10 Fascinating Facts You Never Knew About The Twilight Movies

With nearly 15 years since the first Twilight movie, it’s worth revisiting the behind-the-scenes stories that made the story so successful.

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The Twilight movies are littered with lesser-known, behind-the scenes stories that provide additional insight into the making of the films. Based on Stephanie Meyer’s bestselling book series, the Twilight saga follows Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart), a vampire and a human woman whose love puts them in constant danger. Despite mixed reception from critics and audiences, the series proved to a huge success, causing a massive boom in adaptations of YA literature and earning over $3 billion at the box office across five installments.

The behind-the-scenes story of Twilight paints a fascinating picture of how the franchise came to be the cultural juggernaut it is today. The overall impression is one of a series lovingly crafted, in which sharp casting, a strong sense of camaraderie and a healthy dose of chaos came together to create a series that’s fondly remembered to this day. Here’s 10 interesting facts about the origin of the Twilight franchise.

10Kristen Stewart Had To Wear Contacts For The Whole Saga

Kristen Stewart sports fairly obvious contact lenses to achieve the red-eyed newborn vampire look in Breaking Dawn. However, the actress’ experience with contacts began much earlier in the series. Even when portraying human Bella, Stewart is wearing color-correcting lenses to change her green eyes to the brown of Bella’s book description (via MTV). This wasn’t the only time Stewart had to subtly change her appearance for Twilight. In the original film, the actress was given hair extensions to give her locks some added richness, and in Eclipse, she had to sport a wig after cutting her hair to play Joan Jett in The Runaways (via Glamour).

9Stephanie Meyer Had The Idea For Twilight In A Dream

The multi-billion dollar Twilight franchise can all be traced back to one moment that ignited Stephanie Meyer’s imagination. The author describes a dream (via CNN) with “two people in kind of a little circular meadow with really bright sunlight, and one of them was a beautiful, sparkly boy and one was just a girl who was human.” Not only did the dream give Meyer the idea for a novel about a teenage girl in a relationship with a vampire, the image of the couple in a sunlit meadow has become one of the most enduring recurring motifs in the franchise.

8Robert Pattinson Is On The Twilight Soundtrack (A Lot)

The original Twilight soundtrack is stacked with great songs, some of which were recorded by Robert Pattinson. The songs “Never Think”, which plays when Bella and Edward discuss his telepathy at a restaurant, and “Let Me Sign”, which can be heard when Edward is forced to suck the vampiric venom from Bella’s body, were both written and recorded by Pattinson long before he was cast in Twilight. Rosalie actress Nikki Reed subtly showed the songs to director Catherine Hardwicke, who loved them and put them in the film (via Cheatsheet). What’s more, the famous piano ballad “Bella’s Lullaby” was composed and performed by Pattinson specially for the film.

7Kristen Stewart Was Robert Pattinson’s Biggest Reason For Auditioning

It’s fairly well known that Robert Pattinson wasn’t the first choice to play Edward. Stephanie Meyer envisioned Henry Cavill as Twilight’s Edward, but the ages didn’t line up. Another obstacle to Pattinson’s eventual casting was his own reluctance to audition. The actor admits that he wasn’t sure about reading for the role, but chose to go through with it after learning that Kristen Stewart would be playing Bella. The two had never met, but Pattinson had admired the actress’ performance in Into The Wild and was enthusiastic to work with her (via Marie Claire).

6Robert Pattinson Lied For Fun On The Twilight Press Tour

Oddly enough, Robert Pattinson developed a reputation for lying in interviews, a practice which first emerged on the press tour for the Twilight saga. Following New Moon, the actor told a reporter that he never showered or washed his hair. Unfortunately, the joke got out of hand when an anonymous crew member “confirmed” that Pattinson really did stink. However, Kristen Stewart clarified that Pattinson’s claim wasn’t true, as the actor himself would later corroborate (via The Ringer).

5Robert Pattinson Had To Learn How To Drive For Twilight (Twice)

The Twilight cast went through considerable amount of training and preparation for the film, including baseball practice, workout regimens, and, in the case of Robert Pattinson, driving lessons. The actor didn’t have his driving license, which was a problem, since Edward does a lot of driving in the film. Pattinson managed to obtain his license in the state of Oregon, where Twilight production took place (via Cheatsheet). Later, Pattinson had to learn to drive a speedboat for Breaking Dawn – Part 1. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as smoothly. Pattinson did just one speedboat driving lesson, and subsequently crashed the boat while filming in Brazil (via VC Star).

4Victoria, Laurent, and James’ Entrance Was More Elaborate Than It Looks

One of the most sinister moments in the original Twilight comes with the arrival of the evil vampires, Victoria, Laurent, and James, following the iconic baseball sequence. While the shots of the sinister trio walking through the misty woods appear simple enough, director Catherine Hardwicke had to use some complex filmmaking trickery to achieve the desired effect. As the vampires march through the woods, they’re walking on a piece of machinery called a “magic carpet.” The device, similar to an airport walkway, propels the actor forward with a gliding stride which creates a sense of ethereal, vampiric speed (via Insider).

3Breaking Dawn – Part 2 Had A Swear Jar

The Twilight main cast had some adjusting to do when the final film saw a child actress added to the ensemble. Not wanting to swear in front of 11-year-old Mackenzie Foy, who plays Bella and Edward’s half-vampire child Renesmee, the cast installed a swear jar to help them mediate their language. At the end of the shoot, Foy was allowed to keep all the money in the jar, which Kristen Stewart contends amounted to a few thousand dollars. However, Foy donated the proceeds to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital (via Yahoo News).

2The First Twilight Book Had Very Different International Titles

It’s hard to imagine Twilight’s enigmatic one-word title under any other name, but the first novel’s international publications went in a variety of different directions (via Shmoop). In Finland, the book was called “Fascination”, in France, it was “Temptation,” and in Germany it was “Until Dawn”, a clever play on words in the language, since “bis”, the German word for “until”, is very similar to “biss”, the German word for “bite”. In Japan, the novel was split into three books, titled “The Boy Whom I Love is a Vampire,” “Blood Tastes Sadness,” and “The Vampire Family in the Darkness.”

1Stephanie Meyer Makes A Cameo In Twilight

Given that the franchise began with Stephanie Meyer tapping away at a keyboard, it seems fitting that the films should pay fitting tribute to the author. While some creators, authors, and directors, love to make prominent appearances in their own movies, Meyer was satisfied with a couple of brief and unobtrusive cameos in the Twilight saga. The first appearance comes in the original film, where Meyer is fittingly shown as a patron at the Forks diner, writing on her laptop. The next cameo comes in Breaking Dawn – Part 1, where Meyer can be spotted as a guest at Edward and Bella’s wedding, another appropriate tribute to the author that created the characters.