Chris Pratt has reflected on his trajectory from sitcom buffoon to action hero, revealing that he thinks he “represents the underdog who made his way to success”.
He also said that he gained 30 to 40 pounds while playing Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation, as he discovered he was getting more laughs as a consequence of gaining weight.
“I slowly realised the more I morphed into slightly more clownish, fatter, sweatier, I was getting more laughs and that’s when – as I was still trying to navigate my career and pay the bills – I thought, ‘Maybe this is the niche, maybe this is how I get paid, to play this guy,’” the Marvel actor said.
Despite auditioning for leading man roles at the start of his career, Pratt instead found success playing deadbeat boyfriends in films including Bride Wars and Jennifer’s Body (both 2009).
He told The Independent he never envisioned his career reaching the stage it has. “Early in my career, that’s what I wanted, but I wasn’t getting access to those types of roles,” the actor, who stars in new thriller Mercy, said.
“I was really only getting access to smaller roles and if I was in good shape, the role I was auditioning for was ‘boyfriend’ – the guy who in the movie they’re like, ‘Hey man, welcome to the OC’ and then I get kicked in the d*** and the audience are like, ‘Yeah! F*** that guy! I hate him.’” Those were the roles I was getting.”
He said things seemed destined to remain on the same track after he won the role of loveable fool Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation, a character written exactly like the parts he’d been playing previously.
“I was a guest star who was supposed to be written off,” he said – but the producers enjoyed Pratt’s performance so much that they wrote him into the main cast. Pratt soon found that the more he leaned into his character’s buffoonery, the better he was received.
It was the roles he won in between seasons of Parks and Recreation – Bennett Miller’s baseball drama Moneyball (2011) and Kathryn Bigelow’s political thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012) – that helped him begin to move beyond the roles he was known for.
“No one said, ‘What is that dude doing there?’ It felt like it worked, and at that moment, I thought, ‘Maybe now I’ve got a little bit of experience; there’s an avenue to chase this thing.’ So I had more belief in myself after that, probably.”
When his Mercy co-star Rebecca Ferguson chimed in to say: “It’s not like you represent the underdog who made his way to success,” Pratt exclaimed: “No, I think I do!”
One year before Parks and Recreation ended, Pratt underwent a physical transformation after winning the role of wisecracking rogue Peter “Star-Lord” Quill in James Gunn’s Marvel blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy.
He appeared in three Guardians films in total, as well as two Avengers films, and cemented his action hero status with the lead role in Jurassic World in 2015.
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