LOS ANGELES — Chloe Bates, 15, is in love.

A 10th-grader at an all-girls Catholic school, she is in love with Taylor Lautner, one of the hunky stars of the “Twilight” films.

Girls have been falling in love with movie stars since the dawn of cinema. James Dean. Frankie Avalon. David Cassidy. Rick Springfield. Johnny Depp. There are teen icons for every generation. For Chloe and millions of girls around the world, it's Lautner and Robert Pattinson of “New Moon,” the latest installment in the “Twilight” series.

The “Twilight” series itself is about first love. “New Moon” centers on Bella Swan, an ordinary teenager in love with the mysterious Edward Cullen (Pattinson), who comes from a family of vampires. Edward is romantic and otherworldly, and though he literally hungers for her, he's gentle and protective. But he leaves and Bella finds comfort with her loyal, longtime friend, Jacob Black (Lautner), who she later discovers belongs to a lineage of werewolves.

“It would be so fun to be Bella,” Chloe says wistfully. “I love the idea of having two super-hot mythical creatures fighting over me.”

Like practically everyone at school, Chloe has read all four novels in the “Twilight” series. She spotted Lautner when she saw the film last year and recognized him from a kids movie she'd seen a few years earlier.

“Now he's hot,” she says. “He's really hot.”

Besides his looks, Chloe loves the character he plays: a kid-next-door type who's sweet, funny and just a tad awkward.

“I like him because I can feel like that might actually happen, like this guy could be real,” she says.

Pattinson is really hot, too, but Chloe finds his character's infinite devotion to Bella “kind of unrealistic.”

Fans of the series fall on two sides: Team Edward and Team Jacob. Chloe aligns firmly with the latter, but “it's pretty much half and half at my school,” she says.

Each has his charms. On screen, Pattinson plays a dashing vampire. Off-screen, the British actor is shy and soft-spoken, humbled by all the “Twilight” attention. He's 23, lanky and pale, with thick, tousled hair.

Lautner is buff and bronzed, with a gregarious personality, dark eyes and an easy smile. To reprise his character in “New Moon,” he packed on more than 20 pounds of chiseled physique.

Pattinson and Lautner may be sexier than teen idols past, but they're cut from the same heartthrob cloth as their predecessors: smooth-faced stars who seem wholesome — and just a touch away from attainable.

Until recently, Chloe kept a “very hot, shirtless picture” of Lautner as her computer screen-saver. But she's not as obsessive as some of her friends, who check YouTube daily and follow various “Twilight” fan sites.

She and a dozen of her friends are planning to make their own Team Jacob T-shirts and see “New Moon” when it opens Friday.

One day the doorbell rang at Chloe's San Fernando Valley home and a cardboard Lautner was standing there, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and his sweet smile.

He now stands in her bedroom, near the window — her first vision every morning and the last thing she sees each night.