He’s handsome as hell and scored much acclaim for his work as Tim Riggins on NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” series, but Taylor Kitsch’s big screen efforts have been more of a mixed bag.

Hollywood tried to turn him into a leading man with sci-fi epics “John Carter” and “Battleship,” but both flopped at the box-office and torpedoed his career until a series of grittier and more interesting roles in the likes of “The Normal Heart,” “Savages,” “Lone Survivor” and “True Detective” brought him back.

These days he pops up every now and then, and in the recent thriller “21 Bridges,” he plays the villain who is both a war veteran and small-time criminal. Kitsch also has Neill Blomkamp’s “Inferno” in the works and tells THR that he sees himself as a character actor first, so he “could honestly give a f–k if I’m 15th on the call sheet or first.”

More interesting though is that Kitsch has noticed a resurgence in appreciation of Disney’s “John Carter”. It may not have met box office expectations, but the film seems to be held in higher esteem now than it did when it premiered in 2012. Of the fresh interest, Kitsch says:

“I think it got another life when it went on Netflix not long ago, maybe a year ago or something, but, yes, to be blunt. People stop me all the time for that, especially in Europe. It’s had a little mini-resurgence. Maybe, at the time, it was more of a knee-jerk reaction of ‘Let’s see how we can bury this and everyone that has a part in it.’ Over time, I think you take a breath and understand that it is what it is … I guess people who watch it now for the first time can take a lot more away from it than people did at first. It’s always flattering, and I learned a ton on that movie. I honestly don’t see it as a failure. I have great memories from it, and I still talk to a bunch of the cast. It is what it is, right?”

“John Carter,” based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel series, follows a war-weary, former military captai who is inexplicably transported to Mars and becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions. Lynn Collins and Willem Dafoe co-star in the film which made just $73 million domestically.