The Real Reason Taylor Lautner Was Afraid To Leave His House For 10 Years

Taylor Lautner's Hollywood career didn't take off the way Robert Pattinson's did after the two actors played respective furry and fanged love rivals in the "Twilight" movies — but he didn't completely disappear from the limelight either.

While he can't boast taking up Batman's mantle in a gritty superhero movie like Pattinson has, Lautner was photographed rocking the Dark Knight's dark eye makeup, mask, and cape at a Hollywood Halloween party in 2015, per the Daily Mail. The same year, he appeared in one of the handful of movies he was cast in after he hung up his Jacob Black wig for good, Adam Sandler's Western comedy "The Ridiculous 6." It was critically panned, but this didn't stop the star from signing on for another project produced by Sandler: the 2022 Netflix film "Home Team."

Lautner took a few years off before deciding to return to the big screen in the sports comedy, which will see him playing the coach of a tween football team. But he dabbled in TV first, appearing in the series "Cuckoo" beginning in 2014 and "Scream Queens" in 2016. Throughout his career, he has attracted tabloid attention for his famous girlfriends. Not long after he was linked to Taylor Swift in 2009, he told The Boston Globe he hoped to "maintain as much normalcy as possible” in his life. Unfortunately, being the star of a megahit movie franchise made this next to impossible and even made Lautner afraid to leave home.

There were a few years when a lack of Taylor Lautner in the news probably had his fans wanting to ask him, "Where the hell have you been, loco?" Sadly, it turns out that interest in Lautner's life had something to do with this absence. In a January 27 interview, "TODAY" correspondent Jason Kennedy spoke to the actor about why he spent a decade avoiding going to the grocery store and other public places. "I was scared to go out. I'd get super anxious," Lautner said.

But while screaming fans and invasive paparazzi made leaving home a stressful experience, Lautner confessed that he became concerned when the interest seemed to wane. "You start to question yourself and start to be like, 'Oh, do people not care about me anymore?'" he said. Spoiler alert: They still do, and Lautner has since been introduced to a whole new generation of teens thanks to the "Twilight" movies streaming on Netflix. "Before that, to be honest, it was mainly the 'Twi-moms' that would still stop me in the streets," he told People. "It's like teenagers again."

Lautner told Kennedy he credits his fiancée, Tay Dome, with "getting me back to where I am today." His relationship with the registered nurse is also evidence that he's a lot more comfortable with his "Twilight" fame. He revealed that Dome is a Twihard fan, and, shockingly, she used to be Team Edward. "I converted her," he joked.