Taylor Kitsch served as Tim Riggins in the football drama “Friday Night Lights.” In his most recent role he’s taken on Kevin Carter, the Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist and member of “The Bang Bang Club,” a group of four men in post-Apartheid South Africa who documented the country’s first free elections and the turmoil and violence that accompanied them.

In the wake of its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Speakeasy sat down with the Canadian-born actor to talk about making pictures and the art of shedding tears onscreen.

The Wall Street Journal: What makes a good picture?

Taylor Kitsch: Kev was asked that question. Something that evokes something to someone, something that tells a story. It’s cliché, but it’s different to everyone and that’s what art is. I could be looking at whatever in this room and shoot it a lot different than you, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s something that evokes something, if it’s something disturbing or whatever it is. I think that raises discussion.

To read the rest of this interview go to: blogs.wsj.com

Taylor Kitsch is either on the verge of megasuperstardom or some vicious strain of overexposure. The final season of the show that made him a lusted-after TV icon, Friday Night Lights, has already had its DirecTV finale, but the final season just premiered on NBC. He’s already wrapped the megablockbuster Battleship with FNLcreative guru Peter Berg, just signed on to Savageswith Oliver Stone, and called us shortly after leaving the set of John Carter of Mars, a hugely anticipated reimagining of the Edgar Rice Burroughs story that will be the live-action debut of Pixar god Andrew Stanton (Wall-E). Long before those films hit theaters, he’s taking Bang Bang Club to the Tribeca Film Festival. In Steven Silver’s intense film, set in the everyday blitzkrieg of unraveling Apartheid South Africa, Kitsch stars opposite Ryan Phillippe and Malin Ackerman as Kevin Carter, the photojournalist whose image of a poor child being stalked by a vulture won a Pulitzer Prize, not long before a distraught Carter killed himself in 1994. Kitsch says the part, for which he lost 35 pounds and eventually sought psychiatric counseling, was a dream come true.

You’re working on John Carter right now. Have you seen any of the CGI?
He’s got a good chunk of minutes cut, but I just won’t watch it until it’s done. They want me to watch it, but I need to wait a bit. I don’t want to get all fucking mind-fucked for it. It’s hard watching myself, so I just gotta trust that they’re killing it in post.

To read the rest of this interview go to: NYMag.com

At this weekend’s press day for the real-life indie drama The Bang Bang Club, about a group of four young combat photographers who risked their lives and used their camera lenses to show the brutality and violence associated with the first free elections in post-Apartheid South Africa in the early ‘90s, Collider got the opportunity to speak with actor Taylor Kitsch, best known for his work as Tim Riggins in the acclaimed television series Friday Night Lights, which ends its run this season, and for playing Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

While we will run the portion of the interview where he talked about playing the Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Kevin Carter closer to the film’s release date of April 22^nd, we did want to post his updates on his other upcoming projects. During the interview, he talked about re-teaming with Peter Berg for the sci-fi/action flick Battleship, the crazy ride that his character goes on for the film, surprising audiences with the realness of the story, taking on the title role for John Carter of Mars and working opposite green screens for much of it, preparing to play pot grower Chon for Oliver Stone’s next featureSavages, and how proud he is of his work on Friday Night Lights, which he feels he owes so much of his career to now. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

Question: When you do a small, intense role like in The Bang Bang Club, does that factor in to the type of role you want to choose to follow that up with, to help get you out of that head space

TAYLOR KITSCH: Even this next role that I’m doing, Chon (in Savages), playing with Oliver Stone, I’ve got a great team behind me in this, supporting me an incredible amount, but they know how much it took (to play Kevin Carter). I had a lot of kidney problems playing Kev, through the diet and losing 30-something pounds. It was very tough. So, they’re like, “Just don’t go as far as you went with Kev for Chon.” We’re very conscious of it. And, they keep wanting me to do a comedy, but we haven’t found the right one yet

To read the rest of this interview go to: Collider.com

Guess who’s turning 30? THIS GUY. A very happy birthday to Mr. Taylor Kitsch! Cheers!

It’s about to bring together a cast that includes Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro, butOliver Stone‘s Savages has taken an even bigger step forward, with news coming in that Universal is planning to distribute the film.

THR says that the studio has closed a deal to handle the film, with shooting to begin at the relatively close point of June. Based on Don Winslow‘s novel of the same name, the movie follows two pot growers, Ben and Chon (Johnson andKitsch), who must rescue their girlfriend, O, from a deadly drug cartel, who’ve kidnapped her so that they’ll work for them; the cartel’s matriarch (Hayek) soon develops motherly feelings of protection towards the girl.

SOURCE: TheFilmstage.com