Before Chris Pratt became a household name, featuring in billion-dollar franchises, he nearly stepped onto the Hollywood scene with a different moniker. The story of his almost-stage name is a charming slice of his humble beginnings, directly tied to his time as a waiter before fame came calling.
Chris Pratt almost went with this stage name in Hollywood
Long before he saved the galaxy or outran dinosaurs as different characters in films, Chris Pratt served shrimp at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. It was there that a simple typography malfunction planted the seed for a potential alias. During an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Pratt revealed that his name tag, which read “Christopher,” became worn out over time.
“The ‘PHER’ part got rubbed off, so it said ‘Christo,’ and everyone called me Christo for a long time,” Pratt explained. The name stuck so well that new employees at the restaurant believed it was his real name. This casual nickname followed him as he considered his future in acting.
“As I navigated being discovered and brought to Los Angeles to follow my dreams, part of me thought, in earnest, ‘Maybe I’d go as just Christo,'” he quipped. Ultimately, he chose to use the more familiar Chris Pratt, launching a career that began with his discovery at the restaurant by actress Rae Dawn Chong.
Pratt’s newest project, Mercy, takes him into darker, more high-stakes territory. The sci-fi thriller is set in the near future and centers on an LAPD detective who wakes up restrained in an execution chair, accused of killing his wife. With limited time to clear his name, his fate depends on convincing an advanced artificial intelligence system of his innocence.
That system, Judge Maddox, is voiced by Rebecca Ferguson serves as the judge. The setup places Pratt at the emotional core of the story, relying less on spectacle and more on tension, urgency, and performance.
