It's a good thing Chris Pratt is able to laugh at himself.
The Parks and Recreation actor recently shared his first headshot with fans via Twitter, and on Thursday, he explained how the cheesy photo came to be. "I was 20 years old in that picture. I guess it was the year 2000," Pratt, 35, told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. "I'd just moved to L.A. I knew I wanted to be an actor. I had no idea what to do to become an actor. I had a car and that was it. I'd asked around and my friend said, 'What you need is something called a headshot, and that's a picture of your head.'"
"I knew I needed a headshot and I was in an area of L.A. called West Hollywood...a predominantly gay area, a really kind of fabulous place. I was at the post office and there was a guy who was really kind of looking at me for a long time. And he was like, 'You look familiar. Have I shot you before?' I was like, 'Oh, I've never been shot! Have you shot somebody? I don't think you've ever shot me. I would know!'"
All jokes aside, Pratt continued, "He was like, 'I'm a photographer.' In my head, I'm like, 'Do you do headshots?' He's like, 'Yeah, my apartment is two blocks from here.' I was like, 'Yeah, let's go.'"
Not realizing the potential dangers of the situation, Pratt agreed to visit the photographer's "really nice" penthouse suite. "He's like, 'You probably need to take a shower. You're a little messed up.' He was right!" the star said. "I lived in the car. I took the shower, I got cleaned up, I did my hair, as you can see—picked it out a little. And then he was like, 'That shirt's not gonna do. Here's one of mine.' He gave me this shirt that's in the picture. It's a white shirt. It's a nice shirt. I couldn't afford that shirt. I had that shirt and then he takes the pictures. He tells me what to do: tilt my head, put my arm like this. Takes the film out of the camera, sticks it in the thing, hands me three rolls of camera film, which at the time would have cost me like $400, $500 bucks. Headshots are not inexpensive. And he was like, 'Good luck, kid.'
"I walked out of there an then I decided that this was the best one. He was a good guy. So if you're watching dude, if you remember, thank you," he said. "That got me on The WB. That got me Everwood."
Pratt was on The Tonight Show to promote his hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. As it turns out, the actor had been prepping for the job since he was a student at Washington's Lake Stevens High School.
"I've been a fan my whole life. It's funny because...when I was in high school, I had this leadership class, and we would do assemblies for the school. I was kind of like the Lorne Michaels of the leadership class. I was like, 'All right, guys, this one goes in! This one is cut! This one stays!'" he recalled. "And I would sort of be in charge of the assembly. We would do skits for people in front of the school. By the end of the week it would always be the same thing, which was a skit starring me that I'd ripped off from SNL the week before...giving SNL no credit, just being like, 'Come on, guys. I came up with something last night. Let's just go for it. It's called Cheerleader Sketch. I want to play like a gregarious cheerleader. Chrissy Barr, you're going to play my sidekick.' They're like, 'Uh, yeah, from SNL? The Will Ferrell-Cheri Oteri?'"
Pratt told his classmates, "'Guys, I don't know what you're talking about. And we're on in three!'" He added, "It worked, and now I'm doing the real show. And it's just as fun as when I did it in high school!"
In the same episode, Pratt and Fallon also played a few rounds of the game "Word Sneak," in which they had to weave unusual words (like dentures, jellyfish, soul patch and titmouse) into casual conversations.
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