Actor Chris Pratt is looking back at the restaurant encounter that took him from living in a van in Hawaii to pursuing a Hollywood career, and he still knows whom to thank.
“I’ll forever be grateful to Rae for taking a chance on a kid working at a shrimp restaurant,” Pratt wrote in an Oct. 29 X post about actress and director Rae Dawn Chong, who offered him his first movie opportunity.
Before the blockbuster roles, Pratt waited tables at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. When Chong walked into the restaurant, he recognized her and approached her table, setting in motion a conversation that would eventually take him to Los Angeles.
There was one small problem when she asked for his phone number. He didn’t have one. Pratt gave her his friend Mike’s number instead, then learned a couple of days later that someone had called for him.
He called Chong back and discovered that the opportunity was real. After picking up the script, he returned to Mike’s house and read all 120 pages three times, according to his post.
It was the first script he had ever read. His character’s name was Devon, and Pratt remembered immediately thinking he could play the part.
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The enthusiasm came with preparation. He arrived at the audition with his lines and inflections marked in pencil. Chong told him he could act and offered him the role, but the production wasn’t staying in Hawaii.
Getting to Los Angeles presented a practical hurdle for someone with about $60, a bag of clothes and rollerblades. Then Chong told him the production would fly him out.
“And I remember thinking right then and there, my life just changed forever,” the actor said. The role was for the low-budget horror comedy CURSED PART 3.
Chong’s own account adds another side to the story. In an interview Star published in August 2014, she recalled meeting Pratt while on a retreat in Maui and arranging a read-through for the following week.
“Chris showed up early and was totally prepared,” she recalled. Her memory of his readiness fits the picture Pratt now describes: an inexperienced actor who took the chance seriously once someone offered it.
The opportunity didn’t make him an instant action star. As Fox News recounted in its look at his beginnings, his later career included Andy Dwyer on PARKS AND RECREATION before audiences knew him as Peter Quill, also called Star-Lord, in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.
Pratt has also credited director James Gunn with opening a different door. In a Moviefone interview published May 1, 2023, he explained that he already had steady acting work when Gunn helped change how the industry saw him.
“I wasn’t a waiter any longer, I was a series regular on a show,” Pratt said while reflecting on what playing Star-Lord had meant to him and his family.
Those are two different turning points: one person helped him get started, and another helped an established working actor reach a new level. His latest reflection returns to the first, remembering both the person who offered the opportunity and the preparation that followed.
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