The “Twi­light” series may have changed the lives of fans world­wide, but per­haps no one has been more affected by its suc­cess than the three stars of the film: Robert Pat­tin­son, Kris­ten Stew­art and Tay­lor Lautner.

All became overnight sen­sa­tions when they were intro­duced to the novel’s mil­lions of fans as the faces of Edward, Bella and Jacob — the three high-school stu­dents with mys­ti­cal secrets at the cen­ter of the story. Edward is a vam­pire, Jacob is a were­wolf and Bella is the ordi­nary teenage girl loved by both of them.

attin­son, 23, Stew­art, 19, and Laut­ner, 17, went from bit parts to big stars with the first “Twi­light” film. As they pre­pare for the release Fri­day of the antic­i­pated sequel, “New Moon,” the young cast reflected on the ups and downs of new­found fame.

More after the jump!

AP: What is the best thing to come out of the “Twi­light” mania for you?

Stew­art: It’s the same sat­is­fac­tion that I get from any other movie, it’s just that so many more peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion. I always say I make movies for the life expe­ri­ence — lit­er­ally, you steal from the char­ac­ters you play — and to know that that’s actu­ally affect­ing 100 mil­lion not only lit­tle girls, but really spans the ages of peo­ple, it just feels good. It’s so dif­fer­ent from any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced, so that’s def­i­nitely the best thing.

Pat­tin­son: Pre­sent­ing at the Oscars and stuff, it’s just kind of so sur­real. But there’s lit­tle things, like recently I’ve been work­ing on the “Remem­ber Me” trailer and I had very lit­tle time to orga­nize it, but the con­trol you’re given because of “Twilight’s” suc­cess is kind of incred­i­ble. It is an amaz­ing feeling.

Laut­ner: It’s trav­el­ing the world in gen­eral and see­ing this kind of fan sup­port world­wide. We go to Sao Paolo, Brazil, and then we go to Mex­ico City, we go all over the world and we have fans there with the same amount of pas­sion every­where we go. It’s just amaz­ing to know we have that kind of fan sup­port behind us.

AP: What’s one thing you miss from your pre-“Twilight” life?

Stew­art: I like being out­side. I like to take walks and I could totally take walks — it’s not the fans, the fans are great, they would let me walk. It’s the other peo­ple, you know what I mean. It’s the other people.

Pat­tin­son: I loved dri­ving around L.A. I know not a lot of peo­ple say that, but if you don’t have to get any­where, L.A. is the best place to drive ’round in. I used to have this lit­tle car, a con­vert­ible … and I really do miss doing that, as the sun is going down, dri­ving over the moun­tains. It’s a great thing and I kind of do miss that a lit­tle bit. It’s not really the same thing when you’ve got 10 cars fol­low­ing you.

Laut­ner: Malls and movie the­aters, or me at them. You have to make adjust­ments but you can’t let it get to you.

AP: What has been your most mem­o­rable fan encounter?

Stew­art: There were two girls that wound up in Italy as extras. I had met them pre­vi­ously in Van­cou­ver but they were from Min­nesota, so lots of trav­el­ing and strange coin­ci­dence that they hap­pen to have been placed right next to my mark.

Laut­ner: There are so many. The Brazil­ian fans were very pas­sion­ate. We were greeted by them at the air­port. Appar­ently there were bar­ri­cades but I didn’t see them. It was an inter­est­ing walk from the air­port doors to our car.

AP: How is “New Moon” dif­fer­ent from “Twilight”?

Stew­art: It’s very much rooted in the story. The rea­son “Twi­light” felt sort of kinetic, like the energy was sort of hard to grasp … was because the whole story was about not being able to grasp that energy but going after it with full force and not car­ing about the con­se­quences. That sort of infil­trates “New Moon” because she’s been told that she was absolutely wrong, so now it’s a more mature, con­sid­er­ate approach to the same ideas. Tonally, “New Moon” is dif­fer­ent in that it also becomes more dan­ger­ous, it becomes more real. She finally opens her eyes and she’s like, “Oh, I’ve woken up in Won­der­land. It’s really scary. It’s actu­ally scarier than I thought it was going to be” because there are were­wolves and all the bad vam­pires want to kill her and all of that, so tonally it could not be more different.

Laut­ner: It takes every­thing Bella and Edward cre­ated in “Twi­light” and destroys it at the begin­ning when he leaves, and it has to rebuild it, or Jacob has to rebuild Bella and then it’s kind of destroyed at the end again. It’s an emo­tional roller coaster.

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