10 Movie Actors Who Were Discovered In Unusual Ways

6. Chris Pratt Was Discovered While Waiting Tables At A Seafood Restaurant

chris pratt moneyball
Columbia Pictures

Chris Pratt pretty much went from zero to hero throughout the 2010s, coming out of nowhere to dominate the blockbuster scene with hits like The LEGO Movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Jurassic World.

"Out of nowhere" is also the perfect way to describe how his acting career got going in the first place, because, in an unlikely sequence of events, Pratt ended up getting his big break while waiting tables at a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant.

Pratt (who was in his late teens at the time, and already had a few weeks of acting classes under his belt) was working at the Maui-based restaurant, just trying to earn a living. Then, one day, actress/filmmaker Rae Dawn Chong visited the restaurant, noticed Pratt waiting tables, took a liking to him, and decided to cast him in her directorial debut - the short horror film Cursed Part 3.

Obviously, Cursed Part 3 wasn't a massive hit, but it gave Pratt's career some much-needed momentum - and he has Bubba Gump Shrimp to thank for it.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!