Chris Pratt Was a Door to Door Salesman Before ‘Everwood’ — What He Sold
Chris Pratt: door to door salesman? Pratt is now the star of multiple franchises like Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie. Long before he got his start on TV shows like Everwood and Parks and Recreation, Pratt worked odd jobs to get by. One of those was door to door salesman.
Pratt told the story of his salesman days on the Smartless podcast. These are some sketchy stories, but they ultimately led him to acting.
Chris Pratt became a master door to door salesman, but couldn’t replicate it
When he was 18, Pratt said, he responded to an ad that sounded too good to be true. And it proved to be when he tried to use it himself.
“I answered an ad in the paper for this door to door sales thing that said, ‘Do you like rock and roll music? Do you want to make money?’” Pratt said on Smartless. “I was like oh my God, I think this might be it. So for a year I did this door to door sales job. After I opened my own office in Colorado, climbed to the top, I’ve got all the sales awards and won a free trip to Jamaica, but then I got totally burnt out and learned that my management skills were terrible. I was just really good at selling sh**. So when I tried to open my own office and I put the same ad in the paper, turns out only ding dongs would answer.”
Perhaps sales was his day job, while Pratt was stripping at the same time. Either way, Pratt realized how he fell for the ad, and what company he was in.
“In hindsight, it wasn’t the best ad but I was the guy who answered the ad so I thought it was effective,” Pratt said. “What it really does, the true brilliance in it is it filters out critical thinkers. If you’re dumb enough to answer that ad, then you might get pulled into this multi-level marketing thing. There’s a stroke of evil genius to it.”
Chris Pratt sold coupons, but they weren’t really a deal
If you ever get presented with a coupon book, don’t fall for it. But if it’s someone as charming as Pratt, it can be hard to resist.
“I was selling these coupons,” Pratt said. “So like businesses in the service industry such as a Meineke or Midas or even a salon would put together this package, bring your car in, you get four oil changes for $20 was the deal but really, we would sell it to the person and they would take their car in and get free oil changes but really the mechanic would try to upsell them on a brake job or something like that.”
How door to door sales led to ‘Everwood’
One bonus to the sales gig was that it brought Pratt to Los Angeles, California. That’s where he met casting directors for his first movie, and got to stay until he was cast on Everwood, a role that was tailored to suit him.
“The only time I’d been to L.A. was on a door to door road trip where I came down to sell some stuff because they had an L.A. office,” Pratt said. “They sent me down to sell in some areas. I sold in Oxnard, up and down Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. I had crazy encounters.”
Pratt was not exactly welcome at the establishments where he was trying to sell coupons.
“I’m sneaking through people’s yards and trying to climb in their windows just to talk to someone,” Pratt said. “I’m walking right past a No Soliciting sign to solicit, I had people try to sick their dogs on me.”
Pratt said he parlayed his sales skills into auditions, though still ran into problems when the director called action.
“It’s a great preparation for being an actor, I’ll tell you that,” Pratt said. “For the longest time, I was great at auditioning and couldn’t act my way out of a paper bag. They’d get on set and they’re like, ‘What happened to the actor who came into the thing?’ Oh, that wasn’t an actor. That was a door to door salesman. I walked into a room and I won the role but I didn’t know what the F I was doing. I didn’t know how to act.”
