A lot of girls in L.A. just stand in the corner wondering 'Who's gonna talk to me? Who am I gonna diss?'

I always tried to make it a goal to relieve some of the stress my mother went through. I applied myself to school very diligently. I wanted to go out of state so I wouldn't have to depend on my mother.

In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn't realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn't think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting - that it's a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, 'Hey, I'm going to be a NASCAR driver.'

Actors strive to be part of something like 'Twilight' and what 'Twilight' is, is unbelievable.

I did. I still do. It's kind of grown to a "Ren and Stimpy" kind of lab, which is fun.

It is fun, revisiting a role. Usually, as an actor, you do a movie and you put that character up on a shelf, and he's done. That character is now immortalized on film, but you don't get to play him again. In these films [Twilight saga], we got to revisit these characters, and we didn't take that for granted.

By no means do I want to be a piece of meat for the rest of my career. It's funny when you get asked to do a talk show, and then they follow it up with requesting you take your shirt off.