Robert Pattinson lets his golden eyes shine as he graces this weekend’s cover of USA Weekend.

The 23-year-old actor chatted with the mag about his iconic character Edward Cullen, musical adventures and what’s to come after the Twilight series is wrapped. Check it:

On escaping through his music: “It’s nice to have a bit of artistic or creative endeavor that isn’t so pressurized. So many people have an opinion, especially when you’re doing the Twilight movies. Making this movie, it’s almost as if people have become more concerned with what the fans want the more successful it becomes. The first one seemed more relaxed than this one, and that one wasn’t particularly relaxed. But it’s nice to do music where no one’s too concerned with what I’m doing with it. It’s kind of a relief.”

On his character, Edward Cullen: “In some ways, he’s more relaxed being around humans, and at the same time, he’s competing a lot more with Jacob [played by Taylor Lautner] so he has a lot more petty emotions rather than just thinking in these absolutes like he did in the first two. I’m just trying to keep it interesting for myself as well.”

On what life will be like after Twilight: “I’ve just been so tightly bound. I did another movie in New York over the summer, and it was so tightly bound to Twilight. You have huge groups of fans and paparazzi and stuff, and it was a tiny little indie. It still felt like I was doing a Twilight movie in a lot of ways. It’ll be interesting to see how I’ll feel about the whole thing a couple years after it’s all finished.”

USA Weekend appears in newspapers nationwide.