Chris Pratt, star of the recently released Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy, has opened up about how the premature birth of his son affected his faith.
Pratt and his wife, Anna Faris, were looking forward to starting a family.
“It started [for us] around the same time, and I don’t think one of us wanted it any more than the other,” Pratt said in an interview for the latest issue of People magazine. “She would say, ‘How do you feel about that?’ and I would say, ‘I’ve been kind of thinking about that too! I think that’d be cool. Let’s make that happen.’ “
But the couple felt helpless when their son, Jack, was born nine weeks premature in August 2012.
The 35-year-old actor said they were scared much of the month their son spent in an intensive-care unit. But the ordeal brought him closer to God, he says.
“We prayed a lot,” he said. “It restored my faith in God—not that it needed to be restored—but it really redefined it.
“The baby was so beautiful to us,” he continued, “and I look back at the photos of him, and it must have been jarring for other people to come in and see him. But to us he was so beautiful and perfect.”
As Jack approaches his second birthday, his proud father calls him “a fighter.”
“He’s so open, and there’s no fear in him no matter what,” he added. “He is so charming that my plan is to just let him take care of us as soon as he’s old enough.”
Pratt, who is a cast member of the popular television comedy Parks and Recreation and voiced the main character in this year’s The Lego Movie, has had a successful year.
Faris, a 37-year-old actress who stars on the hit comedy Mom, said he is a great husband and father, and he hasn’t let the fame get to him.
“He’s a really loving father, he is an incredible husband,” she told People. “He doesn’t let fame seduce him. He’s still the same dude.”
