Photo from fOTOGLIF

Friday is the day that the second installment in the Twilight movie trilogy, New Moon, opens, and teenage girls worldwide are giddy with anticipation. Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward Cullen in the movies, has been the flavor of the week all year for his portrayal as the darkly handsome vampire in the wildly popular movie adaptations of the equally popular books. For the two or three of you who don’t know, Edward Cullen is the vampire who falls in love with human Bella (played by Kristin Stewart) in the fantasy romance series.

At first, readers were shocked, shocked! when Pattinson was cast in the movie. He had been in a couple of lesser known films, and had a small part as Cedric Digory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but other than that, he was an unknown quantity. Of course, all that has changed now, and he’s swarmed by girls (and sometimes women who are old enough to know better) wherever he goes.

He treads the water of mega-stardom warily, however, telling Canada’s National Post, “If someone records what you’re saying, you’re always vulnerable to so many people, so you’ve always got to be watching your back a little bit. More people read the gossip sites than actually watch the movies, so you’re always in somebody else’s hands.”

Twilight fans continue to celebrate the awesomeness of their favorite film after the movie took home several awards Sunday night at the Spike TV Scream Awards 2009. This awards show is dedicated to horror, fantasy, and science fiction feature films. The first Spike TV Scream Awards were in 2006.

The big winners included mega hits Twilight and Transformers 2. Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob in the Twilight series picked up a Scream Award for “Breakout Male Performance.” He also picked up the trophies that were awarded to Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson who didn’t attend the ceremony. Stewart and Pattinson won Best Fantasy Actors. Lautner introduced some much anticipated New Moon footage to satisfy those fans who can’t wait for the film to come out in November.

The frighteningly sexy Megan Fox won the award for Best Sci-Fi Actress and delivered a surprisingly sweet acceptance speech that seemed to be designed to put her back in the good graces of her Transformers director Michael Bay. “I am completely grateful to everyone involved with this franchise,” she said, referring to the Transformers movies.

Best Horror Movie went to Drag Me to Hell, while Twilight won Best Fantasy Movie. Best Comic Book Movie went to Watchmen. True Blood won the award for Best Television Show.

Taylor Lautner

Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob in the Twilight movie franchise says his childhood karate coach convinced him to try acting. Lautner recently told Teen Vogue about his coach convincing him to go on auditions while he was training as a martial arts champion. When asked what he likes about acting now that he’s made a success of it, Lautner said he liked taking on new personas: “Taking on roles that were the opposite of what I could be in real life? That’s still my favorite thing.” He also says he would like to do a series of movies in the same tradition as the Bourne Identity series of movies.

Lautner has shot to popularity after the great success of Twilight. In the upcoming films New Moon and Eclipse, fans discover that Jacob can turn into a werewolf. In a recent interview with MTV.com, he says, “Well, Jacob’s thing is he actually can transform in midair. So I got to do these really cool stunts where I got to actually run and then they’d hook me up on wires and I’d jump up in the air and then I’d come to a jolting stop and have to hang there for a bit. That’s what you saw in the trailer, actually. That was a lot of fun. I get to do a lot of cool stunts in this one.”

But Lautner doesn’t claim all the credit for Jacob’s popularity, telling Teen Vogue, “I think the fans would love anybody who played Jacob … I’m just lucky to be the one who got the chance.”

Taylor Lautner

Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob in the Twilight movie franchise at first thought he would not appear in the sequel because he wasn’t beefy enough to play a bookworm/werewolf. But the core audience of teen girls basically told everyone on every Twilight discussion board, “If Lautner isn’t in New Moon, we walk.”

The producers acquiesced because at the time, Twilight was raking in nearly $400 million at the box office. So Lautner dutifully packed on 30 lbs. of muscle by eating more and working out with weights. Jacob Black, his character, is the platonic friend of Bella Snow (Kristen Stewart). He transforms in New Moon into a werewolf. The sequel sees Edward (Robert Pattinson) packing up and leaving, Jacob turning into a werewolf, and a love triangle forming among the three.

To prepare for the sequel, Lautner spent two hours a day at the gym and ate every two hours, going to a men’s size small to a men’s large, according to a recent interview Lautner did with Interview magazine.

Lautner then explained that Jacob’s transformation into a werewolf was as much a psychological change as physical. He goes from being a clumsy nerd to being incredibly agile. Alas, he told Interview, during the coolest fight scenes, Jacob the werewolf is played by computer generated imagery.