As far as movie stars go, Chris Pratt has become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood thanks to his starring roles in the Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World, and several other blockbuster fare across theaters and streaming. It was not always easy for the longtime actor, though, as he opened up about his reckless spending habits that accompanied his early acting jobs.
Pratt has typically been candid about his youth and the financial struggles he faced during that time before he started finding success in Hollywood and acting, which included landing his first job while living out of a van in Maui. However, he revealed on Sway's Universe, via HuffPost, that those financial struggles continued into the early days of his acting career and specifically how quickly he spent his first $75,000 paycheck.
“I was under the impression that I would never run out of money,” Pratt told the show. “The first paycheck I got, I was like, ‘Are you serious?' … I had lived on very little money for a long time, so the first big job I got — I remember it was called a Schedule F job, and this was a TV movie. I got paid $75,000.”
He said that, at the time, he “never could have possibly imagined making that amount of money” and had all these ideas on how to spend it including traveling, investing, and maybe even buying a yacht.
“Then about two months later I was like, ‘Where'd that money go?'”
Pratt added that growing up he never learned financial literacy because his family “never had any money growing up,” so he had to teach himself and form a “financial literacy plan” to ensure he and his family wouldn't need to worry about money if he wasn't working. He described forming this plan as “one of the steps of me growing up.”
Fiscal Responsibility
The story is a reminder that, while many of the names and faces audiences see plastered across screens may make millions, it doesn't mean they're immune from financial struggles, whether it be their own reckless spending or simply difficulty in landing roles. One of the biggest examples of this can be seen in Chris Pratt's MCU co-star, Robert Downey Jr.
The actor was at one time considered “uninsurable” by most major studios due to his struggles with addiction that nearly led him into bankruptcy.
Things turned around for Downey in the mid-2000s as he committed to his sobriety and began working on his comeback, starting with the 2003 film Gothika. He would continue landing roles in more critically acclaimed fare such as Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Zodiac before landing Iron Man, which would propel him to the peak of movie stardom and made Downey the de-facto face of the MCU on-screen for roughly a decade.
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