British schoolboy Robert Pattinson became Hollywood's hot new star alongside Kristen Stewart in Twilight

Dec 31 2008

It's the movie sensation that's set to knock Harry Potter off his number one perch. The boy wizard is dead... long live Edward, the good-looking vampire.

Five years ago, Robert was a schoolboy in his local amateur dramatic society in South-East London. Now, the film's success has made the 22-year-old £5million richer and has propelled him into superstardom.

Even so, he remains every inch the boy next door.

Robert wears a brace, he doesn't wash his hair and his sisters would dress him up as a girl when he was little. Terribly unstarry, he even drinks the odd pint of beer and eats crisps. But he is, without doubt, Hollywood's hottest new pin-up.

And he can act too.

He grew up in a small house in Barnes, South-West London, the son of a vintage car dealer, who even Robert says he wouldn't buy a car from. He drifted briefly into modelling - helped by his mother, an agency scout. And he only applied for drama school at 15 hoping to meet pretty girls.

He didn't - he's still resolutely single - and until recently lived with his parents. But he did get to meet an agent, who spotted him in a local play and introduced him to Harry Potter director Mike Newell.

Mike snapped him up as Cedric Diggory, a prefect at Hogwarts. But it has taken a lead in Twilight to turn him into a global phenomenon.

Fame has come so quickly that Robert is stunned. "I still haven't