Justin Hartley embarks on new chapters after 'This is Us'

On NBC's "This is Us," Justin Hartley played Kevin Pearson: A man whose dreams of playing college football were derailed injury — so he decided to try acting, and ended up a big star.

Hartley's own story has some strong parallels. He loved to play sports growing up but realized, as he got older, he wasn't cut out to play professionally.

"You realize there are too many people out there that are way better than you are. There's no more room for you. You have to find something else to do," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Like Kevin, that something else turned out to be acting. While in college, Hartley joined a theater group where audience members could get onstage and join in the dialogue, leaving the actors to just go with it.

"How you prep for something like that is you just do a lot of improv work, so you're kind of prepared for everything. They come up, they think they're being clever, they say something, you've already