Chris Pratt says ‘complicated’ relationship with his father draws him to certain roles

Garfield star’s own father died of multiple sclerosis in 2014

Chris Pratt has shared how his complex relationship with his later father has inspired some of the roles he’s taken on.

The actor, 44, who currently stars in The Garfield Movie, lost his father, Daniel, in 2014 to multiple sclerosis.

During a recent interview on SiriusXM’s Sway in the Morning radio program, Pratt admitted that complicated father-son dynamics are a subject he particularly likes to explore.

Agreeing that both his Guardians of the Galaxy character Peter Quill and his titular Garfield the cat character have difficult relationships with their fathers, he acknowledged that “maybe it’s not a coincidence”.

“I hadn’t really thought about that,” he said. “But, yeah my own relationship with my dad was fairly complicated, so there’s things to mine there.”

He explained that with any comedy, it’s important for there to be “an emotional through line, in order for there to be structure of an actual movie”.

“Otherwise, you kind of get tired of these same hackneyed jokes over and over again,” he explained. “If it’s not actually a drama, should you strip away all the jokes and the spectacle, you need an actual dramatic through line.”

Identifying this structure in his Garfield Movie, Pratt said: “This happens to be hinged on Garfield feeling abandonment with his father, and so that’s, yeah. That’s a deep feeling I think a lot of people could relate to.”

“Man, Garfield just got real all of a sudden,” the host responded, with Pratt joking that The Garfield Movie is “the most dramatic interpretation of a feline”.

Pratt voices the titular orange cat in The Garfield Movie, an animated movie based on the characters from the popular comic strips created by Jim Davis.

In 2016, Pratt spoke about how filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 helped him cope with his father's death.

“The truth is I ripped open some wounds that had been healing for some time. And I didn’t want to. But I knew it was right for the moment,” he told GQ of the experience.

“There are wounds that are never going to be totally healed. It would probably make for a better story if it was some emotional thing that I hadn’t dealt with... When we face the death of a parent, you sometimes feel regret that you didn’t fully embrace what you had.”

The Garfield Movie is out now in theaters.