Taylor Lautner talks life after Twilight

Taylor Lautner’s got a challenge escaping the giant shadow of his ‘Twilight’ character Jacob, but he’s made a good stab by taking on something totally different in ‘Grown Ups 2’.

He plays Frat Boy Andy, leader of a group of ‘townie-hating’ college jocks.  Basically his character is horrible - he does backflips for no reason – and he’s the antagonist to Adam Sandler and his gang of middle-aged pals (Chris Rock, Kevin James and David Spade). Several critics reckon our Taylor steals every scene he’s in.

It’s the total opposite to the nice-but-dim Jacob from ‘Twilight’, but was this deliberate? We asked the star (watch him above).

[Stephenie Meyer: "The Twilight vampires are mormons"]

“I don’t want to be like ‘OK, in order to get rid of the ‘Twilight’ thing I have to do this now…’ he said. “It wasn’t a planned out thing. When I finished the franchise I wasn’t like ‘Oh, I gotta do a comedy now.’ I knew I wanted to do something different, but then it all made sense. I mean Adam randomly asked to meet with me, and I hadn’t met him before so I was intimidated… He was like ‘Hey I’m doing my first sequel ever, and I would love for you to be a part of it and do a fun cameo in it.’ I was thrilled. I mean it was such an honour coming from him. I’ve grown up my whole life watching all of his movies. And then I was like ‘You know what, that would be really cool. It’s something I’ve never really done before. Totally different. It would be a challenge for me.”

Lautner said he admires actors like Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Brad Pitt because they’ve mixed up genres, something he hopes to emulate.

“I look at actors that I’ve grown up watching my whole life and they’ve never really done the same thing over and over again. Still today they’re challenging themselves - and I respect that.”

We also asked him the classic job interview question: where do you see yourself in ten year’s time?

“Geez-Louise. Look I hope I’m just still doing this. I really hope so, because this is what I love to do and I still can’t believe I’m sitting here today. It all still feels like a dream. So I hope that you know, I’ve done some different movies, I hope I’ve done some dramas, some action movies, some comedies, and I’m still able to work with people like this and I’m still learning. I believe you can never stop learning, so I hope I’m still learning 10 years down the road.”

'Grown Ups 2' is released in the UK on 9 August.