Robert Pattinson plays a dashing vampire.

Kimberley French

Fifteen-year-old Chloe Bates is in love.

A 10th grader at an all-girls Catholic school, she lights up when she talks about her handsome 17-year-old honey. Chloe doesn’t know too many boys, so she still gets a nervous, buzzy feeling whenever she thinks about HIM. Her friends know all about this guy — he’s a regular text and telephone topic. Chloe keeps a few pictures of him on her bedroom wall, scattered among snapshots of her and her friends. She also writes about him in her journal. But she can’t really get close to him. It’s like he doesn’t know she exists.

Chloe is in love with Taylor Lautner, one of the hunky stars of the “Twilight” films. And she’s not alone.

Girls have been falling in love with movie stars since the dawn of cinema. When teenagers became Tinseltown’s prime marketing target, Hollywood delivered handsome heartthrobs any girl could love.

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.

These girls aren’t just experiencing a movie-star crush, they’re participating in a uniquely female rite of passage: The birth of romantic fantasy. And today’s technology — online fan forums, Twitter, an endless Web stream of photos and videos — lets them get closer than ever.

Before real boyfriends and first kisses, girls’ imaginary relationships with their heartthrobs provide a precursor to adult romance — a love before they know what love might be.

“They’re practicing feelings of love and attachment and attraction and romance,” says Los Angeles psychologist Wendy Walsh, whose own 11-year-old daughter also loves Lautner. “These are all new feelings, and what a safe way to play them out — in the privacy of their own room with a poster of Taylor Lautner.”

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), whom 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. I just think that would be incredible.”

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 he constantly runs his fingers through.

Lautner is buff and bronzed, with a gregarious personality 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 slightly sexier than teen idols past, but they’re cut from the same teen-heartthrob cloth as their predecessors: Smooth-faced stars who seem wholesome — and just a touch away from attainable.

Heidi Hurst, executive editor of teen pinup magazine Tiger Beat, notes that since the magazine was established in 1965, the guys on its pages have been “non-threatening, more on the boyish side of good looks.” The November issue features Lautner and Pattinson on the cover.

Farrah Fawcett was the most popular pinup of her day. But the boys who bought her iconic poster related to her in a completely different way than Chloe does, because they typically don’t have relationships with their on-screen idols the way girls do. Most guys want to get physical with their love objects, where girls fantasize about their heartthrob becoming their boyfriend.

“Pinups are more explicitly eroticized where a heartthrob … is about feelings, being able to imagine romance rather than just sex,,” says Karen Tongson, a professor of Gender Studies at the University of Southern California.

As if adolescent emotions weren’t enough, today’s heartthrob crushes are supported by all manner of merchandising and gadgetry.

“It’s so much more elaborate than it used to be,” says USC cultural historian Leo Braudy. “Every movie comes fit with its posters and its icons and its bobble-headed dolls.” The media empires that create the latest teen idols are ready with an array of products for every Zac Efron around — posters, ring tones, T-shirts and more. Then there’s the life-size cardboard cutout of Lautner that Chloe’s mom and dad recently bought for her.

One day the doorbell rang at Chloe’s San Fernando Valley, Calif., home and cardboard Lautner was standing there, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and his trademark sweet smile. He now stands in her bedroom, near the window and the little table where she writes in her journal — her first vision every morning and the last thing she sees each night.