Actor Taylor Kitsch doesn’t credit his talent or luck for his success. He says it’s just the fact that he’s relentlessly stubborn. It wasn’t like he was discouraged from pursuing acting as a profession. In fact his family felt “one day he’d get a real job.” But the one-time class clown just kept plugging away.

As a young hopeful, the Canada native trekked off to New York City to try his luck. “I was too naïve to get scared,” he shrugs. “I kinda just dove into it headfirst and I loved it. I loved working with other actors, especially as green as I was.”

The star of such projects as “Friday Night Lights,” “The Terminal List,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “True Detective” recalls his days in the Big Apple. “My best friend Mike, I was sleeping on his girlfriend’s blow-up mattress. He subletted a bedroom, and I was sleeping on his floor — only for a couple weeks — and then you kind of sleep from couch-to-couch. And some nights you had nowhere to go, so you sleep on the subway car until you get kicked off,” he says.

“I lived in Spanish Harlem for a bit with no electricity, no hot water. But when you're that young you're never, ‘Woe is me.’ Yeah, it was tough at the time, but it’s part of the process. Maybe it’s just because I'm so stubborn I kept driving forward.”

That incessant driving forward eventually landed him the pivotal role of the troubled Tim Riggins in “Friday Night Lights.” And people began to notice. The show was produced by Peter Berk, with whom Kitsch has worked since, including on the upcoming “American Primeval” premiering on Netflix Jan. 9.

This is not your father’s “Yellowstone.” “American Primeval” is the gritty retelling of the battle to settle the West and the factions that usurped the land to accomplish it.

It was no cakewalk for Kitsch either. He broke his foot during filming and had to have a bone surgically removed from his foot. And while they were shooting, he received a call that his father was on his deathbed.

Kitsch’s parents had divorced when he was a baby, and he and his brothers were raised by their mother. “He wasn’t really in my life much at all,” explains Kitsch. “In the last 19 years I saw him two or three times. But me and my two brothers made it up in time. I got a call Thursday, and he died Father’s Day on a Sunday. That helped me and my brothers kind of reconnect, which was great.”

The part of Isaac in “American Primeval” was a dream role, says Kitsch. “I think reconnecting with Pete and then also you have the period piece which I really didn't know a whole lot about — the 1800s and the 1850s — and then you have a guy who was raised Shoshone. It kind of shifts into that world a little bit. You find him mourning the loss of his family, so the stakes are high.”

The limited series is based on a real event, says Kitsch. “And I think it's really when you get a character like that, it’s as deep as you can take them. I think all actors are looking for something like that.”

Looking for something like that has been with him since he was a mischief-maker in high school.

“I was in trouble from being chased by the cops at Halloween to skipping class. I remember taking this photo class and, ironically, I love photography now, but me and my friend Dave skipped class, went and bought this Toyota Corolla for a case of beer, got it insured, and then he took it to his mechanics class and put brakes in it.

“We bought it from my brother’s roommate. And he said, ‘This car is a piece of ---- and you gotta put brakes in there.’ We’re 16, and we said, ‘Yeah, whatever man.’ And then we’re diving it, and he wasn’t lying. So Dave put brakes in it, and we would do an obstacle course in the parking lot in the mall with carts. We would give anybody who wanted to draw something on the car, we would let them. It was ridiculous. By the end of that photography class that same day, we bought that car and drove it along.”

While he took an excruciating drubbing for his role in “John Carter,” Kitsch says he never wanted to quit. He’s proud of the fact that he helped one of his half-sisters through a life-threatening condition. He took two years off during and right after “True Detective” to help his sister. “She’s a traveling nurse now and she’s come full circle and traveled the world a couple of times, backpacked southeast Asia on her own,” he says.

Though Kitsch couldn’t get arrested after “John Carter,” again he stubbornly persisted. “You're kind of battling your way back up the ladder,” he says. “I’ve really never had a contingency plan, but it makes you question stuff.”

The 43-year-old actor has moved from Texas to Montana and says he’s never bored there. “I love wildlife photography. You're going back to the mountains, to nature, which I grew up in. It just really resets you in a beautiful way. ... There’s just something about the mountains for me and being around wildlife that just speaks to me at a different level,” he says.

Barrymore squares with 'Squares'

Drew Barrymore will be occupying the center square when CBS revives “Hollywood Squares” on Jan. 9. The popular game show has endured several incarnations since it originated in 1966 and has proved popular most times.

The chatty Barrymore, who already boasts a daytime talk-show on CBS, should be a tasty choice to handle the zingers offered by the panelists on the tic-tac-toe-like contest.

In spite of an unconventional childhood, Barrymore has somehow prevailed. She tells me, “Everything in your life not only happens for a reason but also for the better, especially if you're at a place where you're really happy, then every circumstance led you there. I always feel complete fondness and admiration and adoration for my life.”

She says she believes in both fate and destiny. “I believe in God, in the nature god — maybe that's Mother Earth. I believe in every type of religion, and think it's good to study all religions even if you don't believe in a particular one.

“I've found there isn't one I don't believe in. I like to find organizations and what people commit themselves to and where they find their spirituality. My father was a big seeker of learning about every religion. I'm a novice — I should say novitiate compared to him. I think it's interesting to try and have an understanding of what many people believe in because there are so many religions.”

Denis Leary joins the Army

Comic Denis Leary is jumping back on the telly this time as a loudmouth Army colonel who is reassigned to the least important Army base in the world — in the Netherlands. Called “Going Dutch,” the sitcom premieres on Fox Thursday.

Leary, who remorsefully points out he never won an Emmy, an Oscar, or a Tony, tells me, “I went to Catholic school for 12 years, at the same school in my neighborhood with the same kids, the same nuns, the same priest. So I don’t know why, but very quickly I realized that I was more interested in making the other kids laugh than actually doing what the nuns told us to do. That was my talent, so I went with it, and it paid off.”

He recalls his first day at school. “We were out in the yard right before school started; you were allowed to play around in the yard. And all these kids were out in the yard, and when the bell rang, this really mean-looking old nun came out and started yelling at us to go inside. My house is only about four blocks away, so I took off. I thought, ‘I'm not doing what SHE tells me.’ So I got detention my first day of the first grade. And it never stopped.”

David Schwimmer gets 'Goosebumps'

One of folks’ favorite “Friend,” David Schwimmer, is starring in a unique project for Hulu and Disney+. On Jan. 10 Schwimmer shows up in the next spooky version of the ever present “Goosebumps” with “Goosebumps: the Vanishing.”

Here a pair of twins are sent to spend the summer with their divorced dad (Schwimmer) when a series of inexplicable things begin to happen. Can this bode well? Can there be a mystery lurking here?

Schwimmer says he can identify with Anthony, the character he plays. “There were several things that I feel connected to Anthony, with him. I was able to access, certainly being a parent of a teenager today, and being at that stage in life, which some of you may or may not be aware of.

“You have an aging parent and things start to change, and you become the parent of your parent. You have to take care of them and manage them. Certainly I can relate to that part of Anthony and being a divorced dad as well.”

Schwimmer says he likes scary events, and that Halloween has always been his favorite holiday. “As a kid, that thrill of being scared and then also of scaring others, especially my sister, who I terrorized. Like, I would hide, I would get under her covers and be totally flat — put all the pillows on top of me and wait for maybe an hour in her bed until she was ready for bed, and then I would scare the crap out of her. And there was nothing more satisfying or enjoyable. And this was when I was 27, so... .”

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