Taylor Lautner Says He Grew Out of His 'Resentment' Toward 'Twilight' Fame: 'Now I Wouldn't Change It'

Taylor Lautner says he has "only fond memories" of his Twilight days now that over a decade since the last film has passed.

While appearing on SiriusXM's TODAY Radio Show on Thursday, Lautner, 31, said that he believes he "needed the space" from his years spent playing Twilight character Jacob Black, which propelled him to stardom as a teenager.

"Now, only fond memories. But I do think that I also needed the space," he said, after he was asked how he feels when he reflects on the Twilight era. "I was always incredibly thankful and feel super blessed for what it brought me but maybe there was a little bit of, like, resentment, deep in there, going like 'I wish I could have experienced this part of normalcy.' "

"Now, I wouldn't change it, but I think it needed the growth to get to that place," he added of his evolving feelings toward the saga.

After Lautner's wife Taylor Dome was asked whether she whether she crushed on her future husband in the vampire-romance movies, Lautner quipped: "The problem is when she was watching it she was saying it about Edward (Robert Pattinson)."

Lautner has been open about his struggles with fame after Twilight grew into a pop culture craze; during a Jan. 2022 appearance on Today, he admitted that he "was scared to go out" for a number of years due to the amount of public attention he received.

"Not many things in life can come and happen overnight. Fame can. It also can disappear overnight," he explained at the time. "When I was 16, 17, 18 years old, waking up and trying to just go out for a walk or go on a date and I had 12 cars waiting outside my house to follow me wherever I'm going or show up to an airport or anywhere, and you have thousands of fans screaming."

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"I went so many years either not leaving my house, or if I did, hat, sunglasses, and just like, scared," he added. "It built up something inside of me where, I didn't know it, but I was scared to go out. I'd get super anxious to go out. So I just didn't."

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The same month, Lautner, who took a break from acting after 2016 and only recently re-emerged with a role in the 2022 Netflix comedy Home Team, told PEOPLE that he's observed a new generation of fans recognizing him in public after the Twilight movies began streaming on Netflix.

"Before that, to be honest, it was mainly the 'Twi-moms' that would still stop me in the streets," he said. "It's like teenagers again."

The actor added to PEOPLE at the time that his break from acting just "made sense for me at that time in my life.

"I started acting from when I was a child, and it was kind of nonstop until I was in my early to mid twenties," he said. "I'm super thankful for what I did experience, but I did miss out on a lot of just normal-life things, like going to college. I wanted to take a step back and enjoy life and spend some time with my family and friends. And I met my [then fiancée] out of it, so it all worked out."