Lautner claims the hard part wasn’t hitting the gym.
“The most important thing was the eating side,” he says. “We found out that I had to consume at least 3,200 calories a day just to maintain, and I was trying to gain.” That meant stopping to eat every two hours or so and carrying around bags of high-protein food, sometimes pausing mid-meeting to wolf down a couple burger patties.
Taylor Lautner wants to clear something up: He has no problem with going shirtless onscreen. “One thing that I have heard recently, which is not true and I didn’t say, was that I will never take my shirt off for a movie again,” says the 17-year-old actor, whose abs and pecs have been under an unprecedented amount of scrutiny since he packed on 30 pounds of muscle for “New Moon,” the second film in the “Twilight” series. “I didn’t say that,” he insists. “If the character requires it, I will.”
That’s good to know, because he’ll probably be asked to appear that way a lot considering the rabid fan response to early shots of a shirtless Lautner in “New Moon.” But Lautner insists it was all part of the job. “A year from now, if I love a character and I love a story that requires me to lose 40 pounds, I’m ready to do it,” he says. Still, all the attention he’s been getting must be distracting, right?
“I don’t think there’s any way to prepare yourself for this phenomenon,” he says. “None of us expected it when we were filming ‘Twilight.’ I don’t think there’s a way to ever get used to it. It’s not normal to drive down a street and see your face up on a billboard. But it’s ‘Twilight.’ It comes with the job.”