Chris Pratt, actor and comedian, dropped out of community college before his first semester was over. After a series of failed side hustles, Pratt moved to Hawaii when a friend offered to buy him a one-way ticket and lived in a van by the beach.
Pratt told The Independent that Maui is "a pretty awesome place to be homeless...We just drank and smoked weed and worked minimal hours, 15-20 hours per week, just enough to cover gas, food and fishing supplies."
The future actor ended up taking a job waiting tables at a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant where he happened to serve actress Rae Dawn Chong, of The Color Purple acclaim. Chong was in the middle of casting her directorial debut. With a little chit-chat and a whole lot of natural charm, Pratt was able to secure a roll and another life-changing one-way ticket, this time to Los Angeles.
That movie never saw the light of day—director Chong once told Entertainment Weekly that it "sucked"—and soon enough, Pratt was back to waiting tables while he went on auditions. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Pratt said that he was only making between $20 and $30 a day at his restaurant job. In order to save some cash, he would eat the leftovers off of his customers' plates. If a diner asked what they should order, Pratt had no problem offering his personal recommendation.
"I’m like 32-ounce porterhouse," Pratt told Norton. "I would say, ‘Listen, here’s how you want it—medium-rare with some mushrooms on the side, get you some mashed potatoes, you’re going to love this, ma’am!'”
His tenacity and perseverance led him to breakthrough roles like television behemoth Parks and Recreation as the air-headed Andy Dwyer, accumulating 52 total acting credits in TV and film, and he's nowhere near finished.
