He took his shot when he saw actress Rae Dawn Chong at the restaurant he worked at. She ended up offering him a role in her upcoming movie.
Chris Pratt is a well-known face in the movie industry, but not many know that his past wasn't always that easy. The 43-year-old star was born in Minnesota in 1979, before moving to Washington State as a child. He was raised by blue-collar parents, and even as a child, he knew he wanted to be an actor.
According to Entertainment Weekly, he decided to study acting at a local community college which he quit after half a semester.
After that, he packed up and went to Hawaii where he lived in a van. "I had a friend who was like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to come out here,'" Pratt says. ”We set up camp on the beach and lived the dream.”
Soon, to make ends meet, he started working at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and surprisingly liked it there. "I don’t know if you’ve ever had a dining experience at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., but they love a gregarious waiter who will get in your face and sing you birthday songs and do trivia,” he says.
One day, the then 19-year-old Pratt waited on actress Rae Dawn Chong of Commando fame. His instincts pushed him to shoot his shot, and he asked her about giving him a chance in the movies. "I was like, ‘You’re in the movies, right? I always wanted to be in the movies,'" he recalls. "She said, ‘You’re cute. Do you act?’ I was like, f— it, ‘Goddamn right I act! Put me in a movie!'"
It seems nothing short of coincidence that Chong was in the restaurant that day because she was gearing up for her directorial debut, a horror-comedy called Cursed Part III, when she ended up offering Pratt a role in the film! He was over the moon when he found out that the movie would be shot in LA. ”The moment she told me she was bringing me to L.A., I knew,” he says. ”I was like, ‘This is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.'”
Even though the movie was shelved, Chong soon realized that Pratt was talented. Pratt soon landed a bunch of roles, and he's now successful, to say the least. He was indeed lucky to have met Chong and served her, but success probably never came as a surprise to Pratt because he always knew he was going to make it big. In fact, he told his high school coach that he was sure he'd end up making a lot of money in the future.
”My high school wrestling coach reminds me about this time I came into his office and he said, ‘Chris, what do you want to do with yourself?'” Pratt recalls. "I was like, ‘I don’t know, but I know I’ll be famous and I know I’ll make a s— ton of money.’ I had no idea how. I’d done nothing proactive. It was as dumb as someone saying, ‘I’ll probably be an astronaut. I’m sure I’ll stumble into an astronaut suit and end up in space one day.'”
Sometimes larger that life dreams do come true and life really goes the your way sometimes, doesn't it?
References:
https://ew.com/article/2014/07/11/how-chris-pratt-went-zero-hero/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Christopher Polk
