Chris Pine Is Great At Being Chris Pine

 

All the way back in 2017 at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, the packed-out Saturday Night Live audience erupted into applause. As the clapping and cheering intensified to 12 on the Richter scale, the host for the evening’s proceedings just stood casually lapping up the love from the audience. Looking inwards at the scene, the man had a prophet-like aura—a halo around his head (or was that only the blinding stage lights?)

As Chris Pine began his opening monologue, there was a certain vibe he offered to the room. He was cool, calm, collected—just another day at the office. Typical Chris Pine.

‘I have a new movie coming out this weekend. It’s called Guardians of the Galaxy.’

The audience responded to this with more cheers and woohoo’s. It wasn’t long before Chris Pine started shaking his head and wagged his finger at the audience. ‘See…ya see…I knew that was gonna happen! I’m not in Guardians of the Galaxy—that’s Chris Pratt!’

What an age-old conundrum. The League of Extraordinary Chris’ (Old Testament, I believe).

‘Leslie [Jones] knows who I am!’ Pine said, ushering Leslie onto the stage.
The likable stand-up comedian, writer for SNL, and actress (famous for her role as Patty Tolan in 2016’s Ghostbusters) took to the stage with her iconic frizzy hair-do, smiling widely and holding her phone in her hands, like a delighted fan.

‘Yeah, you’re Captain America,’ Leslie said. ‘Chris Evans!’

Chris Pine shook his head. ‘N-no…’

‘Chris Hemsworth!’ A moment’s pause. ‘Oh, that’s good enough.’ She pulled Pine in for a selfie in which Chris looked utterly bewildered. ‘Thanks, Thor.’

For what it’s worth, Chris Pine has and will always stand the test of time as being a stand-out Chris amongst the other Chris’. Throwing no shade on the others in this illustrious group, Chris Pine seems as though he was designed not in a lab in the outback of Australia (as Hemsworth obviously was) but built through hard work, determination and strength. He’s a Chris who knows what he wants and won’t let anyone stand in his way from getting it.

Born in the 1980’s in LA, Chris was raised from a family brimming with entertainment talent. His dad, Robert, is an actor famous for his co-starring role on the American crime-drama show CHiPs, while his mum, Gwynne, is a former actress who turned to therapy. His grandparents, even, were in the entertainment business (his grandmother, Anne Gwyne, was a famous pin-up model and one of Hollywood’s first bone fide scream queens) and his grandfather hung amongst the stars as an entertainment lawyer. To keep with the family tradition, the torch would then (surely enough) be passed down to young Chris. On the contrary—the family trade was something that Chris never vibed with. Thankfully he never felt pressured by his folks to pursue it.

‘I never had a passion for acting,’ Pine candidly admitted to IndieWire last year. ‘Acting was something that seemed to pop out of nowhere and then just took over my life. It seemed to be fated and it made a lot of sense.’

 

 

He was more into sports and running around with his friends, like any other kid. The fact that he was quite badly bullied at school didn’t boost his confidence either. He unfortunately was not-so-blessed with acne in his early-teen years whilst going through puberty.

Whilst attending Oakwood School in North Hollywood, Pine picked up a passion for the written text and became an avid reader. His favorite author? Charles Dickens. His favorite Dickensian work? Bleak House—read by Pine at just 14.

‘A Tale of Two Cities I thought was going to be some giant book—which it’s actually not,’ Pine told Esquire in March when running through 15 books he recommends. ‘He’s the master of the run-on sentence and the parenthetical, but also, he’s so f**king funny—still.’

As Pine poured over literature in his youthful years, he only had a few close-knit friends, and found the vibes more in calm solitude than partying and socializing. After graduating from Oakwood, Chris enrolled himself (and was consequently accepted) to Berkeley, the prestigious Californian university in the Alameda County of San Francisco Bay. Having been secured in Berkeley, he started a Bachelor of Arts in English. While finding his path at the university, he longed for a place where he could belong and—as he wasn’t such a social-butterfly as we would all assume—he took to joining theater groups rather than raucous fraternities. Pine definitely preferred improvisation and Shakespeare to initiation ceremonies, a hefty lifetime supply of hangovers, and week-long street parties.

‘If I had let myself off the hook in college, I could have enjoyed myself a lot more. Knowing that I can’t have those years back, I have learned to get the most out of living in the now.’

As a member of the Berkeley Theatre Department, his first dip into acting was in a Caryl Churchill play at the local La Val’s Subterranean Theater, located underneath a pizza restaurant just 10 minutes walk from the main campus. Playing around with a Churchill text certainly put him on cloud nine. Whilst treading the boards with his fellow theater-enthusiasts, Pine also performed as Orestes and read Shakespeare to exercise his acting chops with quite a diverse range that caught the eyes of casting directors and agents alike. He loved expressing himself on stage, and after graduating from Berkeley university, he went on to study acting further at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Fran. Coming from an ‘acting family’, many may assume that this path would’ve been paved for him from birth. On the contrary—his parents had no say in Chris’ natural journey to acting, but did however give him a key attribute to his success. ‘My parents instilled a good work ethic and a drive to achieve.’

 

 

As many English majors would know and sympathize with, securing a lucrative career from a BA is a snort-worthy proposition. So after leaving the American Conservatory Theater, Chris took to small jobs here and there to make ends meet. Using that drive and work ethic, Pine decided to take his skills to TV in the early 2000’s. He scored himself an agent and appeared as an extra in American medical-drama ER, The Guardian and CSI: Miami. ‘I was very lucky early on, and began working and making a living quite soon after I decided to do this professionally.’ It was in 2004 he got his first big-screen debut in The Princess Diaries sequel in which he starred alongside Anne Hathaway as Lord Nicholas Devereaux. His charm, charisma, baby blue-eyes and chiseled-jaw made him a crowd-favorite, for sure. His acting range was wide, alright, and as well as making a mark on the big screen he also continued playing smaller roles for stage, TV and independent film, keeping himself wholesomely grounded along the way. For example he played roles in one episode of Six Feet Under, independent film, Confession, the TV-movie, Surrender and a one-man play called The Atheist at the acclaimed Center Stage in New York. In 2006 he starred opposite Lindsay Lohan (who was known as being a bit of a wild-card on the party scene) in the teen-flick rom-com, Just My Luck where he took another small step into the public gaze, mostly for hanging around Lohan and being caught around town with her.

‘It was a real cyclone of insanity, like being around The Beatles,’ Pine said in a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, recalling his first real interaction with fame. ‘It was fascinating to watch, and in hindsight it’s really a distinct moment in someone’s life when you see what’s really wonderful about what we get to do and what’s really dangerous about it.’

‘Hollywood is like living in a weird bubble,’ he continued in the interview. ‘A bunch of people take care of you and get you stuff, and you’re the center of that little microcosmic world. You start believing that it is real and you deserve it.’

Pine, in a sense, was trying to go back to his grass-roots upbring in amateur theater. He wasn’t doing it for the stardom or the fame, but because he loved it. He was playing roles that he wanted to play, and staying grounded throughout the process. The scariness of fame didn’t appeal to him that much, and he reportedly tried to ignore it.

 

 

That was until 2007, when he was given a script for J.J. Abram’s science fiction action film, Star Trek. The film was a reboot of the original series, featuring all the classic characters like Spock and Captain James T. Kirk. After auditioning for the role of Captain Kirk (in which Pine said his audition was awful as he could not see himself as a leader) Pine was surprisingly offered the role. He jumped at the opportunity. He even had to turn down the offer of a role in the crime film adaptation of James Ellroy’s, White Jazz, but who could blame him.

Upon its release worldwide, Star Trek grossed over $40 million by the end of its opening weekend and has been garnered as the highest-grossing project to come out of the Star Trek universe. It even beat The Hangover and The Dark Knight respectively at the box office. What with Pine at the helm, he was on the map, for sure. That little socially awkward kid who would rather be reading Dickens than partying hard at uni had made a name for himself. Due to overwhelming success from this film, the Star Trek franchise went on to produce a large number of sequels.

What with being thrust into the lime-light with the success of Star Trek, Pine still yearned for that smaller film vibe. It was around this time that Chris was announced as being part of the ensemble to Craig Zobel’s Z for Zachariah. Based on the 1974 book of the same name by Robert C O’Brien, Pine was successfully cast as the mysterious minor, Caleb. His character was one point to the love triangle that unfolds throughout the apocalyptic science-fiction film. Initially, he was cast alongside Amanda Seyfried and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Due to scheduling conflicts, Seyfried unfortunately had to pull out of the project and was replaced by Margot Robbie. Robbie’s involvement with the film certainly takes it up to new heights and Pine is marvelous in it.

The cool thing about this project was it was filmed in little old New Zealand. Audiences may remember a slight controversy surrounding Pine’s time in Christchurch during the filming. It was in Methven near Mount Hutt that Pine was stopped by police whilst driving. Upon taking a road-side breath test, Chris failed and was taken in front of an NZ court where he pleaded guilty. Reportedly he had downed four vodkas before driving. As a result, Chris was disqualified from driving in New Zealand for up to six months and ordered to pay NZD$93 in reparation. Naughty Chris.

That didn’t sour Price’s time on our shores, however. ‘Good people are good people,’ he said, talking about the primarily kiwi crew, ‘no matter the accent or geography. I had a great time; the South Island is just an immense nature and it was nice to get lost in it for a bit.’

Upon returning home from New Zealand he was shown a script by his agent for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, adapted into film by Sir Kenneth Branagh. This role was a big franchise name, alright, being played previously by the likes of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. In Shadow Recruit, Pine was being told upon his audition that he’d be starring alongside Kevin Costner and Keira Knightly. Pine took to the role, offering his own personality and flare to the character. Though it wasn’t the biggest box office success, it’s still a hefty action-adventure and offers Chris Pine as we know and love him. It’s masculine and rough, cool and likable.

 

 

Another masculine role for Chris around this time was in David Mackenzie’s 2016 American neo-Western crime drama Hell or High Water where he played Toby Howard, one of two brothers that commit bank heists to save the family farm. The film went on to be the biggest-selling independent project that year and received numerous accolades, including four academy awards, and heaps of praise for Pine. Quintessentially, Z for Zachariah, Jack Ryan and Hell or High Water, were three films that took Chris into that realm of severe masculinity—dudes with dudes being dudey.
‘Hell or High Water was a film about men relating to men,’ Pine told Indiewire. ‘I felt he [David Mackenzie] had a perfect eye for it.’

His next project, headed by Patty Jenkins, was the complete opposite of that, allowing Pine the opportunity to stretch his acting chops just a little bit further and dive into a completely different character that he was used to. Enter Wonder Woman, where Chris played the role of pilot and love interest of Diana (aka Wonder Woman, played by the amazing Gal Gadot), Steve Trevor. The brilliance of Wonder Woman and Pine’s portrayal in it, was it gave moviegoers a different type of hero to cheer for.

‘At the heart of the movie,’ Pine told Vanity Fair in 2017, ‘it’s about people falling in love and being passionate and being heroic. It’s a great lesson for everyone to learn, instead of other movies where shit is blowing up all the time.’ Wonder Woman was another side to Chris’ acting ability, for sure.

So as Chris continued along his acting journey through the years, hopping from TV, to Netflix, to blockbuster roles, his natural ability to glide into a script so effortlessly glowed and he became the stand-out Chris of Hollywood. As Covid took over the world in 2020, Chris Pine was actually (and hilarious) dubbed the ‘Quarantine Chris’ due to the hype he received from Wonder Woman 1984 and the Star Trek sequels which had beamed their way onto the streaming service.

Around this time, Chris used quarantine as a way to find himself again and see what really mattered to him artistically and personally. Quarantine actually sparked a new light in the guy. A talent he didn’t realize needed nurturing—that of directing. ‘Quarantine was in many ways the best thing that ever happened to me,’ he told Bang Showbiz NZ last year. ‘Because I really had to create my life. I had nothing. I had to create what I was going to do with my life because I didn’t have a project to lose myself in.’ That creation was mystery-comedy film, Poolman. The idea lived rent-free in his head for two years before a chance conversation with Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) who told him to go for it. The film is set to be released this September and is directed, produced, co-written, and starring Pine, amongst many other A-list actors at the helm.

Over the next couple of years, he kept to a low profile, starring in only two thriller films (Contractor and All the Old Knives) but in 2022 his most talked-about role (for all the wrong reasons) came in the form of Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. In the film, Pine played the mysterious Frank, Jack’s (played by Harry Styles) boss who is the designer of the Victory Project. The saving grace of the film (which was widely commented as being a bit bogus) was Florence Pugh’s leading role, and Chris Pine’s performance.

 

 

It premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival where big critics deemed Pugh’s performance superior to the actual film. Ouch! Despite the ‘Spitgate’ scandal that clouded the film’s release, Chris did a phenomenal job in it. His role was highly praised and his likeability continues to this day.

This year, in March, Chris appeared in fantasy-heist comedy, Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley and starring alongside Hugh Grant and Bradley Cooper. Based on the table-top game of the same name it is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The reviews online are staggering of the film itself and Chris’ performance. Pine plays Edgin Darvis in the movie, who follows a wild quest to find a missing artifact in the Forgotten Realms. I’d recommend you go see it—it’s quite a spectacle! Also being released this year is Chris Pine in the form of King Magnifico, the ruler of the Kingdom of Rosas who is the sole keeper of thousands of wishes by people around the world. King Magnifico takes center-scene in the animated musical fantasy film, Wish, produced under Walt Disney Pictures and to be released in November this year.

Looking over the trajectory of Chris Pine’s acting career, it’s obvious that he really is the type of Chris who gets off his backside and works hard for what he wants. He doesn’t want fame, fortune, or worldwide recognition. Though he stands as a stand-out Chris amongst the other Chris’ of Hollywood, he’s just happy doing what he does best. Success to him (in Chris’ own words) is ‘being content and having the ability to craft my life as I see fit.’

Chris continues wowing audiences at just being himself.