It happened while I was filming “Water for Elephants in which my partner is Reese Witherspoon. We had a scene with elephants but there were so many paparazzi around that it was scaring the animals and it was impossible to film. Out of the blue, fans, that were waiting for autographs, had enough and circled around the paparazzi. Teens made big guys run away. It was unreal! I was pleased.

I've said, I think since the second one [part of Twilight Saga ], that it's going to take 10 years to really settle in my brain, and I'm four years into it.

The first period of getting famous was incredibly strange to me and really fun at the beginning because you didn't realise the consequences of anything. You could say or do whatever you wanted and it just didn't matter.

That was the good thing about having different directors [on series]. You had to stay on your toes.

It's strange, somebody asked for my autograph the other day. Because I finished school and I'm not really doing anything at the moment, I was just kind of aimlessly wandering around London and these two guys who were about 30 came up and asked for my autograph. I was really quite proud at the time, and they wanted to take photos and stuff. And then they were sort of wandering around and I was kind of wandering around and I bumped into them about three times, and every single time their respect for me kept growing and growing and growing.

What is forever? God, I don't know. Hope, I guess. That's a difficult question.

I went out a couple of times with Pierce. He's totally recognizable, and he makes no effort to tone it down. Some people were glancing over at us in the restaurant, and he just went over and introduced himself. And it does work. It dissipates all the attention. Me? I just crawl under the table.