“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.’”

Chris Pratt almost used weird nickname his Bubba Gump Shrimp Company co-workers gave him for his Hollywood career

"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.'"

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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January 22, 2026 2:52 p.m. ET

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Chris Pratt in New York City on Jan. 20, 2026. Credit:

Jason Mendez/Getty

Chris Pratt almost went by a very different name when he began his career in Hollywood.

The *Guardians of the Galaxy* star, whose full name is Christopher Michael Pratt, said that he strongly considered using a less-common shortening of his first name during an interview with Josh Horowitz on the *Happy Sad Confused* podcast.

"I was gonna be Christo," he said, noting that the name came from a pre-showbiz job. "I had a name tag that said Christopher, at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, [but] the 'PHER' part got rubbed off, so it said 'Christo,' and everyone called me Christo for a long time."

Chris Pratt in Los Angeles on Dec. 16, 2002.

Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage

Pratt said that some Bubba Gump workers assumed that his actual full name was Christo. "While I was working at Bubba Gump, [there was a] high turnover rate — new employees thought my name was Christo," he said. "And 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.'"

The *Jurassic World* star ultimately launched his screen career thanks to an encounter at Bubba Gump. In the early 2000s, Pratt served as a waiter for actress Rae Dawn Chong, who cast him in *Cursed Part 3*, the horror short that marked her directorial debut.

Pratt can next be seen in *Mercy*, a sci-fi thriller featuring a bar fight scene that took a physical toll on the *Parks and Recreation *star.

"It's essentially almost a comedic bit sequence that happens as my character's apprehended when I'm drunk. I'm in a blackout, and I fight against a bunch of cops," he told **. "I kicked my feet up high enough to hit a neon sign...I wanted to try to break the sign because of my old *Parks and Rec *days, like break as much stuff as you can. It's always better."

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Pratt's gamble led to a fairly serious injury. "I was like, 'I wanna break that,'" he said. "And I hit it with my foot, and it's a metal post sticking out of the wall, holding this thing up. It just hit right into that soft tissue and wrecked my ankle."

Chris Pratt in Los Angeles on Feb. 24, 2025.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Fortunately, most of the movie sees Pratt confined to a chair, which meant that his ankle injury didn't impact production too dramatically. "I'm really grateful that I was just sitting down, 'cause I could not walk for at least a couple of weeks," he said, noting that being chair-bound presented new challenges as an actor.

"I've never worked in a thriller genre before, but I have contributed to physicality," he said. "Whether it be flipping over tables on *Parks and Rec*, or falling on rollerblades, or dance-offs, or big physical running away from dinosaurs, there's been a certain physicality with a lot of the roles that I played. So yeah, I was definitely intrigued by being just the emotional core."

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*Mercy* is now playing in theaters.

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