FEARnet’s hometown, Philadelphia, PA, has historically been voted the ugliest city in the country. Not because of the overabundance of grey sidewalk and silver skyscrapers. Nor because of the climbing murder rate. And not even because of the fact that the harsh “ja eat? fuggedaboutit” accent is indistinguishable from a six-year-old with a mouth full of cheese-steak hoagie. No, it’s because of the overabundance of significantly obese, hideously disfigured monsters we call Philadelphians, which we find lurking the streets of this godforsaken town. So it’s a rare moment when you see a bouffantiful beauty, such as Robert Pattinson, THE vampirific man-meat du jour, walking down a Philly sidewalk. That’s why we, and a few other salivating Philadelphians, took our sorry faces to meet Pattinson a few days ago when he stopped by Philly on his nationwide press tour. In addition to some sequel and DVD news, Pattinson also revealed he’s a believer in everlasting love at first sight! But we’re guessing he didn’t exactly find his soul mate here in the ol’ City of Brotherly Love. Nevertheless, to hear what Pattinson had to say, read after the jump…

Why do you think your character speaks so much to the readers?
I think I’m still not entirely sure. I actually asked the people in Chicago yesterday a similar thing. I asked them “Why have all you girls turned up? What do you see in Edward? Why is he so attractive.” And the unanimous response was “Because he’s so sexy!” [Laughs.] I was like, “Oh.” That is the depth of attraction. I was really kind of baffled by the whole thing. In some ways it must have to do with chivalrous-chivalry-chivalrousness, whatever, that’s how unfamiliar I am with it. It’s gentlemanliness I guess.

How have you been handling fame? How has your life changed?
At the moment not a huge amount. I’m just going from place to place. It’s so new to me I can’t really be jaded. It’s not really going to my head because I don’t even know what it is. It’s strange how you get treated differently by people in a very brief amount of time. When you ask someone to go out to dinner they’re like, “Do you want me to?” It’s like, “What are you talking about, why would I have asked you?!” Funny little things like that happen.

If [Harry Potter’s] Cedric Diggory and Edward Cullen were to get into a battle, who would emerge victorious and why?
Probably Edward, since he’s invincible. Cedric wouldn’t really know what to do.

He [Cedric] has a wand…
Oh, he does have a wand, but he can’t really use it though, he’s too much of a good person. He’s too much of a saint.

How are you handling the hype surrounding the movie, like what happened the other day in San Francisco [in which a girl’s nose was broken and another fainted]?
It’s just kind of weird. I know it can’t be to do with me personally, because the movie is not even out. You’re kind of turning up not really knowing what to do for the people that turn up. People are saying, “I traveled four states and have been waiting since nine o’clock yesterday to do this and it’s like, “Yeah? Cool?” When I go I guess I’m trying to promote it, but I’m not even promoting it. I’m just there to get screamed at. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a surreal experience.

After reading Stephenie’s prequel, the book from Edward’s perspective, did you go literal in your interpretation of how you wanted to play him in the film?
I only got that two thirds of the way into shooting. In any job, whatever connection you feel with the script at the time and whatever you’re feeling is important, is the only thing you can bring to it. I don’t know if I was playing the book. I don’t know what I was playing. I definitely felt some connection to it, and felt I had a connection with Kristen and thought the relationship was the only important thing to get across. I had to make sure there was a separation between their relationship and everything else in the movie. I think that came across.

Is the emotional or physicality of your role easier to play?
A lot of the physicality is quite difficult because I’m not that much of a body actor. I don’t have that much control over my body. You had to establish a whole matrix of movement so it didn’t look human. I guess that was really difficult because it had to be really concentrated, since there was so many [movements].Most fantasy films that flop aren’t consistent, so we went through a lot of stuff about physicality and ended up making it much more simple than complicated. We started out with really complex ideas of how they should move and fight but we ended up playing much more human than we initially started out. I think that’s better, it’s scarier in a lot of ways. The emotion felt very natural.

Can you talk about any scenes you may have shot that won’t be in the theatrical cut, but that we might see later on the DVD?
There’s quite a lot of stuff. We fought the big fight scene at the end within the first week, and I was really convinced that the way I established the character arc that Edward needed to be 100 percent demonic in the last fight. “The monster”, which he always says he is to Bella, I wanted him to become that at the end. I kind of psyched myself up a week to do this nuts fight. As soon as I started doing it I don’t think anyone expected me to do it like that so they were like, “Uh, tone it down.” I had maybe thirteen takes where my direction was “tone it down,” on every single take. I had no idea what was going on. I would love to see what the first take was, especially after seeing the final thing with one bit of the fight with me and Cam. Where we were growling at each other, where we both were really into it like we were vampires. When we watched the playback afterwards, there was a big bright light and we didn’t realize, we thought it was kind of dark and you could just see these two guys, one with a bouffant hair cut and the other with his abs just there like “Argh!” [Laughs.] It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I hope that’s on the DVD, it’s quite funny.

Do you consider yourself a romantic like Bella?
I think I’m particularly old school. I think he only decides to be with Bella because he hasn’t talked to anyone in such a long time and hasn’t made any effort with anybody. When he finally starts the relationship it has to be through this template of what he believes is the correct way of dealing with other humans. I think his actual core is quite similar to me, where he’s just sort of the essence of gentlemanliness, just not wanting to be a complete asshole. I guess that’s kind of what I am.

What’s the first thing you plan to do once the craziness of this thing blows over?
I was getting quite scared the other day. When I go back to London, the only thing I’ve done all year was go around to cities and have people scream at me and stuff and ask things like “What’s it like to play the most beautiful person in the world?” I’m going to go back and start talking to my friends, being like “Yeah, well this other person asked me how is it to play the most beautiful person in the world and then I went to this room and there’s five thousand people screaming at me.” I feel like I have nothing to talk about to my friends anymore. It’s going to really destroy me when I go back home.

What specifically about the character made you want to be in this film?
I don’t think I had a specific thing in mind as to what I wanted to do it when I read the script. I thought it was impossible, and I thought I wasn’t going to get it, but I liked Kristen Stewart and the team. I went in for the hell of it really, and the audition…it just felt really right. That’s really the only reason why I wanted to do the job. I read the books afterwards and established the whole way of playing it. I really found out about the whole cult about Twilight after I did the audition, and I liked the idea of that character that’s so specific and people had such a strong opinion of. Going into a project where the audience will already have a really hard preconception of what is actually seen, you can play against it in the movie. The back-story is already set up, so you can just fight against it. It’s a very odd character.

How does it fit in with any future career goals?
I’ve been playing kind of a string of loner parts for a while, and this is kind of the king of the loner parts. Hopefully I’m going to go into a thing where you actually have some kind of normal relationship with the rest of humanity. I think every role I played has some sort of derangement, so I hope in the next thing I do I can be relatively normal.

There’s an immense sexual tension in these books between Edward and Bella. Do you have any type of trick to build up that connection?
There’s definitely some kind of connection. I don’t know if it’s sexual tension or whatever it was, but I guess we never really talked to each other on the set. There was a lot of awkward silences, since neither of us really knew each other the whole time, and I guess that kind of helped. There’s a lot of stuff you can do. I went to Oregon two months early and just obsessed myself with the story, so when everyone else came up they were like “Oh God, what is this guy on?” I guess the more in depth you get with the part the more involved you get and the more of yourself you see in the lines. It all just kind of binds I guess.

Stephenie Meyer said she listened to a lot of Linkin Park when she was writing the book. Did you listen to any of the bands she listened to?
I was listening to a lot of girl acoustics, like some depressing stuff. Some Alila Diane – who actually lived in Portland – a composer called Georgy Ligeti, who I thought was kind of relevant. It was kind of the opposite of what Stephenie was listening to. She has very hard, almost punk stuff, and I listened to really depressing acoustic stuff.

A lot of the book deals with instant love or love at first sight. Do you believe in it, and believe it’s ever lasting?
I kind of do, I believe in both. I think the instances in which I’ve experienced what you think is love at first sight… you’re always too scared to talk to the person. That always ends up lasting for longer. And if you never talk to them, you think it lasts for the rest of your life! [Laughs.] I kind of do.

After seeing the immense response, will there be other films? And have you signed on to any other Twilight films yet?I went into it when it was a trilogy and signed on for the next two. But I guess it depends on how much money each of them makes.

How do you think your portrayal of Edward differed from Stephenie Meyer’s character?
It’s weird because I thought I was doing something different. But now Stephenie has seen it and she’s like “You did it exactly how I imaged it” and I thought, “Really?”

In the book when you read him saying, “You should stay away from me I’m going to hurt you,” you get this sense of security, because you know he’s never going to do anything, and you know that she knows. I kind of liked the idea of him being in a little less control of himself, because for one thing I think it makes it sexier and makes him more attractive. If he’s saying “Alright listen, there’s a real chance I might definitely kill you,” [laughs] it makes their relationship more intense if she’s saying “I know you won’t,” as reassurance to herself rather than him. It makes it kind of bazaar and funny. I thought I had made him a little more unpredictable.