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Taylor Kitsch attends the Critics Choice Awards on January 14, 2024 in Santa Monica, California
Taylor Kitsch is reflecting on the period of time he spent homeless before his Friday Night Lights fame.
When the actor moved from Canada to New York City in 2002 to pursue modeling and acting, he couldn’t make ends meet, “I was literally sleeping on the subway,” Kitsch, 43, tells PEOPLE.
Things started to shift in his favor though when he got a chance opportunity to meet with a talent manager.
“She was like, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Character pieces,’” he recalls. “She was like, ‘All right, I’ll take a risk on you.'”
Related: Taylor Kitsch Reveals He Had to Have Foot Surgery After a Stunt Got ‘Messy’ on American Primeval Set (Exclusive)
That same manager has stuck with him to this day.
“All I’ve ever wanted to do is disappear into different characters,” Kitsch says. “It’s never been about leading a show or being in the limelight or money.”
Those perks did come though when Kitsch — who was raised by his mom Susan, who worked for the BC Liquor Board, in a trailer park — landed the role of beloved bad boy Tim Riggins in FNL in 2006.
“People, for some reason or another, just really gravitated to Riggins,” he says. “It truly affected my life, and all for the better.”
Related: Friday Night Lights Reboot in the Works 13 Years After the Hit Show’s Finale Aired
While shooting FNL, Kitsch also made the jump to the big screen, notably as Gambit in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
“That process couldn’t have been more different with being on stages and hitting marks,” he says. “They didn’t want me to do improv like on FNL.”
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Taylor Kitsch in Friday Night Lights in 2006
He’s steadily worked since, minus the two years he took off to care for his sister, Shelby Kitsch-Best, while she was struggling with addiction to opioids and other drugs in the mid-2010s.
“Probably the proudest thing I’ve done in my life is sticking with her and being a part of the way it’s turned out,” he says.
After getting sober, Shelby, now a traveling nurse, was able to serve as Kitsch’s advisor on the 2023 Netflix drama Painkiller, on which he played an opioid addict.
“It was really cathartic,” he says. “It’s probably one the closest jobs to me that I’ve ever done.”
Kitsch is working to further serve the sober community by building a nature retreat on 22 acres of his land in Bozeman, Mont., where he moved in 2021 after 15 years of living in Austin, Texas.
“I didn’t even know sober escapes existed until I had the crash course with my sis,” Kitsch says. “I was like, ‘Man, it sounds incredible to offer people a chance to reconnect in nature and slow things down.'”
Related: Taylor Kitsch Is Opening a Nature Retreat as a ‘Tip of the Hat’ to His Sister Getting Sober from Opioids (Exclusive)
Netflix
(L to R) Shawnee Pourier as Two Moons, Taylor Kitsch as Isaac, Betty Gilpin as Sara Rowell and Preston Mota as Devin Rowell in ‘American Primeval’
When Kitsch — whose new Netflix Western American Primeval is streaming now — isn’t on location, he often takes his adventure van to the backcountry for fly-fishing or photographing wildlife.
“After you do jobs that are intense like Primeval, you need a breath,” he says. “There’s no better place for that.”
But even the depths of the Montana wilderness couldn’t shield Kitsch from the attention that came his way when a FNL reboot was announced last month. Kitsch is clear-eyed about whether Riggins should return.
“A visiting coach with two lines, that would be the most I would do, because I love the way we left it,” he says.
As for the next generation of Dillon Panthers, “I hope they create some characters that people f—ing fall for, just like we did.”
Read the original article on People
