ABC/Randy Holmes(LOS ANGELES) — Chris Pratt said he found out his father had died last year while in New Orleans filming Jurassic World.
The 35-year-old actor had kept it quiet and “dealt with it in my own way” for so long that he ended up eventually getting angry and “drunk and almost got in a fight with a drug dealer outside of my hotel room.”
His father Dan had dealt with multiple sclerosis for two decades before his death last summer. Pratt spoke to GQ about how the disease changed his father, himself and his family.
Pratt’s father worked with his hands and was “an old-school kind of dad,” so the disease really stripped him from the inside out.
“He was pretty ornery to begin with and so that just made him more ornery,” Pratt told the magazine. “He had lost interest in life: ‘Well, I’ve got this disease now, I’m gonna die.’ He refused to take any medication or do anything like physical therapy….When he lost his ability to walk he gave up on life.”
Dan Pratt and Chris’ mother eventually split up, and the actor said his father moved to an assisted living facility.
But Pratt said he knew his father was happy and grateful for his son’s success, in shows like Parks and Recreation and The O.C.
“In his own way he let me know that he was proud of me. He didn’t really react in any way, one way or another, but he was definitely proud. If I was on TV, he watched everything I was in. So it felt like I was able to communicate with him through doing work that was on TV,” he said.
Pratt said that after the death, there was a weight that was lifted.
“I can go spend time with my sister or my mom and not have this nagging feeling, like we’ve betrayed dad and we’re not there at his bedside when he never f******g wanted us there anyway. I think he did but he was too proud to show any appreciation if you went to visit him, you know. It was a sad, f*****-up situation,” he added.
Now Pratt is coming to terms that loss is part of life.
“I’ve lost my father, suffered great loss, something that everyone will eventually — if they, God forbid, live long enough — go through,” he said.
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
