Ashley Greene has admitted she had no idea what she was in for when she auditioned for the role of Alice Cullen in Twilight.

The 25-year-old has shot to fame since landing the role in the movie adaption of Stephanie Meyer’s hugely successful vampire saga, which she’d never even heard of before her audition.

Ashley told Company magazine: “We had no idea just how big Twilight was going to become. The audition was top secret so all I had was: vampire, 18, girl.

“I was like, what am I supposed to do with this? Are there any directions? Then my managers were like, oh yes there’s a book.”

So the day before testing for the role, Ashley cram-read the first two Twilight books, which gave her a real taste for the part.

She continued: “By then, I really wanted to be Alice and I worked day and night getting into character. But it wasn’t until we got to Portland to rehearse that I realised this thing was going to be huge.

“We hadn’t even started filming when my mum called and said, ‘Do you know you have a fan site?’”

Four years on and with the upcoming release of the final installment of the franchise, Breaking Dawn: Part Two, Ashley insists she’s great friends with the rest of the cast.

She said: “I mean you hear the horror stories of people not getting along on set. And all of us have such severely different personalities but we all meshed and got along so well.

“I think the experience is so crazy that it bonded us. Now we really look forward to award shows because they brings us all back together.”

Ashley’s co-stars include on-screen and off-screen couple Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, as well as Taylor Lautner and Kellan Lutz.

Nonetheless, most of Ashley’s closest mates are people she grew up with.

She continued: “I honestly don’t have a lot of friends that are actors. Most of my friends I’ve known since sixth grade and are out of the industry. It gives me a sense of reality rather than surrounding myself with a bunch of actors.”

Ashley likes to keep her “private life private” and prefers to avoid star-studded celebrity events where the paparazzi tend to be.

But even when out for dinner, Ashley finds she can’t keep out of the news because of the interest in her love life.

She added: “You know, my brother won’t walk out of a restaurant with me anymore because he doesn’t want to be linked to me as my new ‘mystery man’.

“Same with my close guy friends. In the beginning, my mum would be like, are you dating this person? And I’m like, ‘Mum, no! If I’m dating someone, I will personally come and tell you.’

“It’s kind of insane that you can literally be walking beside somebody and not even know them, but you can still be dating them. It always makes me laugh.”

Read the full interview with Ashley in December’s Company magazine, out 7th November