While actor and model Taylor Kinney has been in the public eye for years, it would be easy for celebrity tabloid readers to know him solely

for his 10-season (and counting) run as Lieutenant Kelly Severide on NBC’s popular “Chicago Fire” or his past relationship with Lady Gaga.

Kinney is, after all, rather private compared to many celebs. But Kinney — who hails from Amish country, attended a Mennonite high

 

 

school, and has a background in carpentry — is anything but your average Hollywood heartthrob. The actor did not start acting until his mid-20s, has an intense amount of hobbies, and is an adrenaline junkie. In between shooting his own scenes, surfing, and riding motorcycles, Kinney does crossword puzzles (in case you were trying to box him in).

 

 

Kinney’s acting career started with the nighttime soap opera “Fashion House” back in 2006, and he has been working consistently ever since. In addition to “Chicago Fire” and its various spin-offs, on which he has also appeared as Severide, Kinney’s other television credits include playing an EMT in the medical drama “Trauma,” a werewolf on “The Vampire Diaries,” and one of Fiona’s short-lived dalliances on “Shameless.” In film, Kinney’s most notable credits are the war thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” where he played a DEVGRU operator in the Navy, and “The Other Woman,” where he played the charming brother of one of the main characters. Here are some untold truths to help you learn a bit more about the charismatic, handsome, and outdoorsy Taylor Kinney.

If you thought that Kinney’s muscular frame suggested he may have been an athlete at some point, then you were correct. The buff star reportedly grew up playing volleyball for his high school — Lancaster Mennonite School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania — and was so good that the Daily Mail once claimed he was a local “hero.” “Taylor was one of our best volleyball players. He was in the team with me,” former teammate Eric Kinnel told the Daily Mail. “I remember he took the team to district playoffs. He had a great senior year.”

According to acting superintendent Miles Yoder in the same article, Kinney didn’t pursue drama as a high schooler, instead focusing on sports and religious studies. It was not until he was a sophomore in college that Kinney began to explore acting (per USA Today). In a 2012 interview, Kinney told the newspaper that the theater class he chose as an elective “held my interest outside of the classroom more so than any other subject I’d ever taken.” Still, it would be a few years before Kinney would make it to Hollywood.