Just like every­one else, we’re obsessed with all things Twi­light. So imag­ine our delight when we get to jet over to Van­cou­ver, Canada, to watch the sequel being shot for our­selves! Here are all the behind-the-scenes secrets from the New Moon set (plus a few top­less shots of the guys – well, we couldn’t resist) 

1 Dur­ing film­ing, Kris­ten was very seri­ous about watch­ing her scenes being played back. Imme­di­ately after fin­ish­ing a scene, she would make her way over to the mon­i­tors, and often cov­ered the screen with her robe so that she could watch it alone. Won­der what she thought about her kiss­ing scenes with Robert Pat­tin­son? If we were her, we’d def­i­nitely be want­ing another take. And another. And another…
2 While we watched, cast and crew filmed scenes for Bella’s high school cafe­te­ria at the David Thomp­son Sec­ondary School in Van­cou­ver. Weirdly, the school was being used at the time, so as soon as the bell went the cor­ri­dors filled with hun­dreds of stam­ped­ing stu­dents head­ing for the gym to peer through the glass, des­per­ate to get a glimpse of the famous cast.
3 Bella is pretty reck­less in this movie, dirt-biking and jump­ing off cliffs. But Kris­ten didn’t do her own stunts. ‘They wouldn’t let me!’ she com­plains. ‘I wish I could. I got to jump off a lit­tle plat­form about 3ft high for the cliff scene. For the dirt bik­ing, I got pulled on a motor­bike that had this big, dorky train­ing wheel on it,’ she laughs.
4 Luck­ily, the birth­day party scene where Bella cuts her­self and vam­pire Jasper (Jack­son Rath­bone) can’t resist the smell of her blood, wasn’t too gory on set. ‘Vam­pires don’t need a mas­sive amount of blood to get feisty,’ says Nikki Reed who plays Ros­alie. But Jack­son got so worked up dur­ing the attack he knocked Eliz­a­beth Reaser (Esme) down and scared Kris­ten Stew­art. Rathbone’s co-stars had to phys­i­cally restrain him dur­ing the scene. ‘I was just going for it,’ he explains.
5 We caught Tay­lor Laut­ner in a very uncom­fort­able har­ness attached to wires on a huge crane. The ex mar­tial arts cham­pion did a lot of his own stunts, and would run, leap and fly 10ft in the air on wires – then stop with a painful-looking jolt. That’s when CGI makes him a were­wolf. ‘My char­ac­ter Jacob is the only wolf that can trans­form in mid-air, he just snaps and all his clothes fly off!’ Tay­lor says. We’ll look for­ward to that.
6 We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw how much sweet lit­tle Tay­lor had bulked up to play Jacob in New Moon. His hot new body was the result of some seri­ous train­ing, not to men­tion a hard­core diet regime. ‘The hard­est thing for me was the eat­ing,’ he tells us. ‘I was on 4,000 calo­ries a day and had to shove as much food in my body as pos­si­ble, and hit the gym five days a week. Even now my trainer is always bring­ing me snacks between shots.’ We spied Tay­lor using resis­tance bands to do strength-training exer­cises in his down­time to keep those mus­cles pumped.
7 In New Moon, Edward steps out into the sun­light in order to expose his sparkling skin and thus the Vol­turi vam­pire clan to the world. And in this film, Rob’s sparkly skin spe­cial effect will be much bet­ter than the last one. Direc­tor Chris Weitz says, ‘It was very sub­tle in the first film. This time we made a 3D model of Rob, so we were able to map every move he made and build an effect that really feels like the light is com­ing from inside him, and there will be lens flare, as if you were look­ing at a dia­mond with the sun shin­ing on it.’ Watch out for that 3D model of Rob for sale on eBay soon!

8 In this scene from the film, Tay­lor really had to suf­fer. ‘I was shirt­less, only wear­ing shorts. It was 35°F (2°C) out­side and I was being drenched in water that was so ice-cold, I was absolutely freez­ing. Thank God the scene was only four min­utes long.’ But Tay, we’re eter­nally grateful.
9 For the scene where Bella and Jacob go on a date to the movies with the hap­less Mike tag­ging along, The Old Para­mount The­atre in Van­cou­ver was used for the exte­rior shots. To our hor­ror we dis­cov­ered these days the inside of the the­atre is a lap-dancing club. They must have had to shoot the inte­rior shots some­where else…
10 The school bas­ket­ball courts were home to wardrobe and make-up trail­ers, and as they walked to and fro, Rob and Tay­lor had min­ders shad­ing them with enor­mous golf­ing umbrel­las to shield them from pry­ing cam­era lenses. Says a min­der, ‘Paparazzi are always try­ing to get on set dressed in cam­ou­flage, hid­ing in bushes, leap­ing out and dis­rupt­ing shoot­ing. It’s eas­ier just to keep it quiet where Rob and Tay­lor are.’ We tell them the big brol­lies are a bit of a giveaway.
11 In Stephe­nie Meyer’s book, the regal Vol­turi live in the ancient Ital­ian city of Volterra, a real town in Tus­cany, Italy. For the movie, the pro­duc­tion crew used Mon­tepul­ciano, an ancient walled city also in Tus­cany. But being medieval, the piazza and city hall gave the direc­tor the amaz­ing shot he needed for when Bella races across the foun­tain to save Edward.
12 The night shoots in Vancouver’s Capi­lano Park For­est went on until around 4am, and the hard­est scenes were Bella’s scream­ing night­mares about Edward. The crew recre­ated her entire bed­room in the mid­dle of the woods, Kris­ten had to sob and scream for hours, and while every­one else wrapped up warm, Tay­lor Laut­ner spent most of the shoot with his shirt off. Shame.
13 The story of Twi­light is set in Forks, Wash­ing­ton, the raini­est, most cloud-covered place on earth. As vam­pires can’t go out in the direct sun­light with­out their skin sparkling and draw­ing atten­tion to them­selves, this is a handy place to live. Unfor­tu­nately, Van­cou­ver was so sunny when we were there, Rob couldn’t shoot his exte­rior scenes. ‘I’d be glint­ing,’ Rob laughs.

14 We spied Rob hav­ing his famously bouf­fant hair given a quick trim on set. Appar­ently, this hap­pened every week to 10 days while shoot­ing the movie. Plus, he had his bar­net re-styled on-set twice a day by New Moon hair­styl­ist Thom McIn­tyre, to make sure it remained per­ma­nently in its sig­na­ture tou­sled state. Diva? Rob? No.
15 In the books, Jacob’s home is a red house, and the pro­duc­tion crew found the per­fect wild loca­tion in the mid­dle of Vancouver’s National For­est. Only prob­lem was, the house was green. ‘It was impor­tant to the fan base to keep the red of Jacob’s house. They know it that way, and they wanted it that way. So we ended up paint­ing the whole house red to match the book.’ Hope the own­ers liked it.
16 Kris­ten turned 19 while shoot­ing New Moon and cel­e­brated by work­ing all day! Luck­ily the crew secretly planned a big birth­day cake for her. She didn’t know a thing.
17 As Twi­light was shot in Port­land, Ore­gon, and New Moon in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, Bella’s house had to be taken down, moved to Canada, and rebuilt, piece by piece, both the inte­rior and the exte­rior. But it’s not quite the same as it was in the first movie. There’s a whole new bay win­dow on the side of the house, so Jacob can climb up to her bed­room at night.
18 To kill time, the cast played catch between scenes as Tay­lor always has a foot­ball with him. ‘As soon as I’m done film­ing I’ll play catch with any­body who will play catch with me,’ he says. ‘Kris­ten and I play catch all the time and she has a really good arm. She’s extremely accurate.’
19 Kris­ten nearly got hurt by one of the were­wolves. Alex Meraz, who plays Jacob’s tribe mem­ber Paul (far left), got car­ried away and became aggres­sive towards her in the scene in which Jacob intro­duces his pack broth­ers to Bella. Alex says, ‘The wolf pack stays up all night look­ing for who’s killing peo­ple, so I thought it’d be a great idea to stay up for 10 days straight.’ When it came to the scene, he was scream­ing his lines and grabbed Kris­ten by the throat. ‘The pro­duc­ers freaked out – no one touches Kristen!’
20 Ash­ley Greene who plays Alice, the vam­pire who can see the future, got to drive a real Porsche while shoot­ing in Italy. ‘It was fun,’ says Ash­ley. ‘I worked with a stunt­man before dri­ving it and learned how to do a bunch of things. Then I drove the Porsche in a scene and stopped about 2in from a wall!’