Entertainment- Chris Pratt wrestled in high school and placed fifth in the Washington State Wrestling Championships.
- Pratt produced "Helen Believe," which chronicles the story of Olympic gold medalist Helen Maroulis.
When Chris Pratt was a senior at Lake Stevens High School, the 215-pound teenager placed fifth in the Washington State Wrestling Championships.
For Pratt, who ultimately wrestled for nearly 12 years as an amateur wrestler before becoming an actor and starring in film and TV projects like "Parks and Rec," "Jurassic World: Dominion" and "The Terminal List," wrestling proved a formative experience that left an indelible mark on him.
"Wrestling taught me that I'm tougher than I thought I was," Pratt told Insider at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Pratt has become a lifelong wrestling supporter as a result, often discussing his wrestling days in interviews while promoting projects, and filming the 2012 documentary "On the Mat," about Lake Stevens High School's wrestling team. He even confessed on "The Late Late Show With James Corden" in 2022 that he once challenged Dave Bautista to a wrestling match via text message after taking Ambien.
"It was like, 'Dave, I wanna wrestle you,'" Pratt told Corden, adding he no longer takes sleeping aids. "I wanna wrestle you. No one needs to know, but I just want to know. I think I can take you. I think I can wrestle you, bro. Collegiate rules. No elbows, no knees. I just want to feel the power. [I was] mortified. Dave would kill me so bad."
More recently, Pratt produced the documentary "Helen Believe," which debuted at the Santa Barbara Film Festival and will play at 700 theaters across the US. The documentary chronicles the story of Helen Maroulis, who shocked the world at the Rio de Janeiro summer Olympics in 2016 when she defeated Olympic champion Saori Yoshida of Japan, becoming the first American woman to win a gold medal in wrestling.
Director Dylan Mulick was in the process of shooting the documentary when his team approached Pratt to produce the project.
"I've been a huge fan of Helen Maroulis," Pratt told Insider. "She has an extraordinary story, both what led to her gold medal and also the life that she's been living since as she continues in wrestling. There was a really important story to be told there, and I so wanted to part of it. I grew up wrestling and wanted to help tell the story."
Maroulis, for her part, remains somewhat astonished, both by the documentary's release and how far women's wrestling has come. According to the National Wrestling Coaches Association, the number of women who now wrestle in high school has grown from 804 to over 31,000. In 2022, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics also adopted women's wrestling as a championship sport.
"If you had told me when I was a little girl that women's wrestling was going to come this far, and there'd be a documentary that was produced by Chris Pratt and had Dylan Mulick as the director, I would have never believed you," Maroulis told Insider, describing the experience of participating in the documentary as "healing" and "eye-opening."
"I wasn't even really allowed to take space up on the mat [early on], and now there's space on the screen for women's wrestling. It's just really incredible, and I'm super grateful for it."