The silly early roles each Hollywood Chris wishes we'd forget
Welcome to Chris-mas in July, a week-long celebration of our four favorite Hollywood Chrises. We'll be analyzing old movies, digging deep into past roles, and exploring everything there is to know about Evans, Hemsworth, Pine and Pratt. We hope this totally made up holiday makes you smile.
One is not born a Hollywood Chris -- one becomes a Hollywood Chris.
Before Hollywood-ification, the Chrises were all just some schmoes with common-ass names trying to make it big. And we have a list of their best early work to prove it.
Listen, we all wish our nascent efforts to fulfill our dreams could just be stricken from the record. But unlike the rest of us commoners who only needed to delete old LiveJournal accounts, the most embarrassing early role of every Hollywood Chris is immortalized on their iMDB page.
We will #neverforget. And honestly, the world is better that way.
Like a superhero origin story, these humble beginnings are a reminder that even the hunkiest Chris was once a mere mortal like you and I.
Chris Pine in Just My Luck, 2006
In the upside down world of 2006, Lindsay Lohan was an A-list actress who Chris Pine was lucky to find himself co-starring alongside in this unfortunately titled romantic comedy.
Almost as if predicting the trajectory of their careers, the plot casts Pine as the clumsy bowling alley janitor who steals all of Lohan's success and luck. Don't let the Harry Potter glasses fool you, though. Chris Pine was never average-looking, even while acting in below average rom-coms.
Chris Hemsworth in Dancing with the Stars Australia, 2006
Some Hollywood Chrises probably thought they'd escape by putting the Pacific Ocean between us and their embarrassing early careers.
But the internet will never let Chris Hemsworth forget that he foxtrotted into being a contestant on Australia's Dancing With the Stars, in between juggling soap opera stardom on the popular show Home and Away.
Better still, the man who now plays a Nordic god didn't even make it past the 6th round. There's nothing quite like watching his hopeful, youthful gaze be crushed by judges teasing him for his "stiffness" and having "the straightest left arm I've ever seen in my life."
"I wasn't much of a dancer," Hemsworth admitted back in 2011 after being ambushed with a clip on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. His old dancing partner Abbey Ross couldn't agree more.
In a BBC Radio 1 interview, he even revealed that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told him DWTS nearly cost him Thor, because Feige thought, "'Thor dancing? I don’t know. The fans are gonna eat us alive.'"
We certainly are eating something up from his salsa moves.
Chris Pratt in The OC, 2007
Nobody @ me, I'm aware that Chris really broke out on Everwood. But his recurring role in the 2006/2007 final season of The OC is so much sillier.
As Guy You Hooked Up With After A Freshman Year Poetry Slam, aka the hippie student Che, the comedic chops that would later be praised on Parks and Recreation were already burgeoning. Che may not have been right for Summer Roberts at Brown, but he was a perfect TV doofus.
Chris Evans in Not Another Teen Movie, 2001
Mind-bendingly, before Chris Evans was another Chris he was another Freddie. Freddie Prince Jr. that is, or at least a parody of his character from She's All That.
Right after graduating high school, Evans made his big break as the raven-haired Jake Wyler in Not Another Teen Movie. Incidentally, one sequence required the 19-year-old to offer himself up as a sundae, complete with whip cream, cherry nipples, and a banana sticking out of his ass.
"You don't think twice about really anything at that stage," Evans said in a Screen Tests interview, addressing this pivotal moment in his career. "You're just really happy to be there, even if you have to put fruit in your pooper."
On the (w)hole (winkwinkwink), Evans is a good sport about the whole thing now, telling EW that he views the film as equivalent to "earning my stripes."
Now someone go write the alternate timeline Captain America comic book where Steve Rogers gains super powers by sodomizing himself with phallic-shaped fruit.
Jess is an LA-based culture critic who covers intimacy in the digital age, from sex and relationship to weed and all media (tv, games, film, the web). Previously associate editor at Kill Screen, you can also find her words on Vice, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vox, and others. She is a Brazilian-Swiss American immigrant with a love for all things weird and magical.
