Taylor Kitsch credits his success to stubbornness

Actor Taylor Kitsch doesn’t credit his talent or luck for his success. The star of such projects as “Friday Night Lights,” “The Terminal List,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “True Detective” says it’s just the fact that he’s relentlessly stubborn.

His family felt that “one day he’d get a real job.” But he just kept plugging away. As a young hopeful, the Canada native trekked off to New York City to try his luck.

“I was too naïve to get scared,” he said. “I kind of just dove into it headfirst and I loved it. I loved working with other actors, especially as green as I was.”

Not that it was easy.

“My best friend Mike, I was sleeping on his girlfriend’s blow-up mattress. He subletted a bedroom, and I was sleeping on his floor — only for a couple weeks — and then you kind of sleep from couch-to-couch. And some nights you had nowhere to go, so you sleep on the subway car until you get kicked off,” he said.

“I lived in Spanish Harlem for a bit with no electricity, no hot water. But when you’re that young you’re never, ‘Woe is me.’ Yeah, it was tough at the time, but it’s part of the process. Maybe it’s just because I’m so stubborn I kept driving forward.”

That incessant drive eventually landed him the pivotal role of the troubled Tim Riggins in “Friday Night Lights.” And people began to notice. The show was produced by Peter Berk, with whom Kitsch has worked since, including on the upcoming “American Primeval” premiering on Netflix Thursday.

It is a gritty retelling of the battle to settle the West and the factions that usurped the land to accomplish it. The part was a dream role, Kitsch said.

“I think reconnecting with Pete and then also you have the period piece which I really didn’t know a whole lot about — the 1800s and the 1850s — and then you have a guy who was raised Shoshone. It kind of shifts into that world a little bit. You find him mourning the loss of his family, so the stakes are high.”

The limited series is based on a real event, he said, adding, “And I think it’s really when you get a character like that, it’s as deep as you can take them. I think all actors are looking for something like that.”

While he took an excruciating drubbing for his role in the disappointing “John Carter,” Kitsch said he never wanted to quit. But he did take two years off to help one of his half-sisters through what he called a life-threatening condition.

“She’s a traveling nurse now and she’s come full circle and traveled the world a couple of times, backpacked southeast Asia on her own,” he said.

The 43-year-old actor has moved from Texas to Montana and says he’s never bored there.

“I love wildlife photography. You’re going back to the mountains, to nature, which I grew up in. It just really resets you in a beautiful way. ... There’s just something about the mountains for me and being around wildlife that just speaks to me at a different level,” he said.