The Twilight movies, as well as the novels they were based on, became a cultural phenomenon in the late 2000s. This vampire-human-werewolf love triangle saga about Edward, Bella, and Jacob took the world by storm. But as time went by, people changed, including the main cast.
Taylor Lautner, the guy who played Jacob Black, the werewolf, did a lot of workouts to get all buff for the role. Posters of him posing shirtless were in every teen’s room, whether their parents knew about it or not. But what those fans didn’t know was that Taylor was under constant pressure to meet everyone’s expectations about his body.
There was no other way around it: Lautner had to undergo a significant physical transformation to be able to show off those bulging muscles. Back then, he didn’t know just how much of a toll this would put on Tayulor’s body and psyche.
When the Twilight movies were finally out, and Lautner had some time to relax, he realized that a lot of women looked at him like he was a piece of meat. In his 20s, he had an unbelievable body, but that also meant people would likely objectify his appearance rather than see what was underneath all that muscle. At some point, he was known as “the guy who likes taking off his shirt every other second.” And that realization nearly broke him, not to mention how exhausting it was to keep it in shape for all those years.
In one of the interviews, Lautner admits that he sacrificed everything for the Twilight Saga, including his body. In the first part, he was 140 lbs, but he gained 35 lbs when they were shooting New Moon. So, as you can tell, Taylor worked very hard to gain every fiber of his abs traps, as well as maintain that look. Spending six days a week in a gym can’t possibly be as fun as many of us think, so at a certain point, Lautner said, “screw this,” and stopped exercising almost entirely.
When you break your routine, things tend to go south one way or another. No more excruciating exercises meant that his steel abs turned into slightly flabby mounds. Or, in other words, Taylor’s body started to return to its normal state. That’s when the obsessive fans started posting all those before and after photos on Reddit. Sadly, this baseless criticism only made things worse for Lautner’s mental health.
Thankfully, Lautner eventually shook it off and learned to appreciate his body. Rounding up the interview, the actor gave some free advice to anyone who might need it. He said that losing a few pounds and bulking up would not suddenly make you happy and that people should value what they have.
