Peter Facinelli: 5 minutes with a sexy vampire

Peter Facinelli: 5 minutes with a sexy vampire

We stopped ourselves swooning for long enough to ask Twilight’s Peter Facinelli, 36 (who play’s Carlisle, Edward’s adoptive father) about biting fans, sharing sex god status with R-Pattz, and vamp sexiness



How do you feel about your sex god status?
Wow, I’m getting red in the face. I don’t know, am I a sex god? The fans of the Twilight films have always been wonderful, so I can’t complain whatsoever.

Do you think Robert Pattinson steals a lot of the attention away from you?
If Rob takes the attention off me then I’m happy to take whatever is left over because there’s plenty to go around for everyone in the cast. I don’t know how Rob handles it. I know how much attention I get and it’s crazy and he gets so much more than me, I can’t imagine how he does it. To have your life under a microscope like that when you’re only 24. He can’t even walk down the street to get a coffee without paparazzi jumping out of the bushes. If it was me I think I’d go crazy, it must be very difficult.

But you must also experience a lot of screaming female fans?
I’ve definitely had my fair share. When the whole cast shows up anywhere it’s kind of like the Beatles. I’ve been working for 15 years and I’ve never experienced that level of fandomonium. It’s amazing really because when we started out we were all convinced the film was destined to fail. We thought that, because it was based on a book, it would never live up to people’s expectations. We had no idea people were going to love it as much as they do.

What’s it like being on the red carpet at a major premiere?
People have commented on pictures of me on the red carpet at the first Twilight premiere, they said I looked angry, but I wasn’t angry – I was bewildered and shocked at how many fans were there. They were two blocks-deep in every direction. But then I realised they hadn’t seen the film yet and I was worried if they didn’t like it, the happy crowd would turn into an angry mob with pitchforks and we’d have to all run. Thankfully they loved it.

Do people recognise you without the blond hair?
Well I think I’ve been around for a while so people generally know what I look like. But sometimes when I meet younger people who haven’t seen me before, and I don’t look like Carlisle, they get this disappointed look on their face. I don’t think I look anything like him.

Do fans ever ask you to bite them?
Oh yeah, all the time. They ask me to bite them for pictures, I used to do it, but then I thought, I don’t want these pictures of me biting people’s necks popping up everywhere – it’s kind of disrespectful to my wife. So now I’ll pretend to bite their wrist, kids love it and fans love it, it makes them happy. I’m pretty game.

Why are vampires so sexy?
There’s something sensual about wanting to consume someone else, to want them so badly you have to ingest their blood. The sensuality of biting someone’s neck, that’s very sexy, and the idea of eternal youth, that’s very sexy too. There is something addictive in the books that reminded me of what vampire folk law was originally. The way they’re seen as this mysterious, sensual creature, like in the old sexy film noir movies. Hollywood took the romanticism out of vampire movies for a while and made it about blood and guts, so it was nice to go back to the origins with Twilight.

Would you say you’re romantic?
I hope so, you should ask my wife that.

What’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for her?
My wife and I just had a wonderful weekend in Mexico so that was quite romantic and I like taking baths with her. I like putting the candles out and just taking a nice hot bath, that’s sexy. Water and candles, there’s something sexy about that.

Where’s the strangest place you’ve had sex?
(Has a long think about it with a little smile on his face.) I don’t want to answer that. Let’s leave that for me and the person and the place where it happened.

Where else have we seen Peter?
He’s the breast-grabbing Doctor Cooper in Nurse Jackie.

And there's more… When we walked into the room where Peter was on a sofa, he joked he likes to lie down and talk to his interviewer like they’re a therapist. Then he grabbed our notebook saying, ‘What’s this?’ and pretended to read ‘I heart Robert Pattinson’ off a page. One woman organising the interview was pregnant and father-of-three Peter couldn’t stop cooing over her bump, asking when the baby was due and talking about his own little girls.