Stephen was only Joking

True Blood star Stephen Moyer: Sex scenes and nudity are just part of the job

THE fangs are back in - or are they? True Blood hunk Stephen Moyer revealed he apologised to Twilight star Robert Pattinson for calling him the "Diet Coke of vampires".

The fight began last year, when Brit actor Stephen made the comments about Robert when the heartthrob refused to let his character drink human blood in the popular films.

Stephen, who plays blood-sucking Bill Compton in TV series True Blood, admitted: "I sent him a message saying, 'Dude, I hope you realise that this is a joke'.

"I did call him a wuss. But I didn't call HIM that. I referred to his character."

However, 40-year-old Stephen has put his foot in it again by admitting he has never seen the Twilight films or read the books.

He also hasn't ever met Robert. He said: "I haven't even seen Twilight. I don't even know the books.

"All I know is that one thing - I think he drinks cow blood instead of human blood."

Not so Stephen's character in the raunchy True Blood, which features as many sex scenes as vampire attacks.

As it happens, the actor is engaged to co-star Anna Paquin, 28, who plays human Sookie Stackhouse.

The couple feature naked, and sprayed with fake blood, on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone magazine - alongside Alexander Skarsgard, 33, who plays vampire Eric.

Now there's another thing you won't see Robert and his Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart doing.

The three characters in True Blood are in a sex triangle - but Stephen reckons their racy scenes are just another day at the office for the stars of the series that's based on the The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris and set in a fictional small Louisiana town.

He laughed: "The nakedness is something that is part and parcel of the show."

And Stephen admits he and Anna, who met on the show, are comfortable with the amount of sex scenes they both have - including those with other characters in the new, third series.

He admitted: "I think it must be incredibly difficult for couples where the partner isn't an actor. They really don't get you looking in someone else's eyes and saying, 'I love you', or having sex or, even worse, being incredibly intimate.

"It could be a spoken scene, which is far more intimate than a physical love-making scene, and that's sometimes tough to watch - just as it is for me to watch Anna do it with anybody else.

"But there's an understanding that we are doing our job. We both get to read the script, so we get to talk about it before we attack those scenes."

Love bit Stephen when he met Anna - but they kept their relationship a secret for 10 months.

She is 12 years his junior and is best known as a child actress in Jane Campion's The Piano.

The role of Flora won her a best supporting actress Oscar at the age of 11 - the second youngest female star to receive the honour.

More recently, she was Rogue in the X-Men movies.

Stephen has two children from former relationships - Billy, 10, whose mum is a classroom assistant, and Lilac, eight, from his seven-year relationship with a journalist, Lorien Haynes.

Both live in England with their mums. With two kids from two girlfriends, why make Anna his wife?

Stephen said: "I've never been married, and I think it's really interesting.

"It got to the point where I just was thinking, 'You are calling somebody who you intend to stay with for the rest of your life your girlfriend'.

"That's what I've called everybody I've ever been with - and that's not to say that those relationships weren't important, because they were. I've got two amazing kids.

"But it felt ridiculous to call the person you really are going to spend the rest of your life with your girlfriend. And so I felt like it should be something more than that. I felt like she should have a title, so I could joke and say 'the missus' and make lots of wife gags."

His friends couldn't believe he'd proposed, thinking he'd never get married. And nobody was more shocked than Paq - Stephen's pet name for Anna.

He revealed: "I should have got the St John Ambulance crew when I did it. She thought that it was something that I was never going to do."

Stephen also took the brave step of meeting his future in-laws - alone. Anna was born in Canada but raised in New Zealand, and Stephen was Down Under before Christmas working on a new TV disaster epic, Ice.

While there, he flew to Wellington to meet his mother-in-law.

Stephen said: "That's commitment. It was lovely, actually.

"I got picked up at 9am in Wellington, driven around for six hours, introduced to all the friends and family, had lunch with her mum and then, at four o'clock, she stuck me back on the plane.

"I had to go back to Auckland because I was filming up there."

True Blood not only helped Stephen to find a wife - it brought him fame, too.

A jobbing actor on episodes of A Touch Of Frost, Casualty, Midsomer Murders, Cold Feet and Peak Practice, he managed a longer stint on short-lived 1999 Scots medical series Life Support alongside Julie Graham, Richard Wilson and Art Malik.

Not even playing the title role in 1997's Prince Valiant alongside Edward Fox and Joanna Lumley proved his breakthrough.

When his agent got the script for True Blood, Stephen didn't want to do it at first.

He'd been in American telly series The Starter Wife alongside Debra Messing of Will & Grace fame and didn't want to do another long series.

As it turned out, True Blood, which is back on British screens next year, changed everything.

When it started, many didn't even know he was an Essex boy because of his convincing Southern US accent.

Now Stephen has become a sex symbol to millions. They call themselves Moyer's Maidens and Bill's Babes. You can even get T-shirts.

That said, it's not his adoring female fans who encourage him to keep those abs nice and tight - but fellow actor Ryan Kwanten, who plays Jason Stackhouse.

Stephen said: "Ryan is such a ridiculous physical specimen that we all have to keep ourselves in check, otherwise we look silly next to him.

"So, everybody has to go to the gym and everybody has to sort of look fairly OK - so I don't really think about it.

"All I think about is my food after the sex scene has happened, because everybody has to starve.

"If they put the sex scene after lunch, it's a nightmare."

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xoxo
Carrie