Tragic Details About Chris Pratt's Life

Before Chris Pratt had a stunning transformation into a super buff action movie star, he was struggling to make ends meet. In 2013, the "Guardians of the Galaxy" star proudly detailed to Buzzfeed how he'd worked as a stripper when he was 18 and gave the show of a lifetime at a pal's grandmother's birthday bash. At that point, Pratt was essentially taking any job that came his way, so he ended up becoming a babysitter, gardener, painter, car washer, and blackberry picker. During a 2016 appearance on "The Graham Norton Show," the actor recalled that while he auditioned for roles across Hollywood, he picked up a job as a waiter at an awful restaurant that only paid about $30 a day. Unfortunately, Pratt couldn't make much in tips either since the establishment hardly had any patrons. 

As a result, he often had no choice but to eat people's leftovers right off their plates. In fact, Pratt sometimes coaxed restaurant-goers into ordering bigger portions so he could have a more substantial meal. Meanwhile, in a 2014 chat with The Independent, the "Parks and Recreation" alum confessed that he became homeless after dropping out of college after just one semester. While he mostly lived out of a van or camped out in a tent back then, Pratt still took an optimistic view of his time being homeless in Hawaii, reasoning, "We just drank and smoked weed and worked minimal hours, 15-20 hours per week, just enough to cover gas, food and fishing supplies. You know, it was [a] charming time."

In August 2017, Chris Pratt and his first wife, Anna Faris, took to social media to announce that they were sadly parting ways after eight years of marriage. The celebrity couple's joint statement made it clear that Faris and Pratt would stay friends after their divorce and would continue to focus on actively co-parenting their son, Jack. Although both parties remained tight-lipped about their split in the immediate aftermath, the former couple slowly started opening up about what went wrong as the years went by. While appearing on "The Drew Barrymore Show" in 2023, Pratt admitted that he felt completely lost in the short period after his divorce when he hadn't met his future wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, yet. Notably, an insider shared a similar sentiment with Us Weekly in 2020, divulging, "Chris was very insecure about himself before he started dating Katherine." 

They elaborated, "He never felt 'good enough' for Anna Faris, and then when their relationship started to go downward, he was angry and not liking who he was." Meanwhile, Faris hinted that a power imbalance contributed to her split from Pratt during a 2021 episode of her "Unqualified" podcast. According to the "Scary Movie" star, "I don't think we did a great job of eliminating competitiveness." However, Faris added that her prior relationships, both of which were with fellow actors, could've gone smoother if she didn't stress so much over the comparisons. It's also worth noting that Pratt was accused of cheating on Faris with his "Passengers" co-star, Jennifer Lawrence. However, the Oscar winner flat-out denied the crazy rumor during a 2018 KISS FM interview.

While speaking to Redbook magazine in 2015, Anna Faris disclosed that she went into labor with Jack just seven months into her term. Although the doctors managed to halt labor for another week, her little boy ultimately arrived nine weeks early. When Chris Pratt appeared at the March of Dimes Celebration of Babies Hollywood Luncheon in 2014, he recalled that his son was only about three pounds and was whisked off to the neonatal intensive care unit moments after his birth. As a result, "He had jaundice, so they put a blindfold on him and he slept beneath [a] creepy light and he had a PICC line, which is an IV that runs up his arm into his heart," the actor explained, per Us Weekly. 

Their newborn son had several tubes going through him to help him survive while Jack's parents had a machine that beeped to inform them that he stopped breathing, and they had to hear that horrifying noise several times. During those tough times, the Marvel star cherished the little moments when he would get to hold his son close and play him country music. "I made him promises [...] in that moment just about what kind of dad I wanted to be, and I just prayed that he'd be here long enough and he was going to let me keep him," the actor recalled. Thankfully, Jack ended up making a full recovery.

In November 2021, Chris Pratt shared a heartfelt Instagram message to gush about his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, and thank her for "a gorgeous healthy daughter." However, social media commentators felt that the word "healthy" was in poor taste since his son with Anna Faris faced so many health issues as a baby. As a result, Chris faced tidal waves of backlash. A few days later, the "Super Mario Bros. Movie" star took to Instagram Stories to clarify that although it brought him down mentally and made him want to stay in bed, he listened to some Christian music, pushed himself to work out, and felt better. Likewise, in his 2022 Men's Health profile, Chris discussed his reaction to the widespread criticism, arguing, "That is f****d up. My son's gonna read that one day." 

He continued, "He's nine. And it's etched in digital stone. It really f***** bothered me, dude. I cried about it." However, it doesn't seem like the voice actor learned his lesson about choosing his words more carefully. For Mother's Day 2023, Chris shared an Instagram post where he thanked Katherine Schwarzenegger, writing, "Our two daughters are so lucky to have you and you're the best step mama to Jack." While he also gave a shout-out to stepmother Maria Shriver and his own mom, Kathy Pratt, there was no mention of Faris. Once again, social media users called him out for failing to honor the mother of his son.

During a 2015 interview with British GQ, Chris Pratt revealed that his father, Daniel Pratt, had passed away in 2014 after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a few years prior. Since the father-son duo had an admittedly complicated relationship, Daniel's passing brought up tons of complex emotions for the actor. However, Chris didn't want his feelings to bring the rest of the "Jurassic World" cast down, so he tried his best to suppress them. But the "Passengers" star confessed that his emotions inevitably poured out in unexpected ways: "I got pretty angry and got drunk and almost got in a fight with a drug dealer outside of my hotel room." Daniel's passing brought him some relief as well, though, with the Marvel stalwart noting, "I can go spend time with my sister or my mom and not have this nagging feeling, like we've betrayed dad and we're not there at his bedside when he never f***** wanted us there anyway." 

Although Chris' dad liked having his family around, his pride unfortunately inhibited him from letting them know. In fact, the actor even pointed out that his dad never explicitly told him that he was proud of him and didn't have much of a reaction to his massive success in the entertainment industry either. Elsewhere, in the "Onward" star's 2024 SiriusXM interview, Chris admitted that he had developed a tendency to play characters who typically had a tumultuous relationship with their fictional fathers. Ultimately, though, Chris found a new father figure in his father-in-law Arnold Schwarzenegger and even called him a "godsend" during a chat with Entertainment Tonight in 2024. 

In his 2015 Men's Health interview, Chris Pratt recalled how he only noticed his changing weight when he watched himself in "Parks and Recreation." In the next moment, the actor realized that none of his comedic performances lived up to what he had done in the beloved sitcom, and Pratt believed his size had contributed to it. So, the future Marvel star vowed to gain more and wound up eating multiple cheeseburgers during his table reads for the show. Eventually, Pratt's weight went up to 300 pounds, and he didn't feel his best. "I was impotent, fatigued, emotionally depressed. I had real health issues that were affecting me in a major way," he admitted, per E! News. So, the sitcom star vowed to get fit to make himself feel better. 

However, in the "Garfield Movie" star's 2020 People interview, he acknowledged that he started pushing himself too hard, disclosing, "I was doing 500 push-ups a day, working out at the gym, running five miles a day, but with no food, and I tore my body apart." He also noted, "I didn't realize how that affects your body long-term, so that the minute you stop doing that you balloon your weight back up." 

Ultimately, the lovable actor learned that the key to sustained, healthy weight loss wasn't eating as little as possible but eating the most nourishing foods that made him feel his best and fueled his intense workouts. In fact, in another People interview, which was conducted back in 2013, Pratt even proclaimed that the endorphins he got from exercising almost acted as an anti-depressant for him.