Up and coming actor Robert Pattinson is about to go from "that guy in Twilight" to a household name in a lot of houses across America and the world when the big screen adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight hits theaters. Although you can make the comparison to the Harry Potter films in terms of frenzied excitement, Robert Pattinson has much more of a rock star persona than Daniel Radcliffe ever did. Meyer's character, Edward Cullen, not only has the sex appeal that helps young girls discover their womanhood but he also has the vulnerability many girls can relate with. Whether Pattinson likes it or not, he knows his life is about to change.

When Pattinson sat down with the press at the recent Twilight junket in L.A., he revealed that all of the current attention feels like he's living in two existences, as so many know who he is yet so many people don't even recognize him at all. But when Twilight hits theaters on November 21, those two realities will become one when almost everyone under the age of 25 (and a lot more) will know what he looks like and who he is.

While on-hand at the Twilight junket, we also got the goods on how Robert Pattinson is handling his newfound fame, why Catherine Hardwicke forced him to learn to play baseball, what it's like to play such a different vampire, and how his song wound up on the Twilight soundtrack.

So I just grab the soundtrack and see your name on it. Can you talk about the song and all of that?

PATTINSON: It was just a random occurrence. I was playing music last year and I think Nicky Reed gave a CD to Catherine [Hardwicke] and then Catherine called me in and said, "Hey, look at this." And she showed the scenes with these two random songs, which were just recorded on my computer and it kind of bizarrely fitted... And so I was fine, I didn't really think about it. The hype wasn't even as much then, she just started editing.

I didn't know it was going to be on the soundtrack or anything. So I was just like, "Okay," and agreed to it then. Now it's become this big deal and it looks like I'm trying to get like a record contract off of the back, and everything else, and I go, "Argh, no." But I don't know, yeah, they were songs written years ago and nothing to do with Twilight. I thought I'd be able to get away with it secretly and have it under a different name and stuff but I think people thought it was too much like a marketing gimmick. So I go, "Ah, whatever."

This is probably the wrong question to ask somebody who successfully bought into the idea of wizards and Hogwarts. But how easy is it for you to buy into the idea of vampires, because I think this is a new look at them, the different rules, but it's also a much more realistic sense? These are much more human vampires than we've seen before yet you still have to buy into that supernatural aspect of the character. How much of a leap is that?

PATTINSON: Not too much, I guess. I mean, I was trying to humanize it as much as I can. There is obviously the leap where you say, "Okay. If you get bitten by one of these guys, you live forever and you have all of this stuff." But I found it quite easy to just accept once you know the facts of their existence. I found it quite easy to just accept that and say, "Okay. Edward was unconscious and he gets bitten by someone and three days later you wake up and have an unquenchable thirst for human blood. When before that you were just a normal, moral seventeen-year-old. And you realize after a little while I never sleep and I'm going to live forever and I have super strength and super speed. Like how would I behave as a human from that point onward?" So I really didn't think about it like playing a vampire, I just thought about the specific, the sum of its parts, with really the word vampire on top. I mean, I didn't think about it playing a vampire at all.

What about the attention I'm sure you'll be getting from the fans of Twilight and [that] you're bound to get in the future? Do you think it's going to be fun or annoying, because you're going to get a lot of attention for this role?

PATTINSON: I still haven't really gotten my head around it. I mean, I've been in so many cities now where everybody screams and stuff and then you leave the room and no one knows who you are. And it's like the most bizarre dichotomy of existences. It's like I'm living two completely different lives. Maybe it will be different when the movies comes out? But, I don't know. I mean I've been in this Twilight wrap for ages where I haven't done anything really this year other than do the movie and then promote it. And so when people come up to me on the street, I'm totally expecting it. But I guess after the movie's released then - I mean, I'm not surrounded by Twilight people all of the time and people still say, "Hey, Edward," or whatever. I don't know what that's going to be like if they do do that. I mean, I don't really go out that much anyway so I don't really meet anybody. So it doesn't really affect me [laughs]."

Are the books as big in the U.K. as they are here?

PATTINSON: I don't know yet. I mean, I've only been there for eight days this year. I mean, I get a lot of letters from London. But here, since the day I got back from Oregon people come up to me every single day and everybody knows. I mean, I was in the airport the other day and the customs lady is like, "I've got my midnight showing tickets." [laughs] And it's like the customs woman is like seventy and I was like, "Okay." It's like, "Me and all my friends are going."

I didn't know what it was when I went into it. I thought it was an independent movie director making a vampire film with an actress who was on a roll of doing kind of classy, indie films, like intelligent films. It wasn't... I didn't see it as a teen movie, I thought they are trying to do a teen movie which is different, it was for a different audience. I didn't think it was so huge at all. I just thought it was a teen movie that wasn't pandering to people, I thought it could be kind of clever."

Can we talk about the baseball scene real quick, because we heard that you didn't really know how to play? Did they teach you to play baseball?

PATTINSON: Absolutely... I'm terrible at baseball, yeah. And Catherine wanted me so desperately to be like a pro baseball player for some reason. And I was just like, "Why? He's not a pro baseball player, he's a vampire. Why would he be a pro baseball player?" [laughs] And I just didn't understand it. So I kept fighting everyone the whole time and I was like, "He can be crap. He doesn't even need to be able to play. He doesn't need to know the rules, doesn't even need a bat." I don't know.

So everybody hated it and I kept arguing and arguing it. And everybody found it really annoying, because I wouldn't do my 'ready' position. Then, I don't know... I had a coach teach me how to do a ready position and I was just like, "It's a squat. Stop calling it a ready position." So every time Catherine had a problem with blocking at any point during the rest of the shoot, I'd be like, "I really think doing a ready position would help this scene. I'm in the corner doing the ready position." Yeah, I'm terrible at baseball.

You described it as a teenage movie but smart, or not like the typical teen movie. But there are those really powerful emotions that I think are something that the teenage girls who read the books are really responding to. And I thought in filming those you really have to teeter right to the edge of melodrama or right to the edge of pushing it so far that you can't buy into it. How do you gauge where that point is? Or with these heightened passions, is it okay to just keep going beyond?

PATTINSON: I mean, I like melodrama a lot and I don't think it's really done in movies anymore. Like the only other movie I've seen recently is Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. That's the kind of thing, like these operatic stories, and I really thought it was that. And I thought also the fact that it's in this tiny little town and the way it's written is so - what's the word? Languid, something like that. It begins with an 'L' [laughs].

I mean, the books, nothing really happens in a trilogy of books. I mean, in the fourth one a lot of stuff happens but it's like literally wading through treacle and a lot of the story and having that claustrophobia, it really intensifies stuff. I don't think you really need to do too much, it just needs like a look here and a look there and it just heightens it by the fact that nothing is really happening in the whole movie. I haven't seen it, so..."