It's a funny thing: You want so badly for people to see what you do - you're proud of it - and I like the effect that movies have on people. But the attention can also make me uncomfortable.

Acting was my classroom in many ways and I always believed and I still do that acting is not just about pretending to be someone else, it's also about discovering yourself and reaching deeper inside yourself.

I think we were promoting New Moon just as I was finishing The Runaways, and I remember going to Comic-Con with a Minor Threat T-shirt on. I was really happy and excited to be there, but I was so defensive and crazy.

I've just grown into not having to care so much and to not try to think that I'm going to be able to plan out the way that everyone perceives me. There are no false impressions. Everyone's impression of you is going to be what it is in that isolated moment.

I can't do what my mother did, which is tell me every single day of my life about her labor and how long it was and how it was 36 hours of hell .

Usually, at the end of a film it's like I've finally gotten to know this person completely, and then we're done. That actually happened on the set of Twilight, and then it happened again on New Moon. Each time my character Bella became a different person, and I got to know that person and take her to the next level.

If you respect yourself and you love yourself, that's the only way anybody else is going to.