Chris Pratt is opening up about his “rough run with Marvel.”
Before the actor landed the leading role of Peter Quill/Star-Lord in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise, he admitted to having horrible luck with preceding auditions for Marvel films.
“I auditioned for them all. I had a rough run with Marvel,” Pratt told Jimmy Kimmel during his appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Thursday. “I auditioned for ‘Thor’, but not even to be Thor — but to be one of the sidekick guys, and I didn’t get a callback. Usually they give you a little bit of feedback, and I remember the casting director goes, ‘Wow. You really made a big choice there.’ Which is code for being like: ‘Hey, dial back the acting there, guy.’”
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As Pratt failed to land role after role, he said “it got to the point where I was never gonna audition for Marvel again. I was like, ‘This is stupid, I’m never gonna be in a Marvel movie.’”
When asked which Marvel films he auditioned for, Pratt clarified, “all of them.”
“Anything that came out that needed a guy that even remotely looked like me, I auditioned for in some way or another,” he explained. “And I would either submit a tape and they would say ‘No, we don’t need to see him,’ or I would get there and see them, they’d go, ‘No, that’s the last time we need to see you.’”
“And it was not only just Marvel things but there have been a lot of heroic characters in various films,” he continued. “Not DC characters, but like, you know, ‘Star Trek’ or ‘Avatar’. Anything that was like, ‘This guy walks in and he’s got the ‘it’ factor.’ Over and over again I was like, ‘Well, I definitely don’t have that ‘it’ factor they’re looking for because they don’t even want me to come back.’”
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Nonetheless, Pratt, who stars in the new “Super Mario Bros. Movie”, remained hopeful as he eventually landed the role of Star Lord. In his recent cover story for The Hollywood Reporter, Pratt recalled how the part came to be his.
He recounted how, at first, his audition began on a rocky note when director James Gunn stopped him and said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re blowing it. This is the moment right now. You just need to stop doing whatever you’re doing and just be real. Just be you.”
After that, the only thought running through Pratt’s head was, “you’re blowing it, you’re blowing it.”
However, things took a positive turn when Gunn brought in Dave Bautista to improv with Pratt. Their chemistry sold him, which led to Pratt nabbing the lead role.
Now, nearly nine years after the first “Guardians” was released, Pratt is gearing up for the third and final instalment, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”, which hits theatres on May 5.
