"Twilight" heartthrob Robert Pattinson, 23, was beaten up when he was younger because he got cocky!

No wonder he chose to play Edward Cullen - the ass kicking vampire in "Twilight" - in his own weird way he was probably getting revenge for all those times he was at the end of a fist.

Robert tells Parade Magazine he was be "beaten up by a lot of people" when he was younger because he was an idiot.

"I was a bit of an idiot, but I always thought the assaults were unprovoked."

"It was after I first started acting and I liked to behave like an actor, or how I thought an actor was supposed to be, and that apparently provoked a lot of people into hitting me," he admits.

In his new movie, "Remember Me" there is a scene where Pattinson punches a guy.

Talking about the fight scene, Rob said,

"It went fine and nobody was really hurt at all. But, at the end, I was like doing this thing where I was hitting myself in the arm, sort of pumping myself up. They cut it out of the movie, but I punched myself so hard that I was in a lot of pain for the rest of the shoot. It was the most stupid thing I've ever done."

Now why would you do that you hunky punk?