Taylor Lautner Disappeared From Hollywood. Here's Why

While he had about a dozen movie and TV credits to his name before "Twilight" hit theaters in 2008, the role of passionate Pacific Northwest werewolf teen Jacob Black made Taylor Lautner almost instantaneously super-famous. But such success can come with a price — such a lack of privacy and other negatives that are hard for any newly arrived celebrity to process, let alone someone like Lautner, who was just a child when the first "Twilight" movie hit. Fame wasn't a totally positive experience for Lautner, and the sting of it affected his life for years.

"When I was 16, 17, 18 years old, waking up and trying to just go out for a walk or go on a date and I had 12 cars waiting outside my house to follow me wherever I'm going or show up to an airport or anywhere, and you have thousands of fans screaming," Lautner told NBC's "Today" (via The Hollywood Reporter) in 2022. He added that, for more than a decade, he just didn't go to malls, grocery stores, or movie theaters because he didn't want to be seen or fussed over. "I went so many years either not leaving my house, or if I did, hat, sunglasses, and just like, scared," Lautner explained. "I'd get super anxious to go out. So I just didn't."