"Taylor Kitsch"

Taylor Kitsch (born April 8, 1981) is a Canadian actor and model. He is best known for his role as Tim Riggins in the NBC television series Friday Night Lights and for his role as Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He also starred in big budgeted films John Carter and Battleship.

Kitsch was born in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. His mother worked for the BC liquor board and his father in construction. He has two older brothers and two younger half sisters, and was raised by his single mother. He played junior ice hockey for the Langley Hornets in the British Columbia Hockey League before a knee injury ended his career.

Kitsch moved to New York in 2002 after receiving an opportunity to pursue modeling with IMG and studied acting there as well. While in New York, he became a nutritionist and a personal trainer.For a time in New York he was homeless and took to sleeping on subway trains in the middle of the night.

In 2004, he relocated to Los Angeles where he modeled for Diesel and Abercrombie & Fitch.He also appears in the limited edition coffee table book About Face by celebrity photographer John Russo.

Kitsch starred as football player Tim Riggins in the NBC series Friday Night Lights, which was created by Peter Berg.

He played Pogue Parry in The Covenant alongside Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, Laura Ramsey, Toby Hemingway, Jessica Lucas and Chace Crawford.

In February 2008, he signed on to play Gambit in the X-Men franchise spinoff X-Men Origins: Wolverine, released in May 2009. Of the fan-favorite character of Gambit, Kitsch states, "I knew of him, but I didn't know the following he had. I'm sure I'm still going to be exposed to that. I love the character, I love the powers, and I love what they did with him. I didn't know that much, but in my experience, it was a blessing to go in and create my take on him. I'm excited for it, to say the least."

In 2009, Kitsch signed up for Steven Silver's The Bang Bang Club, a historical drama set in South Africa which documents the final bloody days of the apartheid. He had to lose 35 pounds in two months to play the role of photojournalist Kevin Carter, alongside Ryan Phillipe and Malin Åkerman.

In November 2010, The Hollywood Reporter named Kitsch as one of the young male actors who are "pushing – or being pushed" into taking over Hollywood as the new "A-List".

Kitsch's first lead role in a film was in Disney's John Carter, based on the novel A Princess of Mars, which was released in March 2012. He played the title role of John Carter, a Confederate soldier who gets transported to Mars. The film made back less than a third of its budget domestically, and worldwide grosses barely recouped its production and marketing costs. Despite this, Kitsch said, "I'm very proud of John Carter. Box office doesn't validate me as a person, or as an actor." In May 2012, he starred in Peter Berg's Battleship, an adaptation of Hasbro's eponymous guessing game, as Naval commander Alex Hopper. It, too, failed at the domestic box office, boasting the worst opening in history for a fim that cost more than $200 million. Again, international revenues are expected to help mitigate its performance. The film marked his reunion with Berg and former co-star Jesse Plemons, who also starred in Friday Night Lights. In June 2012, he will play in Oliver Stone's Savages opposite Blake Lively, Salma Hayek and Uma Thurman.


source : en.wikipedia.org