Edward Cullen (né Edward Anthony Masen) is a fictional character in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. He is featured in the books Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, as well as the Twilight film, and the as yet unfinished novel Midnight Sun - a re-telling of the events of Twilight from Edward's perspective. Edward is a vampire who, over the course of the series, falls in love with, marries, and has a child with Bella Swan, a human teenager who later chooses to become a vampire also. In the Twilight film series, Edward is played by actor Robert Pattinson.
In Twilight, Edward meets Bella Swan, a human girl whose thoughts he is unable to read, and whose blood smells overwhelmingly sweet to him.[2] He fights a growing attraction to her, but after saving her life on several occasions, he succumbs and eventually falls in love with her. Edward admits to Bella that he is a vampire, and that although he retains the physical body of a seventeen-year-old, he was actually born on June 20, 1901. His adoptive father, Carlisle Cullen, transformed him into a vampire in 1918 to prevent him from dying in the Spanish influenza epidemic in Chicago, Illinois. Carlisle instilled in him a sense of morality uncommon in most vampires, and central to his way of life is the refusal to consider humans as food.
Larry Carroll for MTV Movies deemed Edward and Bella an iconic love story for a whole generation ,[25] while Kirkus cited Edward's portrayal in Twilight as being overly Byronic .[26] Edward Cullen was also ranked #5 on the Forbes list of Hollywood's 10 Most Powerful Vampires.[27] Entertainment Weekly named him one of the greatest characters of the last 20 years and described him as a literary influence and love of girls and women everywhere for a long time to come .[28]
Edward Cullen came in second in Entertainment Weeklyc’s Sexiest Beasts Poll. EW polled the different mythical characters from different genres, both from film and TV, to find out who reigns the sexiest of them all. The vote comes down to Edward Cullen of the Twilight Saga and Damon Salvatore of The Vampire Diaries. Edward Cullen was narrowly beaten 1– garnering 134,728 to 138,630, a difference of just 3,902 votes.
