Chris Pratt talks Marvel audition fails: 'I was never gonna audition for Marvel again'

Can you imagine a world without Chris Pratt as the star of Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, it almost happened.

On April 27, Pratt told Jimmy Kimmel that he bombed his Marvel auditions so badly, he almost gave up on being in a Marvel film entirely.

As a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Pratt revealed, “I auditioned for Thor, but not even to be Thor – but to be one of the sidekick guys, and I didn’t get a callback."

“Usually they give you a little bit of feedback, and I remember the casting director goes, 'Wow. You really made a big choice there,'" he added. "Which is code for like, ‘Hey, dial back the acting there, guy.’”

He shared the failure "got to the point where I was never gonna audition for Marvel again."

"I was like, 'This is stupid, I’m never gonna be in a Marvel movie,'" he admitted.

At the time, he was auditioning for "anything that came out that needed a guy that even remotely looked like me."

"I would either submit a tape and they would say 'No, we don’t need to see him,' or I would get there and see them, they’d go, 'No, that’s the last time we need to see you,'" he said.

Luckily, Pratt eventually booked his Guardians of the Galaxy role and the rest is history. But his transformation from NBC's Parks and Recreation to Guardians movie star didn’t come easily.

In 2018, Pratt told Men’s Health, "I probably lost about 35 pounds in six weeks. I ran five or six miles a day. I ate leafy green salads and protein shakes. I cut out all alcohol. Trim, trim, trim."

Pratt will wrap his Guardians role with the upcoming film, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3.

“Don’t do any emotional preparation, just go see it, and you’ll see why people were moved,” Pratt advised the audience during Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con panel in June 2022 of the final movie. "It’s an emotional moment for us, certainly as actors who were in the piece, watching it for the first time and being reminded of everything we did over the past year-plus making the movie. And being out in Hall H in front of all these fans [for] the first time in years and understanding that this is the end of this trilogy. It’s all emotional."