The Guardians Of The Galaxy star was not born into Hollywood stardom and was once told he was too fat. But look at him now.
It’s getting so that every new blockbuster franchise movie seems to
star somebody named Chris, and I for one am starting to feel my head
spin. Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt: suddenly everyone has these
utterly forgettable and bland Anglo-Saxon names that all merge for me
into a blur of befuddled non-recognition. Some of them look as if they
had success hardwired into their genes by virtue of parentage and
who-you-know. The satisfying thing is that the best of them came from
nothing whatsoever, with no indication anywhere in his background that
movie stardom was in his future.
I first remember Chris Evans as
the memorably dickish and callous lead in Not Another Teen Movie, the
one outing in that franchise that rewarded a second viewing. His career
trajectory since then – and
it’s been 13 long years – was fuzzy and
indistinct to me until the first Captain America movie, and the
connection between Marvel’s latest superhero and that exploding toilet
in NATM kind of blew my mind… wait, him? Then, worldwide fame
assured, he suddenly announced, King Joffrey style, that he was ready to
retire from acting altogether when his new franchise wrapped. To which I
can hear you saying scornfully, “Yeah, nice work if you can quit it.”
Chris Pine
you can usually spot because of his upsetting, blue-eyed Village Of The
Damned glare. He’s the son and grandson of Hollywood actors and power
players and we all know that the way to get famous these days is to be
born into it. And Pine, like Evans, looks as though he was born in a lab
and bred for stardom in some satanic back room at one of the big talent
agencies.
Chris Pratt, refreshingly, looks like he was discovered
waiting tables. And he was, at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company franchise
in Hawaii, by actor Rae Dawn Chong, which at least has the ring of Lana
Turner at the counter of Schwab’s Pharmacy. Of the three, he’s the last
one you’d pick for movie stardom. For starters, he was Nolte-ishly burly
tending to fat, and the core of his appeal is a doe-eyed innocence,
easily amped up to the phosphorescent dimness of Parks And Recreation’s Andy Dwyer, but it’s not necessarily built for toughness.
Shows
what I know: next time we saw him he was one of the Navy SEALs in Zero
Dark Thirty, then a slow-witted baseball player in Moneyball. A return
to sweetness in The Lego Movie seemed like natural preparation for his
role in Guardians Of The Galaxy, which calls on his funny and tough-guy
sides (with a light side-order of Pine’s Shatner-esque assholeishness).
And his ridiculously sculpted new physique, once so Michelin Man doughy,
is now a ridiculous retort to the Moneyball casting agent who once told
him he was too fat. Too fat, too stupid… hah. I like that he’s too
normal. That is new.
