cast for Twilight. What was that experience like? And, did you do any bonding ahead of time, so that you could appear as close as the Cullen family is in the books?

Kellan: Yeah, we actually really tried for that. Lucky for me, I knew a lot of the cast members. They were my friends, so it was really easy to step in there and be Emmett. As far as with Nikki Reed and myself, I hadn't really hung out with her, so it was my mission, as well as hers, to make the relationship of Rosalie and Emmett, and be able to portray a realness on screen. We're married and we pretend to be siblings, so we had to feel each other out and know the quirkiness of it all. So, we'd hang out and go to dinner all the time, and we built puzzles and just did random stuff. The cast would all hang out off the set because we were all around the same age range and it was such a great cast to work with. Everyone was really cool. We'd all go to dinner, or go to the bar next door and listen to the bands play, and just relax. We had some hard shoot days with a lot of stunts.

TeenHollywood: Well, Emmett is pretty cool.

Kellan: I was like, "Hey, I want this Emmett guy. He's cool." And then, the project was cast. I wasn't able to put myself on tape, and everything was golden for it, so I was just like, "Okay, onto the next one" but the actor who was playing Emmett fell through, for whatever reason. So, I said, "Get me in there!" The next day, my agent said, "Your audition is tomorrow. If they like you, they're going to fly you to Oregon the next day." I went to the audition and I had a lot of people rooting for me. So, they flew me out to Oregon that night, and I had to audition for Catherine Hardwicke the next morning, at 8 o'clock. Catherine liked me a lot and said, "You're my perfect Emmett! You're it!"

TeenHollywood: Did you understand what a huge following the books have?

Kellan: I really didn't realize what Twilight was. I honestly didn't realize the huge cult following, and that there were so many books. I was just excited that someone wrote an amazing script that was so sensual. It's beautiful. It's a love story about a vampire and a human girl, and what they can and cannot do. It was just really cool. So, once I found out that there were books, I did myself some reading and fell in love with the whole series.

TeenHollywood: Now that you know about the devoted following, does that freak you out at all? Have you had any strange experiences with fans yet?

Kellan: No, it doesn't freak me out. I like it. It makes me smile. I don't really get weirded out by anything in life. The fans are super-cool. I love talking to them because this is for them. This is a secondary Bible to some of them. They love the books. Having my hair black and not curly was life or death. Nothing really scares me. Even when they found our hotel rooms while we were filming, I was happy to chat with them. It was really cool. The fans are great.

TeenHollywood: When you're playing a vampire, how do you find something to identify with since you can't draw from personal experience?

Kellan: I really feel lucky to be Emmett because, he is one of the few that really is indifferent, as far as being a vampire. Unlike Edward, who finds it a negative that he can't die and he has to live like this forever, Emmett is such a worry-free soul. He just loves it. He's like, "I get to live forever, fly, jump far and have extra strength." As an actor, I'm trying to portray the free will of it. It's not really a complex story, like the other characters might have. I just tried to have him enjoy it, the most he can.

TeenHollywood: Having wanted to play a vampire, were you disappointed at all that you didn't get to wear any fangs?

Kellan: In the beginning, I was like, "You're kidding me, right? Give me fangs! I want fangs!" But, no, not at all. I really think that's the beauty of it. They really humanize us, which hasn't been done that much. Everyone sees the clichéd Dracula with the fangs and the blood coming off of him, whereas us Cullens do want to try to fit in. We don't want to look scary or stand out. Yeah, we have pale skin and cool eyes, but I really like the humanization of it all.

Read more about Kellan by accessing the interview here.

Aside from Twilight, Kellan will also be seen this year in HBO's Generation Kill and in the new 90210 series.