As they prepare to bid farewell to the franchise that has made them household names, a daunting task awaits the trio at the centre of the Twilight phenomenon. Will they forever be typecast as the lovesick teenagers that promoted abstinence over pleasures of the flesh? Or can they escape the clutches of Stephenie Meyer's teen vampire series, to emerge as forces to be reckoned with in the years ahead?
Wary of such a Herculean task, each of the three key players – Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner – has been studiously preparing for their professional lives, post-Twilight. Thus far, the results have varied considerably.
• Stewart entered the series with the most on-set experience, having enjoyed a clutch of acting roles before becoming Bella. Supporting turns in Panic Room, Cold Creek Manor and Into the Wild, among others, helped establish her as a young star. It didn't hurt that the 22-year-old's father, John, is a TV producer and her mother, Jules, is a script supervisor. Solid turns in Welcome to the Rileys, The Runaways (as the rocker Joan Jett) and On the Road (where she bared all) suggest she's well ahead of the pack.
• Pattinson, although less experienced, has worked feverishly to overcome his pin-up tag as Edward. The 26-year-old Englishman's turns in Water for Elephants with Reese Witherspoon, Bel Ami with Uma Thurman and David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis have earned him respectable notices, with Cronenberg pointedly giving the lad the thumbs up. He's currently attacking Mission: Blacklist ("about an interrogator called Eric Maddocks, who kind of led the US to find Saddam Hussein in this really intriguing way," he says), and is due to start shooting The Rover, the Australian David Michod's follow-up to Animal Kingdom, in January ("a hard film to get," he confessed to The National, following Cosmopolis's premiere at Cannes). Industry heavyweight support aside, a non-Twilight box-office hit remains elusive.
• Lautner remains the least likely to succeed once his Twilight sheen as Jacob has dimmed. A martial arts type with limited pre-fang credits (the most notable being Robert Rodriguez's The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl), the 20-year-old has tried to push ahead after 2009's forgettable Valentine's Day with the similarly limp outing, Abduction, which spectacularly tanked last year (although his co-star Lily Collins escaped unscathed). A pair of Golden Raspberry nominations haven't helped his long-term plans.