Taylor Kitsch:
Hot as “John Carter”
by Lynn Barker
 Taylor Kitsch played a hot football player in the TV series “Friday Night Lights” and was fun opposite Hugh Jackman as “Gambit”, a thief with supernatural powers, in the “Wolverine” movie. He’ll soon be seen in Battleship, based upon the long-popular game.
Right now, catch him looking buff, fighting aliens and winning a princess all with a very so-ugly-he’s-cute, alien “lizard/dog” named Woola by his side.
AGW: This movie is in 3D. Have you seen it that way yet?
Taylor: No, I heard it’s unreal in 3D. I can’t wait to see it in 3D, IMAX for sure. I think this is the type of movie to see it that way. If you do it right, I think it can be great. It just enhances that escapism.
AGW: You must have been exhausted shooting this with all the action.
Taylor: I was working six-day weeks on it, and was in almost every shot of the film so I was beyond exhausted.
AGW: For the girls, you look pretty buff in the movie. What did you have to do to get your bod in great shape?
Taylor: My body is CG, so I was actually 250 pounds playing him [he laughs]. No. Uh, well, that’s flattering. I was raised playing hockey my whole life but I don't walk around looking like that. It’s 4:30 a. m. workouts, and then you work out all day on set, in between takes, and then the diet is the most boring diet you could ever imagine. It’s dry chicken breast with yams, brown rice, and protein shakes, basically, and you flood your body with water.
 AGW: John Carter comes from Earth and by alien technology, is transported to Mars where he basically has to fight for his life. That’s all action but there is a lot of emotion in the movie. Were you glad about that?
Taylor: I take more pride in the emotional scheme of John Carter than the aesthetic [looks] part of it, and I always will. And I wouldn’t sign up to the movie
if it didn't have the heartbeat it had. It’s a different sense of vulnerability, than I’ve never had. And it’s something you don’t get used to. When you’ve got to go on set and gear down to where he had to go, you’re vulnerable, man. So you better look or feel good, too.
AGW: This movie is based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and there are comics and other graphic stuff on the character. Did you read all those to get to know your character?
Taylor: Yeah. The books were what I used, or tried to tie into as much I could before I had the script because they didn't give me the script until after the screen test, really. I had to latch on to the emotional part of it. Carter is that beaten down guy at the beginning of the film.
I latched onto [studying] the Civil War. I studied with historians at the University of Texas; books and letters of uh, Civil War soldiers. How do you prep for all the green screen stuff? You’ve just got to create that emotional base to draw from that’s real, and so you can put me anywhere and everywhere and then I can still be grounded in it.
AGW: There’s so much action to this film. Did you get any injuries?
 Taylor: I started with a high ankle sprain, which was tough because obviously he’s jumping around. There were bizarre little things like Woola [the lizard like dog] jumping on me, and obviously, there’s no Woola on set [he’s computer-generated] so you throw yourself onto the ground. We were in a live setting on Lake Powell, so it was on a rock and my arm went numb for like an hour. So we’re just all chilling, waiting for my left arm to de-numb.
I cut my chest real well in this fight sequence on one of these air ships because they have all this armor, and the armor literally stuck in, pulled and cut me pretty good.
AGW: Carter and his princess have some hot chemistry. How was working with beautiful Lynn Collins? You two seem to really “like” each other.
Taylor: It says a lot about Collins, man, she’s so good. She’s the best of the scene. When you work with someone like that, the giving and taking is just so great, and the trust is immense, so you take more risks because I can fall and she’ll be there, or vice versa.
AGW: You are the big lead in this film. Were you comfortable with that?
Taylor: I mean I am comfortable with it. It just comes down to me surrounding myself with great people and then the work is better for it at the end of the day.
Uncredited photos copyright and courtesy Walt Disney Pictures, 2012
This movie is rated PG-13
Web Site: JOHN CARTER |
