Chris Pratt Got Real Candid About Being 100% Lost Post-School, Pre-Stardom

It’s extremely weird to think of Chris Pratt these days in the ‘before’ stage – y’know, before he became a bonafide film star, before he lost the dad bod, before he charmed the pants off everyone as loveable slob Andy Dwyer in ‘Parks and Recreation‘.

But before he was this:

But BEFORE all of that, he was just a really successful high school football star who had no idea what to do with his life. Also, he looked a lot like Heath Ledger. Weird.

In a new cover interview with Vanity Fair, the ‘Passengers‘ star got extremely candid about his post-high school, pre-Hollywood life and having exactly zero idea what to do with it – so he got a job as a door-to-door salesman.

“I was selling coupons for things like oil changes or trips to a spa,” he told VF. And he was bloody good at it, because who wouldn’t want to buy all kinds of useless shit off bébé Chris Pratt? He got so good, in fact, after 15 months he was promoted to a manager and moved to Denver.

From Vanity Fair: “We rented an apartment,” Pratt told me. “I slept on the balcony. And partied. I wasn’t even 21.” The novelty wore off as the truth became plain. He’d been caught in someone else’s moneymaking scheme. As the old wisdom advises, when you sit at the poker table, look for the sucker. If you can’t identify him, leave—it’s you. Pratt called his boss one morning. “ ‘This is too much for me,’ “ he said. “ ‘I’m more in debt every month. I’m so depressed. I can’t do it.’ And she said, ‘I just want you to know, Chris, that there is nothing else out there.’ “

Um, quite frankly, RUDE, and I hope that boss has seen every single one his movies.

So anyway, Pratt moved to Hawaii to basically booze, chill, and work in a restaurant chain, and it was there he found ~religion~ and totally changed his life.

“I was sitting outside a grocery store—we’d convinced someone to go in and buy us beer. This is Maui. And a guy named Henry came up and recognised something in me that needed to be saved. He asked what I was doing that night, and I was honest. I said, ‘My friend’s inside buying me alcohol.’ ‘You going to go party?’ he asked. ‘Yeah.’ ‘Drink and do drugs? Meet girls, fornication?’ I was like, ‘I hope so.’ I was charmed by this guy, don’t know why. He was an Asian dude, maybe Hawaiian, in his 40s. It should’ve made me nervous but didn’t. I said, ‘Why are you asking?’ He said, ‘Jesus told me to talk to you . . .’ At that moment I was like, I think I have to go with this guy. He took me to church. Over the next few days I surprised my friends by declaring that I was going to change my life.”

OBVIOUSLY, that happened. In his new-found era of religion, he met actress Rae Dawn Chong when she popped into his restaurant one day, landed an audition, and flew to L.A. to star in the never-to-be-released film ‘Cursed Part 3‘. (It was, shockingly, absolutely terrible.)