Taylor Kitsch is so good-looking and talented, it's hard to imagine that he ever wanted for anything, let alone a nice warm bed. But Kitsch, the long-haired and handsome star of NBC's Friday Night Lights spent some time, not so many years ago, sleeping on New York City subways while he struggled to find modeling work. "The funny thing is you don't really think about it when you're in the shit," Kitsch says. "I just didn't want to leave New York."

The Canadian-born actor started out with a different sort of fantasy: he wanted to be a pro hockey player. But after an injury he dropped out of college (where he studied nutrition) and moved to New York to make it big in modeling. After a rough start — first the subway home, then a tenement apartment he shared with a horde of other models — Kitsch started getting tiny parts in big movies. Covenant, Snakes on a Plane and John Tucker Must Die were all small breaks until finally he was cast as Tim Riggins in Pete Berg's critically acclaimed Friday Night Lights.

Since then, Kitsch has been living in Austin, playing TV's most beloved — and hottest — alcoholic football player. When he's off set, Kitsch rides his motorcycle to small towns and explores, and plays league sports with the locals. "I definitely have a pieces of me like Riggins — my father was never in my life," he says. "I've had curve balls thrown at me."

Now Kitsch is shooting a big feature film in Africa, playing Pulitzer-prize winning war photographer Kevin Carter in The Bang Bang Club. The role is a graduation of sorts from beautiful tortured young man to a truly tortured man who documented terrible genocide. Kitsch read for the part and freaked out. "I was scared shitless to take this on. And that's when you know you're doing something right."