Some things to know about burgeoning blockbuster king Chris Pratt:



1) He does excellent impressions of The Only Way Is Essex cast members. He calls the show a “dumpster fire – something that stinks but you can’t not watch”. 2) He got through his audition on Parks And Recreation by improvising himself playing Grand Theft Auto (“Watch, I’m gonna drop a hovercraft on a hooker”). 3) He dresses up as Guardians Of The Galaxy’s Star-Lord to visit kids in hospital.

There’s a lot of love for Chris Pratt right now. He may only have become a leading man with last year’s Guardians, but he was so good at it, so comfortable in his own skin, it seemed as if Hollywood had been waiting for him. About to hit 36, the star of next week’s Jurassic World is suddenly box-office bounty, a rumoured part in every franchise in the reboot game: Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Knight Rider. He’s a very contemporary action hero: handsome, buff, funny and charismatic, while remaining relatable, a Joe Schmo done good.

In London on a Jurassic World charm offensive, he’s finely turned out in shirt, jeans and – there’s no other way to describe it – tweed waistcoat. On the sofa he’s a keen, attentive interviewee, if a little more intense than you might expect. He does seem authentically jazzed about people seeing the dino-sequel and, to be fair, the film is a blast. The story begins with the park open to visitors, teeming with them in fact, and wouldn’t you know it, on the very day we drop in, one of the big beasties breaks out, precipitating catastrophe. The film is funnier, scarier and more idiosyncratic than its trailers indicated; the studio, Universal, was confident enough to hold back, says Pratt. “They didn’t feel like they needed to blow their wad in the trailers.” There’s not an ounce of cynicism in his enthusiasm. “I was a massive fan, it’s not just lipservice to promote the movie,” he says. “It was a big part of my childhood: 13 years old, my first event movie, it was a big fuckin’ deal to me as a kid.”

Pratt plays Owen Grady, a raptor researcher who works at a behavioural facility at the edge of the park. Jurassic World has a theme that emphasises respect for nature, and the perils that befall those who don’t, and Pratt relates. He says he reveres “the natural order. That’s something that Owen and I have in common.” He says this respect comes from his experience as a recreational hunter.

The thing inside me that drives me to go out and hunt is very animal Chris Pratt

“I have a great deal of respect for the animals that I kill,” he says, “and I feel remorse and all of the emotions that come with it.” As a non-hunter, I ask him to explain how choosing to kill something and then feeling remorse about it fits together. He leans in, happy to explain. “The thing inside me that drives me to go out and hunt is very animal. But the remorse, emotion and respect I feel, and the closeness to God that I feel when I’m out there, is my humanity. It’s an opportunity for me to explore what parts of me are animal and what parts of me are human.”

Of course Chris Pratt is a hunter. His breakthrough cinematic roles – Guardians, Jurassic World and playing a Navy Seal in Zero Dark Thirty – all share a resourcefulness that came naturally to a boy raised “dirt poor” in the Washington State town of Lake Stevens (population: 30,000). Pratt’s mother worked in a supermarket, his father was a gold miner. As a youth he dabbled in stand-up comedy and did a spot of stripping (once for a friend’s grandmother) before – at the age of 19 – moving to Maui for a year, living in a van and waiting tables at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. He wanted to act but did little about it. He did, though, smoke lots of weed.

The film team review Jurassic World Guardian

At Bubba Gump, he recognised a customer: Rae Dawn Chong, an actor who had appeared in 80s hits Commando and The Color Purple. He told her he was an actor too, she told him he was cute, and that she needed someone for a part in a horror film she was directing in five days’ time (the not entirely memorable Cursed Part 3). She gave him $700 for the role; he used the cash to buy a car to drive to auditions. It was then that his career kicked off: recurring roles in TV shows (including The OC), some bit parts in films. After a while he decided to go for big movie gigs but met with disappointment. He didn’t get Star Trek. At GI Joe, he says, the director’s eyes glazed over when he walked in. As for Avatar, he was told he just didn’t have “that thing, that ‘it’ factor”.

Discouraged, Pratt resigned himself to the fact that he didn’t have what it took. He decided that he’d be OK making a living out of supporting roles. One such role came up for the first series of Parks And Recreation. Andy was due to be a guest character, the man who sued the council after falling in a pit, but Pratt improvised his way into favour, his charisma transforming a temporary part into a permanent star turn. Pratt got happy and fat, acknowledging that being big made the character more likable. He was, it seemed, destined to be a professional doofus. But then, abruptly it seemed, the funny fat guy somehow landed the lead in Guardians Of The Galaxy. Pratt posted a photo to Instagram of himself looking like an absolute Adonis, and the internet shook.

The Marvel index: Pratt as Peter Quill in Guardians Of The Galaxy.

The transformation hadn’t quite happened overnight, but Pratt had decided to go for Guardians big-time, without compromise. He’d previously lost weight for bit parts in the likes of Moneyball and Zero Dark Thirty, and although he’d gained it again, Kathryn Bigelow’s drama, in which he played one of the Navy Seals who kill Bin Laden, convinced him that he could pursue those testosterone dreams again. “I didn’t believe I was capable of being an action hero until after I saw Zero Dark Thirty,” he says. “That was when I was like: ‘OK, that guy was believable.’ People didn’t laugh their way through it, they bought that I could potentially be a member of Seal Team Six. That changed who I was, and it required me to really focus on the physicality of creating an action hero and changing the way that I look. So I did.”

So he did, but not without retaining the inherent affability that seeps into all of his characters. Directors are now exploiting that “it factor” he was once told he didn’t have. A lot of Star-Lord’s attitude, wise-cracking and dancing came straight from Pratt, whom Guardians director James Gunn says he sees as a classic movie star in the mould of Gary Cooper and John Wayne.

Lame man’s terms: Pratt as Andy Dwyer in Parks And Recreation.

Indeed, with his mixture of brawn and earthy charm, Pratt is increasingly coming to resemble a more contemporary Hollywood star: Harrison Ford. Pratt may yet become Indiana Jones, but he’s already giving it his own spin in Jurassic World. If Star-Lord was his Han Solo, then there’s more than a nod to Indy with Owen; one of the first things we see him do is roll under a gate, away from jaws of death, in the nick of time. Such moments, says Pratt, are director Colin Trevorrow paying tribute to the fact that the film is exec-produced by Spielberg (“It’s a Jurassic Park film!”). However, like Gunn, Trevorrow told him to play the character as if it were himself; Pratt originally read Owen as a Steve Irwin/Bear Grylls sort of character but was encouraged to make him his own. “The nature is the same but the nurture is completely different,” says Pratt. “If I had lived a different life and landed in that spot... that’s how I try to approach my roles.”

Not many people are able to invest so much of themselves in films this big. “It does feel great,” he says. “There’s still elements of my personality that I don’t think exist in the roles that I’ve played yet, but I have time to put some of those elements into more roles.”

What sort of things? “Well… I think I’m gonna sound douchey, but the characters that I played up until Owen are a little more dim, I think, than myself. I have this defence mechanism, this survival tactic of playing dumb. It’s my way of playing possum.” In life and on film? “In life, which is translated to my comedic style in film. It’s like my clown. It’s how I get out of situations. With Owen, Colin was like: ‘Listen, this character’s not funny, he’s not a funny guy. This is not Andy from Parks And Rec. He’s not a dipshit.’ That was nice, but it was also a little scary for me. Because I know it works when I play Andy, I always get a laugh out of that, playing a dipshit. Playing a guy who’s supremely confident but dumb is a formula that’s worked, so to depart from that, it’s a little harrowing.”

Comedic actors can spend years larking about before awkwardly attempting dramatic roles but Pratt is doing it seamlessly. How cultivated is that on-screen it factor? “Hmm, I don’t know how to answer that because…” He laughs: “On one hand I want everyone to think that everything I do is intentional and the result of a concerted, focused effort to achieve the thing that I’ve achieved, like it’s all been in my control. But at the end of the day, I’m just taking big swings.”

Jurassic World is in cinemas from 12 June