Chris Pratt Opens Up About Blowing Through His First Hollywood Paycheck of $75k
He wasn't used to that much money.
Chris Pratt has admitted that when he got his first substantial Hollywood paycheck, he blew through it in weeks.
During a recent interview with SiriusXM's Sway In The Morning, Pratt was asked whether he found it hard to spend the money he was earning when he first began to land bigger acting jobs.
"Oh, no," the Parks and Recreation actor said immediately, engendering laughter in the studio. "No, no. I was under the impression that I would never run out of money. The first paycheck I got, I was like, 'Are you serious?’ I mean, I had lived on very little money for a long time, so the first big job I got I remember was ... a TV movie. I got paid $75,000."
The actor then broke into song, and to the tune of "Careless Whisper," sang, "I’m never gonna wait [tables] again. F*** you, bitches, I am leaving."
But, he added, "And then about two months later, I was like, 'Where’d that money go?!'"
Chris Pratt poses at the 2003 People's Choice Awards, towards the start of his acting career.
Pratt explained that he ended up spending it on traveling the world, and jokingly shared that he expected to buy a yacht before all the money ran out.
"That was just a crazy amount of money to me," he said. "I never could have possibly imagined making that amount of money. And it went very quickly."
The actor grew up modestly, so earning such an amount of money at one time was overwhelming—he didn't know how to handle it.
"We never had any money growing up, no one ever taught me financial literacy," he said. "I didn't know what to do with money. It was like, it would come in, I would spend it. It took a good amount of time for me to kind of stop and say, 'Alright, I got to get wise about this. I have to think about, 'What am I gonna do? How am I gonna get to the point to where if I stop working one day I'll still be okay? My family will be okay.' So like coming up with a financial literacy plan later in my life was sort of one of the steps of me growing up."
These days, with roles in the likes of The Garfield Movie, the Jurassic World series, and the Guardians of the Galaxy series, Pratt is obviously—shall we say—well off. To be more exact, Celebrity Net Worth puts his estimated net worth at a cool $100 million. Whew.
If you're looking to increase your own financial literacy—whether you're looking to make investing more accessible or start a business of your own—check out Marie Claire's Money section, where we break down some of the major financial issues facing women today in a digestible format.
