At 23, Taylor Lautner knows all about being hot — and not.
The popular “Twilight” star, whose killer smile and killer abs as the bare-chested werewolf Jacob made him a teenage sex symbol, now stars in “Tracers,” which opens in limited theatrical release this week and can be seen now on Video on Demand.
The “Twilight” saga ended in 2012 and remains the standard for young adult franchises like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.”
“I owe so much to that franchise, we all do,” Lautner said from Santa Fe, N.M., where he’s filming an Adam Sandler comedic western.
“Afterwards things closed down a little bit. If you’re being honest you have to rebrand yourself. It’s part of the territory when you’re part of something so iconic.
“People tend to see you in that way, but as an actor it’s important to do different things.”
In “Tracers” Lautner keeps his chest covered and that dazzling smile under wraps.
Was that intentional?
“Yes, absolutely!” he said with a laugh. “I try to make that a deal whenever I do anything now: ‘He doesn’t have to take his shirt off every five seconds.’
“Because I made ‘Tracers’ with the producers of ‘Twilight,’ that was always part of the plan. And the seriousness of the situation was what drove me to the project in the first place.”
In “Tracers,” Lautner plays Cam, a decent guy in debt to loan sharks, forced to join a heist gang who use parkour — leaping over, up and sideways on surfaces — for their robberies.
“One of the coolest things about this movie and what got me excited was our director wanted this to feel as real as possible and unlike any other version of a parkour movie.
“He told me, ‘I want the audience to know you are doing it, because you can tell when the cameras cut to a wide shot for a stunt man.’ The goal was to make the audience feel part of it,” said Lautner, who trained for four months in L.A. “and then in New York I trained on the locations.”
As for advice to Hollywood’s current franchise stars, “Honestly, I would say soak it up and enjoy every single moment. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To be part of that is extremely lucky — and then it’s going to be over.”
