Taylor Lautner on the cover of GQ!
He lives with his parents and loves The Olive Garden: Taylor Lautner pulls up for lunch in Valencia, California, a suburb forty-five minutes north of Hollywood. This is where he lives, with his parents and younger sister, in a home that’s almost indistinguishable from the others in the neighborhood. Lautner suggests the Olive Garden for lunch. “Do you like this place?” he asks, a little unsure, adding: “My father turned me on to it.” Without glancing at the menu, Lautner orders the Toscana soup, then asks to substitute the Caesar salad for the house. Before the waiter can reply, Lautner interrupts innocently: “I know,” he says, “it’ll be a dollar fifty extra. That’s fine.”
On almost getting fired from Twilight: Lautner admits to some dark, if brief, moments of self-doubt. He hired a personal trainer on his own dime and started practicing some Tony Robbins mind tricks. “I’m in the gym,” Lautner says, “and I’m doing reps, and I’m reading the books, and I’m studying the character. I’m just saying to myself, ‘I want this role. I love this role. I’m not gonna lose it. And I’m gonna know it better than anybody, and I’m gonna do that extra rep, because I’m gonna be Jacob Black.’ ” He ate every two hours, mostly meat his parents cooked and then packed in a cooler he kept in the car. Sitting in traffic, Lautner would eat cold ground chuck from plastic Baggies. He put on thirty pounds of muscle, consented to a screen test with Stewart (who lobbied on his behalf), and kept his job. He also solved the film’s marketing issues when his abdominal muscles became New Moon’s main talking point, not to mention his calling card. In one scene, Stewart crashes a motorcycle, and Lautner rushes to her aid. “It’s just blood, Bella,” he says. “No big deal.” And then pauses to peel off his shirt.
On talking off his shirt, but not for Valentine‘s Day: “Originally I was supposed to take off my shirt,” he says. “The script said we were walking into school and Willy takes off his shirt. I said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out. He’s gonna take off his shirt in the middle of school? No, no, no. The reason I took off my shirt for New Moon is because it’s written in the book that way. And there’s reasons behind it.”
On his future as a bankable action star: “I can’t get caught up in that,” Lautner says. “If I start thinking, Is this movie going to open? Is this movie going to do well? I’m not focusing on the job. The job is to make a good movie.”
On the paparazzi: “There’s some things you just have to live with,” Lautner says, pulling out of the parking lot. “Like twelve cars camping outside your house, and when you wake up in the morning, they’re going to follow you wherever you go. It helps that I live in Valencia. It eliminates some. But they’re still here.”
Does he ever think about moving out of his parents‘ house? “Um, you know, not so much,” he says. Really? What 18-year-old movie star with millions wouldn’t move out of his parents’ house? “There’s really no point. I’m so busy. I really haven’t thought about it.” I think he likes it in this small town, with its strip malls and Olive Gardens. Because there’s too much at stake, and he can’t get into any trouble here. “There’s some of that,” he says. “The thing I love is that my home life hasn’t changed. I still help out with the garbage. I still help out with the lawn.”
