With millions of worshipful fans and a Midas touch at the box office, the Twilight movies will be a hard act to follow for anyone who has been involved in making them.
This may be especially so for supporting cast members such as Taylor Lautner, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed and Jackson Rathbone, most of whom have seen their profiles raised just enough to provide a modicum of name recognition, but not much else in uber-competitive Hollywood.
In a series of interviews at a Beverly Hills hotel early this month, Life! asked each of them what the franchise means for the rest of their career.
"It's not all positive," says Lautner. "You have to overcome the hurdles of being known as Jacob Black or Bella Swan or Edward Cullen. But it's our job to show that we have different sides to ourselves. That's what acting is."
The 20-year-old, who plays Jacob, the lovelorn werewolf who could never quite get the girl, is probably the most popular supporting character in these movies, especially with female viewers, whose attention he describes as "strange" and "a little awkward".
"But it comes with the territory. I'm definitely not going to complain," says the actor, who is working on an untitled project with X-Men director Bryan Singer and has also bagged the lead role in Tracers, a film about parkour that is still in pre-production.
While he acknowledges that there is a risk he may be seen as nothing more than a pretty face with a six-pack, he thinks that can be overcome.
"It's probably all about choosing characters and showing as many sides of yourself as possible."
Lutz, Reed and Rathbone, on the other hand, are branching out into other fields. Lutz and Rathbone are trying their hand at producing for film and television, and Rathbone and Reed in music, although all hope to continue to act.
Those acting roles are not that easy to come by, though, even with Twilight on your resume.
Reed - who plays Rosalie Hale, a member of protagonist Edward Cullen's family - seems to have felt this the most, telling Life! that it has been a tough slog trying to get other work.
"I've sat in these chairs for four years now and I know what it feels like to have nothing to talk about," says the 24-year-old of doing the press rounds for the Twilight movies.
"You would think that after the success of the first film, I'd be doing 100 movies a year in between, and I wasn't. I was working really hard, so it wasn't for lack of trying."
The industry has finally begun to see her in other roles and genres, however. Reed has done four
movies this year alone, including director Joss Whedon's paranormal romance In Your Eyes, which is due out soon.
She and co-star Rathbone, 27, are pushing hard to develop their music careers too, and have cannily timed the release of their new albums to follow the rush of publicity for the last Twilight film.
Reed's is a collection of romantic duets that she wrote and performed with husband Paul McDonald, one of which plays during the end credits of the film.
Rathbone - who is Jasper Hale, another member of the Cullen clan, in the films - describes his music as "kind of Americana and folk rock, with country blues inspiration".
The fact that these young actors have fingers in so many pies is testament, perhaps, to just how fleeting success in this arena can be, which is why so many feel compelled to make the most of their moment in the spotlight.
Lutz, Rosalie's husband Emmett in the movies, says: "One of the hardest things is to make a name for yourself", and for that alone, the Twilight experience was "99.9 per cent of the time positive".
Like Rathbone, the 27-year-old, who has been cast as Tarzan in an animated motion-capture film of the same name next year, has set up his own production company to develop material for himself and others.
And if that Plan B does not work, Lutz has another career lined up - as an inventor.
Despite dropping out of a chemical engineering degree for acting, he has kept in touch with his nerdy side by doodling frequently in his "invention book", he says.
His earnings from Twilight mean he can finally afford a patent lawyer. He is now working on two projects - one for a portable exercise device and another "for the military and medical field".
All is not lost if the inventions fall flat. "They could be funny script ideas," he says.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is showing in cinemas.
This article was first published in The Straits Times newspaper on November 23, 2012. For similar stories, go
to sph.straitstimes.com/premium/singapore. You will not be able to access the Premium section of The Straits Times website unless you are already a subscriber.