Kellan Lutz is featured in the upcoming Interview Magazine:
KELLAN LUTZ: I am in my backyard in L.A. hanging out with my two dogs.
JACOBS: Who are your dogs?
LUTZ: Kola is a shepherd-husky mix I adopted from the Compton animal shelter. Kevin is the newest, most adorable member of our family. He’s a Chihuahua. I found him on the street when I came back from one of my trips.
JACOBS: You spent time on a dairy farm in Iowa while you were growing up?
LUTZ: Iowa is where the big farm was, where my grandparents lived. After my parents divorced, we would visit them. My mom would send me out to the pigpen, where we had these huge, huge pigs. I would stand there for six hours holding a hose, watering pigs. They’d dive in the mud and shake it off, and I’d go home covered in it. I loved the whole thing of getting wet and dirty and then getting in a warm bath.JACOBS: You also have experience spraying crops and building silos. Are you aware of how this story reads in New York and L.A.? Anything involving uncontrived hard labor is irresistible to the style industry.
LUTZ: I’d rather do manual labor than sit behind a desk. And as my grandparents got older, I’d fly out there and help out around the farm. We’d tear barns down; we’d build barns. I’d rather be outside rolling hay or driving the tractors.
LUTZ: I have a lot of older brothers who messed up in different ways in my mother’s eyes. So I learned from all of their mistakes. I can’t go into detail, but while I was growing up, I always tried to make it a goal to relieve some of the stress my mother went through. I applied myself to school very diligently. I wanted to go out of state so I wouldn’t have to depend on my mother. And L.A., where my father lived, seemed to call to me.
JACOBS: Why acting?
LUTZ: In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn’t realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn’t think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting—that it’s a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, “Hey, I’m going to be a
NASCAR driver.” They need to have some way in. Once I was in L.A., I realized anyone could do this. Why not give it a shot? I started going to a ton of acting classes, and I found I had a real passion for it, probably the biggest passion I’ve ever had in my whole life. So I decided to put school aside, put all my scholarships aside, put everything that I worked hard on for my mother and myself aside, and pursue this roller-coaster ride.
JACOBS: How old were you when you got the -Abercrombie & Fitch cover?
LUTZ: Eighteen. I was actually working in L.A. at an Abercrombie to make friends. I had no friends.
JACOBS: On the sales floor?
LUTZ: I was selling clothes. But I believe my personality helped, because I was the worst folder. I just couldn’t care to do it. I felt like I had ADD. I would just goof around and shoot rubber bands everywhere. Somehow the manager didn’t fire me, and I became a greeter, when you have to stand outside, you know, topless, and kind of finagle people into the store. Then Abercrombie had an audition, and my agency sent me out. I met Bruce Weber, and they chose me. I wasn’t the strongest, most fit, best-looking guy on that shoot, but somehow Bruce put me on the cover. I was just lying on the grass playing with this beetle, and they used that shot. I was still working at the store when the magazine came out two months later. I was just very lucky, and that opened up doors to acting.
JACOBS: Unlike some actors, you don’t seem to have a need to distance yourself from modeling.
LUTZ: It’s weird that the world sees modeling as a negative. It just blows my mind how many people think that because I was a model, I think I’m pretty and that I can use my looks to get ahead. I’m not pretty!
JACOBS: You really don’t think you’re pretty?
LUTZ: It’s funny when people say you have sex appeal or call you the next Brad Pitt. I just laugh. I’m not that. I don’t want to be that. “You’re a sex icon.” Why? Because I played a vampire in a movie? It’s all very unearned. If I had the best freaking abs in the world or if I looked like Brad Pitt does in Fight Club [1999], then cool, but I’m not starving myself. I eat what I want, and I’m not a workout fiend. My genetics are good, but they aren’t crazy He-Man style. I don’t get it, but I appreciate it. [laughs]
JACOBS: And sometimes you just like to go on a shirtless run with your dog, and people need to deal with it.
JACOBS: Your humility is charming, but do you ever look at other guys going up for a role and think, “I can destroy you with my good looks”?
LUTZ: I love competition. I thrive on it. I love being able to win the room over before even walking through the door. When I was going out for Twilight, I was a big guy, especially after Generation Kill. I was close to 200 pounds and just all muscle. The character description was a big, bulky fighter, a wrestler, a bear of a guy with a smile. I walked in the waiting room and I noticed nine other actors, and half of them were trying to do push-ups, and half of them were trying to be all tough. I chuckled to myself. I’m very perceptive. I love seeing guys out of the corner of my eye be like, “Great.” Because they see a guy walking in who totally looks the role. It’s funny. I don’t try to be cocky, but I’m just very confident because I know I did all of my homework. I also really love, love, love doing character pieces. I love wearing wigs to auditions, even though sometimes they don’t work. I love trying to play the not-confident guy, the guy against my normal character, because that’s when real acting comes into play.
Read the entire interview with Kellan Lutz here!!
via Eclipse Movie
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