Profile: Chris Pratt
Hollywood‘s sexiest goofball
“I do believe in destiny,” says Chris Pratt, whose three most recent starring roles were in films (The Lego Movie, Jurassic World and Guardians of the Galaxy) that have together grossed $2.9 billion worldwide. “I’m lucky. But I didn’t walk into 7-Eleven, buy a scratch ticket, scratch it off, and star in Guardians of the Galaxy.”
He’s right: at 37, the six-foot-two Pratt has come a long way. He was born in the town of Virginia, Minnesota, and grew up all over the Northwest, wherever his parents (his dad worked in construction and mining; his mom at Safeway supermarkets) took the family. He spent his high-school years in Lake Stevens, Washington, dropped out of community college and went to Maui, where he did odd jobs and was essentially homeless. That’s where he met, while serving her in a restaurant, Rae Dawn Chong, who saw something in him and offered him a part in a movie short she was directing, Cursed Part 3 (2000). His acting career was born. Before long, he was a regular on the TV series Everwood (2002–06), followed by a season of The O.C., and finally, NBC’s Parks and Recreation (2009–15), in which his character, Andy Dwyer, a too-lovable-to-be-obnoxious buffoon, became instantly popular and his calling card for comic talent.
Pratt, being far sharper than Andy, took movie roles (in the Oscar-nominated Moneyball and Zero Dark Thirty) throughout his years on TV, including one in Take Me Home Tonight, where he met his wife, actress Anna Faris. The birth of their son, Jack, in 2012, who was two months premature, made Pratt rethink his priorities. He shed the chubby exterior he’d gained over the years at Parks and Rec and buffed up. It helped him focus. “Being in good physical shape is the best way to combat depression,” he claims. “You just have endorphins running around your body.” By the time he appeared at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy, dancing to the ’70s-retro song, “Come and Get Your Love,” it was clear that he had the looks and manic charm to be a matinee idol.
There are Guardians and Avengers sequels scheduled for 2017, and a planned Jurassic World sequel in 2018, but even this fall looks promising for Pratt. Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the classic Western The Magnificent Seven opens on September 23, in which Pratt joins Denzel Washington’s gun-happy posse of do-gooders, and on December 21, he’ll star opposite Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence in the sci-fi adventure flick Passengers. As director James Gunn once observed: “I said before we ever started shooting Guardians that Chris Pratt’s the biggest movie star in the world—it’s just that people don’t know it yet. And that’s the case.”
