Chris Pratt reveals how he blew through his first Hollywood paycheck: 'It went very quickly'
The "Guardians of the Galaxy" star says he thought he'd never run out of money.
These days, Chris Pratt is a big star, with plenty of paychecks rolling in. But he still remembers what that first big one felt like.
"I was under the impression that I would never run out of money," Pratt told Sway Calloway this week on SiriusXM's Sway in the Morning (video below).
"The first paycheck I got, I was like, 'Are you serious?'" the Guardians of the Galaxy star said. "I mean, you know, I had lived on very little money for a long time, so the first big job I got, I remember was it was called a Schedule F job, and this was a TV movie. I got paid $75,000, and I was like, 'I'm never gonna wait [tables] again. F--- you bitches. I am leaving,' and then about two months later, I was like, 'Where'd that money go?'"
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A lot of it went to travel.
"I went back to Maui, I went to Australia, I traveled the world," Pratt said. "I was like, 'Well, I'm gonna probably invest, I'm probably gonna get a yacht.' I didn't know how, that was just a crazy amount of money to me. I never could have possibly imagined making that amount of money and it went very quickly."
Pratt's first big role was on the WB drama Everwood in 2002, a job that lasted until 2006. From 2009 to 2015, he appeared alongside Amy Poehler in NBC comedy Parks and Rec, playing the lovable but dimwitted Andy. He went on to star in the Lego movies, superhero fare, and the next era of Jurassic Park. So $75,000 was just the start; he reportedly now earns millions per movie.
It's been quite a transition, said Pratt, who told Entertainment Weekly in August 2014 that he once lived out of his van in Maui. He caught a lucky break when, during one of his shifts at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, he waited on Rae Dawn Chong, who gave Pratt a role in a short film she directed, Cursed Part 3, which is his very first IMDb credit.
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Chris PrattSo the money started coming, but Pratt wasn't sure how handle it.
"Because also, we never had any money growing up," he said. "No one ever taught me financial literacy. I didn't know what to do with money. It was like, it would come in, I would spend it, you know what I mean? It took a good amount of time for me to kind of stop and say, 'All right, I gotta get wise about this.' I have to think about, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna get to the point to where, if I stop working one day, I'll still be okay, my family will be okay? So kind of coming up with a financial literacy plan, you know, later in my life was sort of one of the steps of me growing up."
When he was asked about when he felt like he was a successful actor, Pratt pointed to his first big TV series.
"I did a TV show called Everwood back in 2003, maybe 21 years ago, and I bought my mom a house," he said. "That's when I felt like I made it."
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