The shirt off his back

Taylor Lautner was a teenage werewolf – still is, in a way, even though filming has finished on the Twilightseries of fantasy flicks. As fans look forward to the first instalment of a two-part conclusion, the shirtless wonder at its centre tells TARA BRADYhow only the Brazilian army can hold back the Twilhards

MEN THE size of Massey Fergusons patrol the corridors of the Beverly Hills Hilton. It’s hard not to stare at the planetary circumferences of their necks and the throbbing veins on their throbbing veins. And they say LA’s Muscle Beach is dead.

So you’re here to keep the girls out? “Yep. Most of ’em.” The main guy – the one who is either packing heat or else is extremely glad to see everyone – smiles. More veins appear. If the late Col Gadafy had hired these gentlemen he’d still be sitting pretty in a golden palace somewhere.

Oh well. Never mind the geopolitics. This is Beverly Hills where, dead or alive, Col Gadafy (“What’s he in?”) is not nearly as significant as La Toya Jackson, who arrived earlier today with enough suitcases to cripple an entire herd of camels. And she, in turn, is not nearly as significant as Taylor Lautner, the reason all these burly chaps are here.

How dangerous can those Twilhard kids be? "It can get pretty hairy," grimaces the young star. "Probably the scariest one was in Brazil. Kristen and I were doing the New Moonpress tour. We were in a small room, just doing interviews: all very quiet and low-key. Then our security team bursts through the door and locks it from the inside. 'Try to remain calm. Two thousand girls have just breached hotel security. They're in the staircase right now on their way up.' We were in lockdown for an hour until the Brazilian National Guard came and rescued us."

Did he have a contingency plan? “No. That’s just it. We tried to figure out what we’d say. Hi? Yes, it’s us? It was funny to consider our limited options. Should we do a dance or trick or something? You know everybody says they have the most passionate fans in the world. But only ours need an army to disperse them.”

Smiley and dressed unassumingly in a red plaid shirt and jeans when Taylor Lautner sits down next to you, you don’t think “OMG! Finally some alone time with Jacob”; you marvel at how impossibly young he is.

“I know. It’s crazy, right?” He grins and flops his elbows on to a table, like he’s getting ready to do homework. Aw.

Like most adolescents his iPod is “all over the place with rap and rock and country”, and he prefers songs to albums. He loves U2. “My favourite band. Definitely.” He loves driving and sports. He loves movies – but that, he says, is only a recent development.

"I've always liked movies, but never as much as throwing a football or going on a hike with my friends. But when I was shooting Abductionwith John Singleton – who's just a total film guru – we were watching tons of movies throughout the entire process. So now I'm kind of hooked."

He looks younger in person, but on the multiplex screen it can be hard to believe he's only just turned 19. The math, to be fair, is somewhat misleading. It's more than six years since director Robert Rodriguez cast him as the titular piscine hero of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girlin 3D, Lautner's first leading role. He's worked steadily since, periodically removing his shirt to produce age-inappropriate screams heard around the world, as part of a little multi- billion-dollar franchise about vampires, werewolves and puppy love.

He never saw it coming. "When I first auditioned for TwilightI had no idea what it was," he says apologetically. "I'd never even heard of those books. It was only after I'd got the movie and went back to school – I was still at public high school at the time – when suddenly I saw a girl reading one. It took me about a week to figure out that in fact all the girls at school were reading these books. They were everywhere. So that got me really excited. It was like this huge underground cult I never knew existed."

It almost didn't happen. Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight, a 2008 adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's supernatural romance, was not expected to set the multiplex ablaze. Yet somewhere between the Thirteendirector's gritty documentary tropes and the triangular chemistry of Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Master Lautner lay a catchy cinematic alchemy.

“I don’t know, we sort of clicked right away. If we hadn’t all gotten along so well, it would have been a nightmare to make all those films together.”

That almost didn't happen either. When The Golden Compassdirector Chris Weitz signed on for the sequel New Moonin 2009, he immediately wanted to recast the role of Jacob Black. At 17, argued the film-maker, Lautner just didn't have the girth and bulk to pass as a werewolf. Undeterred by Weitz's rumoured preference for One Tree Hill'sMichael Copon, Lautner hit the gym. And how. Within months he had gained 30lb of muscle and was back on the staff.

Determined fellow, aren’t you? “Yep. That’s me exactly. I was lucky too, because I learned at a young age that nothing happens without hard work. You don’t just wake up one morning and everything has fallen into place. I knew that from sports and martial arts. You hear far more nos than yeses in the movie business. But martial arts taught me to have persistence, to keep pushing and to stay focused on what you can control.”

Killer moves have played a major role in Lautner’s glittering career.

He was six when he took his first karate class back in Hudsonville, Michigan. By eight, the son of software developer Deborah and Midwest Airlines pilot Daniel had a black belt, a junior world championship title and was training with Xtreme Martial Arts founder Michael Chaturantabut.

“What I loved about the training is the sense that you’re always improving. I don’t have time to train seriously any more; I just do it for fun. And even then you’re still learning all the time.”

Chaturantabut, a former TV Power Ranger, encouraged his charge to give Hollywood a try. For years the Lautner family shuttled between Michigan and California while Taylor picked up roles in The Bernie Mac Showand Cheaper by the Dozen 2. By 2001 the entire clan was ready to throw caution to the wind and move to LA.

Would Hollywood change a Catholic kid from the Midwest? Not a chance.

“I don’t know: I’ve just never got the whole partying thing. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I guess I’ve always been just too outdoorsy and into sports to bother.”

The Twilightsequence has made Lautner the highest-paid teen star in Hollywood history. He's won four Teen Choice Awards. His films have taken almost $800,000,000 and counting at the box office. He's been romantically linked to Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez.

He's "super thankful" for the ride. But now the end is near. Following on this year's Harry Potterdenouement, Breaking Dawn, the final book in Meyer's sequence, will be split into two parts.

“It’s a tricky one. I know when we read this book we were all very curious to see how they’d do it. It’s a very different book to any of the others. If you took out the vampires and the werewolves and the supernatural elements, the story would, at heart, remain the same. We were super-grateful to get Bill Condon as our director as he was very character-driven and this one is all about character development. Jacob finally gets to grow up.”

Does that mean that Taylor Lautner is on Team Jacob now? “Whoo. Definitely. I’ve fallen in love with Jacob. When he feels pain, I feel pain. And he feels pain a lot. I have a special place in my heart for the guy. I really do.”

He ought to. Over the years Lautner has worked hard to bring Jacob to the big screen. It hasn’t all been weight training. Early on, the actor who boasts distant Native American roots (Ottawa and Potawatomi) through his mother, spent time with the Quileute tribe in La Push, near Forks, where the books are set.

“There’s not a lot of them left, so it was a really special experience. I remember my first lunch with them. There were three teenage guys and there were parents and grandparents, but I really wanted to talk to the teenage guys because that’s what I was playing. So I was expecting them to be different or spiritual or something. And I’m there ready to take mental notes, asking them how they spend their spare time. ‘Uh. We play basketball and go to the beach and check out girls.’ Whoah. This isn’t going to be so hard after all.”

The star knows there’s more than a year of promotional duties to go – Part 2 won’t hit cinemas until November 2012 – but he’s gearing up for a long goodbye.

“It’s so tough. I’ve already said goodbye to the filming aspect of it. I suspect that’ll turn out to be the worst part. It was always the aspect I loved most. But I think that last premiere is going to get emotional.”

Will he keep in touch with co-stars K-Patz? “Definitely. Definitely. Definitely.”

And will he miss people quipping “I didn’t recognise you with your shirt on”?

“I do get a lot of shirt jokes. The way I look at it is that we had a responsibility to the fans of books to bring those characters to life. And my character just happened to be shirtless a lot of the time. I was only doing my duty.”

Choose sides Whose team are you on?

TEAM EDWARD

You are an incurable romantic who yearns for rock-steady devotion. You might like to get that seen to before you get arrested for combing through the bins of some unsuspecting love object.

TEAM JACOB

Whoah there. Never mind the rippling physique. He's a dog, dude. An actual dog. We know you love the old thrills and spills. But you don't need a romantic partner; you need a roller coaster and a life-size cut-out of Rambo.

TEAM RENESMEE

Your obsessive fan fiction now takes Jacob and Renesmee into the 22nd century. You spend way too much time thinking about the Twilightfranchise and your neutrality on crucial Edward v Jacob issue makes you Switzerland without the Nazi gold.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

opens next Friday