“He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn’t your daddy,” father-figure Yondu (Michael Rooker) told Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The 2017 movie pit Pratt’s intergalactic outlaw against his long-lost father — Ego the Living Planet, played by Hollywood legend Kurt Russell — who turned out to be a supervillain. Pratt gets another iconic on-screen dad in Samuel L. Jackson in the animated The Garfield Movie, which reunites the Pratt-voiced fat cat with his estranged feline father: Jackson’s scruffy street cat Vic.
When ComicBook asked Pratt which movie dad imparted the best fatherly advice, Pratt shared the wisdom that his Guardians of the Galaxy co-star gave him that still applies today.
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“We would spend a lot of time together. We just have so much in common,” Pratt said in an exclusive interview for Garfield. “His advice was to make sure I focus enough attention on the things in my life that I’m passionate about that aren’t my career. He and I both like to be outdoors. He’s got a cattle ranch, I’ve got a cattle ranch.”
He continued: “And so he was talking about how important that was to him and carving out his own little piece of the world that was away from the Hollywood world, [and] to maintain perspective in that.”
Based on Jim Davis’ iconic comic strip, The Garfield Movie sees Pratt voice the lazy, lasagna-loving, Monday-hating tabby cat after voicing Mario in last year’s animated blockbuster The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The story follows the indoor cat on a wild outdoor adventure when he’s unexpectedly reunited with his long-lost father, Vic, that forces Garfield and his canine companion — the dim-witted dog Odie (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish‘s Harvey Guillén) — from their perfectly pampered life with owner Jon (Superman‘s Nicholas Hoult).
Pratt and Jackson — who are the cat’s meow, according to the first positive Garfield Movie reactions — lead a star-studded cast that includes Hannah Waddingham (The Fall Guy), Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible), Cecily Strong (Schmigadoon!), Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso), Bown Yang (Saturday Night Live), Janelle James (Abbott Elementary), and Snoop Dogg (The Underdoggs). Tickets are now on sale for The Garfield Movie, which opens only in theaters May 24.