Robert Pattinson thinks his ego was "a lot bigger" when he first became an actor.

Robert Pattinson

Robert Pattinson

The 31-year-old star was catapulted to the A-list when he portrayed Edward Cullen in the 'Twilight Saga', and he has admitted when he broke into the entertainment business he was very cocky and felt like a "big shot", but he has claimed he has since changed his ways.

Speaking to fellow actor Jamie Bell for Variety's Actors on Actors series, the 'Remember Me' star said: "I think anyway, my ego was a lot bigger when I first started and whenever you start losing control of so many different aspects of your life and the job. Like when you first start acting you feel like a big shot when you are only doing a small something on BBC Three."

And Pattinson believes starring in a globally popular multi-film franchise such as 'Twilight' can be restricting because the character is established in the first movie.

He explained: " I think, sometimes, when you are doing sequels to something it doesn't matter what you think, and in a scene you may think, 'Oh I think the character would do this,' you can't do that because a - it's already written in a book, so it doesn't make any difference, and b - the tone has already been set up so the machine is already in motion. So it's slightly frightening. You lose your sense of identity a little bit. It's like when you get a new car you want to corner it really hard. I think when you do jobs afterwards, I like doing something that is one extreme to the other."

Although Pattinson finds sequels "slightly frightening", he thinks it is made him realise "how small" he actually is in the scheme of Hollywood and the film business.

He added: "I never tried to run away from any of it. If that massive franchise stuff had of come up at the time, it's frightening as well, because when something becomes really big you feel you get an awareness of how small you actually are."