Robert Pattinson warned off Kristen Stewart before getting Twilight role

Twilight film-maker Catherine Hardwicke told Newsweek magazine that she even made the 24-year-old actor “swear on a stack of bibles” that he would not touch Stewart, then 17, before he was cast in the film series.

Hardwicke was forced to take the unusual step after noticing the pair's instant chemistry during their very first meeting in her Malibu kitchen.

And after the pair kissed on the director's own bed during an audition, Stewart lobbied for Pattinson to land the role of Edward Cullen.

'Kristen felt connected to him from the first moment they were together. That electricity, or love at first sight, or whatever it is,' Hardwicke told the US current affairs magazine. 'She was like, 'It has got to be Rob.''

But before she cast the then 21-year-old Pattinson in the role that would catapult him to stardom, she made him promise that he would behave himself around Stewart, who is now his girlfriend.

Hardwicke said that she told Pattinson in no uncertain terms: 'You have to realise that Kristen is 17 years old. She is underage. You have got to focus dude, or you're going to be arrested.”

She added: 'I made him swear on a stack of bibles.'