For a young actor trying to break into the business, headshots are a necessity. The only problem is if they do eventually make it big, someone might drag out those old, embarrassing headshots on a talk show and share them with the rest of the world.
That’s what happened to Chris Pratt and Melissa McCarthy, who both stopped by The Graham Norton Show and shared the stories behind their very first headshots.
Pratt said he was at the post office when a man approached him: “This guy was like, ‘You look familiar. Have I shot you?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve never been shot.’” When he offered to take headshots of Pratt back at his apartment, Pratt quickly accepted, and the end results are adorable, albeit very dated. (That hair!)
McCarthy, meanwhile, talked about how when she first moved to Los Angeles, her commercial agent encouraged her to take character shots. McCarthy ended up taking two photos, both based on characters she created as part of the improv group the Groundlings—one with a “grey, snarled wig and old lady glasses” and the other with a Barbie cowboy hat and boot earrings.
“First of all, I don’t know how you got them because I literally thought I had the only two hard copies,” McCarthy said of the photos. “When you sent them to me, I was like, dear God, they’re out there.”
The full episode of The Graham Norton Show airs June 6 on BBC America.
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