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| Breakout Star Meet Taylor Kitsch–a B.C. boy on the brink of superstardom. |
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| African Awakening One woman’s tale of volunteering at an orphanage on the other side of the world. |
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| Are These Really Role Models– Paris, Britney, Lindsay—where have all the role models gone? |
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Taylor Kitsch has a lot to smile about these days. Not only is the 26-year-old actor who currently stars in the critically acclaimed television series Friday Night Lights as badboy, Tim Riggins—a high school football star in small-town Texas—garnering lots of praise for his performance, but he’s also enjoying every minute of it. “I can’t tell you how much fun it is to play this character. There’s a lot of substance to this guy, lots of layers,” he says from Austin, Texas, where the show is shot for eight months of the year and where he has just bought his first home.
But it was just a few years ago though that Taylor, who grew up in and around Kelowna, British Columbia, was sleeping on a borrowed air mattress in Spanish Harlem while studying acting with renowned acting coach Sheila Grey in New York City. “When I look back, I don’t know how I did it,” he says. But thank goodness he did. It was while at The University of Lethbridge in Alberta that a serious knee injury dashed his dreams of a professional hockey career. Up until then, Taylor had spent his entire life on the ice. “I was convinced [hockey] was what I was going to do,” he says.
In an instant, he was faced with some serious decisions about his future. Taylor had always been interested in acting, having starred in various plays throughout high school, and he ultimately decided to take his chances and move to New York in 2002 to study acting. “I got kind of obsessive,” he says. “I was studying like 40 hours a week, plugging away at all these novels and books on different methods of acting. I lived for class.” After finishing acting classes in New York, he got an agent in LA and lived out of his car for weeks on end while going to auditions. Finally, he landed his first role in the action feature Snakes On a Plane alongside Samuel L. Jackson, which was soon followed by roles in The Covenant and John Tucker Must Die. And, then, came his breakout role in Friday Night Lights in 2006.
This past summer, while on hiatus from the series, which just started it’s second season, he shot Gospel Hill with veteran actors Danny Glover and Angela Bassett. “I was able to be part of something that was very meaningful and had substance,” says Taylor of Gospel Hill. “And that’s really addictive.”
Something else Taylor’s addicted to is staying physically fit. In his spare time, he stays physically active and is involved with various children’s charities. “I’ll go to hospitals and read to kids which I love doing,” he explains. And you won’t find Taylor on the front pages of any tabloids. “You don’t see me out at all those Hollywood deals. It’s a choice to be in those tabloids, believe it or not, and I truly believe it does nothing for me,” he says. “Any actor you admire, if you can name the top five or 10 actors that you admire, you’ll never see them in the tabloids. That says a lot.” As for his future? “I want to work with Sean Penn. He’s my mentor and I look up to him. I think he’s brilliant—the best there is. I want to direct. I’m writing some stuff. Really, I just want to keep moving forward.” We have no doubt that he will. |
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“I was absolutely traumatized when I had no more hockey left because I truly believed my whole life that I would be a hockey player. Other people told me, ‘Hey, you’re young. There are other opportunities.’ But I didn’t believe it because of my mindset because I was so disappointed. But you just have to move forward and progress despite disappointments in life because they’re bound to happen. I guarantee that if you set your mind to it and prepare, you’ll create new chances for yourself. It’s inevitable. It really is.” |
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Last fall, as I returned for a third semester of grade 12, I looked at the school year ahead with a sunken heart. While all my friends were heading off to university, I was heading back to high school to take an additional three business courses in order to boost my overall average for university admissions. But when my friend Ruhi mentioned that she was going to volunteer for six weeks that winter as a helper and teacher at an orphanage in the east-African country, Tanzania, I marveled at what she was doing and a seed of inspiration was planted in my mind.
When I arrived in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’s former capital, which means “Haven on Earth,” last April after flying for a day-and-a-half from Toronto, I was greeted with clear blue skies, beautiful warm weather and magnificent palm trees. Having Ruhi there to help me unpack calmed my nerves at being in such a foreign place. We were housed with a wonderful elderly couple who ran a school on their property in Mburahati, a village just a ten-minute drive from Dar Es Salaam. The two of us shared a bedroom with one large bed covered in mosquito netting to prevent us from getting malaria. Living with this couple, sharing meals with them and following their daily schedule allowed us to become a part of their lives and, more importantly, gain lifelong friends. And, we also quickly picked up conversational Swahili (the local language)! Our days were divided into two parts. After the resident rooster woke us at 4:30 a.m. each morning, we made the 15-minute trek through the sandy roads of the bustling village to the Mother Theresa Missionaries Charity Orphanage. The orphanage housed approximately a hundred children ranging from
Starting around 2 p.m. each afternoon, we either stayed at the orphanage, or taught English back at the school on the property where we lived with the elderly woman who asked us to call her Bibi, which means “grandmother” in Swahili. Her house occupied half of the property, and the other half housed three open classrooms that could hold about twenty students in each. I spent quite a bit of time working on English grammar exercises with the 10-to 15-year-olds and was impressed with their attentiveness and eagerness towards learning English. The three Tanzanian teachers working at the school encouraged Ruhi and I to bring new teaching strategies and activities to the classrooms. The english grammar lessons I taught were what I looked forward to the most because it was so rewarding to work with students who showed such eagerness towards learning English. As my four-week volunteer program came to an end, I felt both excitement at returning home and sadness at leaving the children and friends that I had built special bonds with. I was determined to share the joys of my experience with all my friends and relatives to help them understand how crucial volunteers are to people living in third-world countries. Before I went to Africa, I was a high school graduate uncertain about what I wanted from my own life. But by diverting attention from myself to others in need, I was able to find a sense of direction and purpose. I realized that even as an 18-year-old, I was able to make a difference in other people’s lives. I came home with a newfound sense of purpose—to do more for others. There is a quote by Mahatma Gandi that now rings so true to me: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” When I lost myself in the arms of the orphans, I realized all I wanted was to give them more. |
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Out of control celebs are the media darlings of today, but are they creating a dangerous sense of normalcy?
This summer was a busy one for Hollywood’s “It” girls. In June, around the same time that Paris Hilton was ordered back behind bars for her drunk driving conviction, and Lindsay Lohan was being accused of a similar offence while already in rehab, Hilary Duff quietly spent time at an elementary school in South Central Los Angeles donating thousands of meals to its underprivileged students through her Blessings in a Backpack charity initiative. Hilary’s generous contribution is the kind of positive news that we should hear more of, especially concerning young celebrities. Yet her good work barely registered a blip on the media radar while Paris’ prison sentence garnered front-page headlines at the most reputable papers around the world. Why is this?
A straight-forward answer is that conflict, scandal and sensationalism are what grab our attention. As a result, that’s what finds its way into the mainstream media. Every day we are bombarded with new images and stories of a young star behaving badly, making it impossible to ignore stories covering Britney’s continual meltdown—from shaving her head to throwing a temper tantrum at a July OK! photo shoot intended to revive her dying career and most recently, losing custody of her children—unless we shut off our televisions and throw away our laptops. For many teens, being constantly bombarded with coverage of underdressed, oversexed and just plain irresponsible young adults is painting an unrealistic portrait of what is acceptable behaviour and the type lifestyle one should aspire to lead.
Today’s unprecedented interest in the lives of the irresponsibly rich and famous, particularly of young Hollywood stars, is fuelled by the media, whether through television, magazines or internet coverage. Even in the face of serious problems like drug habits and criminal charges, these young stars lead a charmed existence filled with designer clothes, hot dates, and lots of late-night partying—an attractive lifestyle that is infused in many young minds as being something worth aspiring to. But for the average teen or 20-something-year-old, the reality of having served time in jail presents huge barriers for future success.
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Getting busted for drunk driving and drug possession can prevent you from living your life to the fullest: travel is next to impossible because most countries don’t allow people with criminal records to enter, and promising job prospects often don’t lead anywhere once your potential employer does a background check. Yet reading about Lindsay’s second arrest following a drunken car chase and her subsequent stint in rehab or Rumer Willis’ involvement in a hotel room drug raid makes their antics seem socially acceptable. Janice Lee, the program manager of Vancouver’s YWCA High School Mentorship Program agrees. Some of the teens Lee talks to believe that young celebrities have an enviable life and a level of material success that’s easily attainable. “Their lifestyle seems glamorous. They just party all the time,” she says. But this extreme type of behaviour doesn’t pay the bills and, as was all too clear this summer, is ultimately destructive. |
“Celebrities are very much a part of youth culture and the media that youth enjoy and consume,” says Warren Nightingale, a media education specialist with Canada’s Media Awareness Network, an organization that promotes media literacy. “So it’s important for teens to possess the critical thinking skills to decipher it and be aware of what the media is presenting.” In other words, the only way to find the truth in media at times is by being able to separate the reality from what is constructed to get our attention and make money.
Nightingale points out that the lead stories in magazines and newspapers are written to sell copies. So even though there are famous young people out there conquering the business world, making a scientific breakthroughs and doing charitable work, they often shy away from press because they know what the wrong media spin can do to their credibility. Canadian actor Ryan Gosling addressed this issue in a June 2007 interview. “It’s a huge fear of mine that I will bring any kind of negative attention to a situation that couldn’t be any worse,” said Ryan while discussing his work lobbying government officials to help facilitate the peace process and liberate child soldiers in Northern Uganda. “I don’t want people to attach their opinions of me to the issue [I’m involved with].”
| Luckily, teenagers today are more media savvy than ever. So while many of you may be entertained reading about the wild ways of your favourite “celebutantes,” you don’t necessarily want to be them. “The young girls I work with do understand that those [celebrities’] lives are strictly entertainment,” Lee says. “They look at them just to laugh at.” Being able to look past these faux role models means you’ll be able to find the real deals out there—and there are plenty. |  |
Take Hilary Duff, for example. She garners her fair share of press as part of the pop princess set, but the 20-year-old is an anomaly among her peers, preferring to spend much of her free time away from the party scene to champion worthwhile humanitarian causes. In addition to her work with USA Harvest—a program that donates food to missions, food banks and soup kitchens—Hilary works for numerous organizations such as Kids With a Cause, a charity that provides programs that help improve the quality of life for less fortunate youth, as well as Epilepsy Toronto, an organization that aims to help people with epilepsy live full and independent lives. She is also known for supporting local events in the various cities she visits during promotional tours and concert stops, such as visiting a children’s hospital in Australia on her world tour this year after learning that a young fan requested she visit his ward if she was ever in the country. The young boy, an eight year old named William Styles, passed away before Hilary’s visit but she remained committed to fulfilling his wish and even took the time to meet with William’s family.
And, like Ryan Gosling, Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter Alicia Keys is involved with projects in Africa. The twenty-five-year-old beauty became the co-founder and global ambassador for Keep a Child Alive, a non-profit organization committed to providing anti-retroviral treatment to kids and adults with HIV/AIDS in Africa, after performing a concert in South Africa in 2002 where she saw firsthand the human tragedy of the disease. Keys now serves as the organization’s ambassador, helping to raise awareness of the epidemic and encourage those of us who are more fortunate to get involved in the cause by using her voice—literally: “Don’t Give Up (Africa),” a duet Alicia recorded with Bono, is available for downloading on the Keep a Child Alive Web site.
London, Ontario native, Ryan Gosling works with ENOUGH, a project dedicated to abolishing genocide and atrocities in war-torn regions of Africa. He has visited refugee camps in Darfur and, in 2005, he filmed a documentary on refugee camps there in order to raise awareness of the terrible conditions that currently exist there. And, unlike some other stars of his generation, the 26-year-old actor used his celebrity in a positive way when he rocked a “Darfur” T-shirt at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. Gosling’s t-shirt got a lot of viewers and celebrities alike talking about the devastated Sudanese region and garnered just as much press as his steamy kiss with his The Notebook co-star and real-life girlfriend Rachel McAdams on that same stage.
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Closer to home, Chris Bosh is putting his celebrity status to good use on a local level. The gracious and soft-spoken captain of the Toronto Raptors uses his leadership skills on and off the court to help at-risk youth in Toronto and his hometown of Dallas. The 23-year-old’s The Chris Bosh Foundation hosts basketball camps, mentoring sessions and book clubs aimed at helping kids and teenagers reach their full potential and become well-rounded and successful in all areas of life, including academics and sports, and provides social enrichment. |
While these particular young celebrities are setting an admirable example for their generation, sometimes not-so-famous role models carry the most influence. As part of her role at the YWCA Vancouver, Lee organizes an annual high school mentorship program matching girls in grades 11 and 12 with successful women in their prospective—and often traditionally male-dominated—careers, such as engineering and law enforcement. Lee has seen firsthand the positive impact these business leaders and community members have on the teenage participants. “One hundred per cent of the girls in our 2005-2006 program said that they considered their mentor a role model,” she says proudly.
So when it comes to finding positive role models, it’s clear that there are a lot of great people to choose from—spoiled celebrities need not apply.
Inspired to get involved with the organizations supported by your role model? Check out these links to find out how you can help make a difference.
The Chris Bosh Foundation
ENOUGH!
Keep a Child Alive
Kids With a Cause
YWCA
