Chris Pratt revealed that he used the money to travel to various destinations around the world, including Hawaii and Australia.
Chris Pratt shared his experience of receiving a significant sum of money for his work in Hollywood for the first time. He admitted to People that he spent all of his first acting paycheck because he didn’t know how to manage the money. Pratt is renowned for his roles as Star-Lord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), and as Owen Grady in the Jurassic World trilogy (2015-2022).
Reflecting on whether his modest beginnings affected his spending habits, Pratt, known for his roles in The Garfield Movie, revealed the opposite was true. “Oh, no. No, no. I was under the impression that I would never run out of money,” he quipped. Recalling his first significant paycheck, he explained, “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… was a TV movie. I got paid $75,000.”
Pratt humorously recounted how he quickly spent all the money and found himself broke within two months. “I was like, I’m never gonna wait again…, I am leaving,” he joked. “And about two months later, I was like, Where’d that money go?!” Pratt disclosed that he used the money to indulge in vacations to destinations like Hawaii and Australia. He added, “I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna probably invest. I’m probably gonna get a yacht.'”
Pratt mentioned that he wasn’t taught proper financial planning at a young age, which left him unsure of how to handle or manage money. “It took a good amount of time for me to kind of stop and say, All right, I gotta 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,'” he elaborated. He added that formulating a financial plan later in his life was “one of the steps of me growing up.”
The Jurassic World star also reflected on pivotal moments in his career where he felt he had “made it,” including obtaining his SAG card and featuring in a Carl’s Jr. TV commercial. However, according to People, his greatest “I made it” moment was purchasing a house for his mother, Kathy Pratt, after appearing on the TV series Everwood.