Twilight: New Moon star Robert Pattinson has bravely opened up to reveal his experience of being assaulted in a series of unprovoked attacks when he was younger.

The 23-year-old has decided to talk about how he suffered at the hands of others during his teenage years – for no good reason that he can remember.

Rob said: “I’ve been beaten up a few times, by a lot of people when I was younger.

“I was a bit of an idiot when I was younger. But it was always unprovoked, in my eyes, anyway.”

He added: “I never got beat up by school bullies. It was after school.

“It was generally after I started acting. And I liked to…behave like an actor! Or what I thought was an actor. Which generally provoked a lot of people into hitting me!”

Rob recently admitted that his shy streak – perhaps caused by the attacks – means his he finds the attention he receives from followers of the vampire movies difficult to deal with.

He said: “You kind of, you are trying to limit the amount of time you have to deal with it. I do a bit of hiding.”