Kitsch finds his niche
Actor enjoys challenge in variety of roles
LOS ANGELES — Out of the public eye for a few years, Taylor Kitsch issues a self-deprecating warning to his fans.
“You’re going to get sick of me,” says the Vancouver-raised actor whose three acting efforts will be on display over the next few months.
Kitsch’s part of the firefighter ensemble in the upcoming biopic Only the Brave, and he stars as Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh in the mini-series exposé Waco.
More immediately, he has a co-starring role in the spy thriller American Assassin. The film is based on the 2010 bestselling Vince Flynn novel featuring blackops assassin Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien), who dedicates himself to eliminating terrorists around the world after his fiancée is killed in an attack. Initially, Rapp is trained by lethal U. S. operative Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) in preparation for his licence to kill.
When Hurley’s former protege by the code name of Ghost (Kitsch) goes rogue and steals a nuclear device, Hurley and Rapp are assigned to find him. To that end, they team up with a Turkish spy (Shiva Negar) to track down Ghost in Europe before he can cause a catastrophic event.
Kitsch’s role requires him to get involved in lots of fistfights, firefights and even a few sequences involving torture. But he was up for the task from the start.
“It was intense,” Kitsch says of his portrayal. “But that’s pretty much why I signed on.”
Collaborating with the Oscarnominated Keaton in many of his scenes was another bonus, especially since the veteran led by example on the often chaotic sets in London and Rome, where most of the interiors and exteriors were filmed.
“The best leaders are the ones who show the way through their actions and that’s Keaton,” says Kitsch. “It was a real journey to collaborate with him because he brings energy and a lot of humour to what he does.”
Off camera, Keaton’s wit came in handy to lighten the mood during scenes in which Kitsch’s sadistic Ghost tortures Keaton’s Hurley as payback for allegedly abandoning him on a botched mission.
“We even looked at torture videos online to see how far we should go and what Ghost might have gone through to reciprocate the treatment on Hurley,” the actor says.
Meanwhile, former Navy SEALs and assorted military experts trained O’Brien and Kitsch with extra focus on their showdown at the conclusion when Rapp confronts Ghost in the hull of a boat. Both rejected the use of stuntmen, so they ended up pounding on each other over the week of shooting the sequences.
Serious injuries were avoided, but Kitsch admits “we did hit each other a couple of times, but it wasn’t too bad.”
The Kelowna native and onetime Langley Hornets junior hockey star is used to the rough stuff, but two serious knee injuries ended his NHL dream. In 2002, he moved to New York, booking some modelling gigs while studying acting.
Four years later, his extra effort paid off when Peter Berg hired him to play dysfunctional Tim Riggins in the Friday Night Lights TV series. On the movie front, he played Gambit in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and managed to overcome his consecutive 2012 misfires of John Carter, Battleship and Savages.
The next year Kitsch redeemed himself with his portrayal in Lone Survivor, which was Berg’s acclaimed film version of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s non-fiction book about his 2005 Afghanistan mission gone wrong.
He’s just as proud of his portrayal of Koresh in Waco. The six-part miniseries is based on the story of the 1993 FBI siege of a religious sect in Waco, Texas, which resulted in a deadly shootout and fire. The narrative will provide perspectives from both sides of the faceoff, including surviving Branch Davidians.
“It’s one of the best roles I’ve done is my life,” Kitsch says. “And, more important, I think we’re going to bring some truth to what happened. It’s an absolute tragedy of what went down and how it went down.”
And, all things considered, the mix of roles is just about right for him.
“I’m really happy where my career is right now and I am happy to throw some of curve balls,” he says. “It’s always fun to switch it up.”