Reese Witherspoon on Rob "He is extraordinarily attractive. I'm not gonna lie"

Reese Witherspoon became a household name in the late '90s with a string of scene-stealing turns in films like "Pleasantville" and "Election." Around the same time, Leonardo DiCaprio was transforming from teen heartthrob to mature Hollywood A-lister, thanks to the nearly $2 billion success of "Titanic."

Over a decade later, Witherspoon has been thinking back to that pop culture period. It's the only way she can make sense of the overwhelming popularity of her "Water for Elephants" co-star Robert Pattinson.

"The only thing I can compare it to is when Leo was in 'Titanic,' " she told MTV News while promoting her upcoming movie "How Do You Know." "It was that kind of fervor about a person. The women lining up outside the set — it was just unbelievable — till 5 o'clock in the morning waiting to just glimpse him."

The Tennessee set of "Water for Elephants" was basically no different than what happens when the "Twilight" vamp goes anywhere. As director Francis Lawrence told us in the fall, "[E]very day there would be, like, 50 people [staked out] ... . [T]here would be people camped out in the hallways of our hotel. All day, all night long, it didn't matter. People were there to try to catch a glimpse."

Witherspoon, of course, got an up-close-and-personal glimpse of RPattz, and she was happy to report back to us: "He is extraordinarily attractive. I'm not gonna lie," she said.

"Robert is such a great guy from a great family," she explained. "That's the thing that's so funny. He's not really this bad boy; he's just a great guy and really worked hard on 'Water for Elephants.'
He really worked long hours, long days. He looks totally different in the movie."