10 Revelations From Anna Faris’ Memoir: Chris Pratt Romance, Jealousy, Son Jack’s Birth and More!

Credit: Diane Bondareff/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

10 Revelations From Anna Faris' Memoir: Chris Pratt Romance, Jealousy, Son Jack's Birth and More!

  Anna Faris is no expert on life. But her adventures, advice and mishaps still provide a lesson nonetheless. Anna and Chris: The Way They Were Now, in her new memoir, Unqualified, the Mom actress opens up about all aspects of her life. Written before she and husband Chris Pratt announced their separation in August, Faris candidly discusses their decade-long relationship while also detailing her son Jack's premature birth in 2012, her body insecurities, fighting jealousy and much more.   Chris' Hotness Evolution Here, Us Weekly rounds up 10 revelations from the powerful book, out now.

Credit: Diane Bondareff/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

10 Revelations From Anna Faris' Memoir: Chris Pratt Romance, Jealousy, Son Jack's Birth and More!

  Anna Faris is no expert on life. But her adventures, advice and mishaps still provide a lesson nonetheless. Anna and Chris: The Way They Were Now, in her new memoir, Unqualified, the Mom actress opens up about all aspects of her life. Written before she and husband Chris Pratt announced their separation in August, Faris candidly discusses their decade-long relationship while also detailing her son Jack's premature birth in 2012, her body insecurities, fighting jealousy and much more.   Chris' Hotness Evolution Here, Us Weekly rounds up 10 revelations from the powerful book, out now.

Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock

Chris Pratt wrote the foreword

And he had to Google "foreword." That aside, he goes on to praise Faris and their 10-year romance in Unqualified. "Anna is an important part of my life and she always will be," he writes. "She asked me to write this foreword. And I'm doing so because I love and respect her and told her I would." Noting their striking similarities — they both hail from Washington, have scars on their left hands and collected bugs — he also rattles off their differences. "For one, Anna is voracious information collector," he adds. "Anna is kind, possibly to a fault. . . . She's been in the spotlight longer than me yet continues to be the voice of reason in uncomfortable situations regarding our lack of anonymity." And despite their recent split, they remain on good, perhaps even great, terms. Her memoir, he writes, is "a face first dive into the mind and person that I spent one amazing decade with, and will, for the rest of my life, amicably coparent a human."

Credit: Eric Charbonneau/Shutterstock

Emma Stone would bail her out of jail

On her Anna Faris Is Unqualified podcast, the actress often challenges her guests to a game of not-so-rapid-fire. Now, in her book, she turns the tables and asks pal Cassie Daniels, a screenwriter and her segment producer, to surprise her with a round.

The question: "Think of this like 'f—k, marry kill' but instead you have to hide a dead body with someone, call them to bail you out of jail, or get anal bleaching together. And it’s the costar edition. Here are your options: Allison Janney [from Mom], Regina Hall [Scary Movie], Emma Stone [The House Bunny]."

Faris' answer: "I think I would hide the dead body with Regina, because she’s pretty cool under fire. She wouldn’t panic under the stress of that. I’d call Emma Stone to get out of jail, because she’s really crafty and quick on her feet and she would create a plan. I think she would be a little surprised to hear from me, though, because it’s been a while. 'Hey, Emma! I’m in a little jam!' But I think she would answer the call. And then Allison, yeah, we could do anal bleaching. We’ve seen a lot of each other’s bodies. But truly, I think any of these women would perform well in any of these scenarios."

Credit: Charles Sykes/Shutterstock

She had moments of doubt before her first marriage

"It barely seems real," Faris writes of her union to actor Ben Indra, who she met on set of Lovers Lane. "It felt as if we were play-acting at being married."

Though they moved in together after just four months, she admits she questioned their romance. But, "I also felt like I didn't have the courage to be single," she reveals. "Being single and dating makes you vulnerable. Trying to become an actor was already terrifying enough, to add searching for a relationship and friends to that list? That felt like too much."

Still, her sudden success didn't help the pair, who split in 2008. After scoring her role in 2000's Scary Movie, "there was an immediate shift in the power dynamic of our relationship after that, though I didn't clock it at the time," writes Faris. "It never occurred to me that this moment of success could have a negative impact on what was then a budding relationship."

By her 30th birthday in 2007, things had only gotten worse. "It was a rough time for both of us," she admits. "I was singularly focused on my career at that point and Ben repeatedly accused me of putting my work first."

After her birthday party — "I spent not one moment alone with Ben and I noticed it" — they took a trip through the English countryside. There, she noticed the stiffness of their relationship. "We were searching for conversation," she recalls. "We had nothing in common."

Two months later, she would leave him.

Credit: Alex Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock

Chris Pratt helped her realized Indra wasn't for her

Faris first met Pratt on the set of Take Me Home Tonight in Phoenix, Arizona. On screen, they played a couple, but in reality, she was still married to Indra. Which was all the more reason for Faris to be so skeptical of Pratt's kindness.

"I was constantly looking for proof that he was not as great as he seemed," she reveals. "I tried to analyze his motives … Chris would walk me to my door or otherwise make sure I got home safely. It baffled me."

They just had a perfect banter. Something even costar Topher Grace picked up on. And after Indra failed to impress during a visit to the set, Grace asked her "what the f—k are you doing with that guy?" Her response: "I don't know."

She couldn't deny a spark between her and Pratt. "I called Ben and told him over the phone that I was leaving him, and then went to set and was like, 'Hey everybody! I just left my husband,'" writes Faris. "Pretty soon I was knocking on Chris' door and was basically like, 'Hi. I’m ready to get boned.'"

Jokes aside, she knows the phone breakup was "questionable" but doing it in person was "exhausting" and she wanted to rip off the band-aid. "Had I told him face-to-face, not only would I have had to wait longer, but it would have been horrible drama," she admits. "The reality is that if I hadn’t met Chris, my first marriage probably would have lasted until I found a different someone else. Chris was my cattle prod. I needed someone to come along and show me something different than the relationship I knew."

Credit: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

She knew she would marry Pratt — and the eloped for a reason

Almost right away. "When we finally got together, it was hot and heavy in a way that I'd never experienced before," she writes. "You might think that, fresh off an almost decade long relationship, I would be hesitant to move on to the next, but I couldn’t have fallen more headfirst into my feelings for Chris."

Just months into dating — "It was laughter all the time" — Pratt went on a backpacking trip to Europe with his Everwood costars. On a train to Prague, he called and "said, 'I just love you so much. I just want to marry you,'" recalls Faris.

In 2009, while in Bali for a friend's vows, they decided to wed. "It was a gorgeous ceremony that was just the two of us," she writes. "We had already told our parents that we were probably going to elope, and we’d promised them that we would have a party at home, too."

That 70-person party, where her dad officiated the ceremony, was just the reason why the went off on their own. "There was some minor drama," jokes Faris. "Just my cousins getting in a fistfight on the dance floor, and some of Chris’s friends bringing strippers as dates, and then a girlfriend of one of Chris’s friends accusing me of hitting on her boyfriend. On my wedding day. Your average wedding hoopla. Who wouldn’t want that?"

Credit: Diane Bondareff/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

She has her body insecurities

Beginning with her face. With a scar on her upper lip and an overall feeling that they were too thin, she started getting injections around 2008 while filming The House Bunny.

"Turned out, after doing it long enough, the injection became very apparent," admits the actress. "One day a bunch of my friends were like, 'Hey, Anna, your lips are getting pretty big.' At that point, I had to wean myself off the injections."

Though she says the procedures were ultimately mistakes, she doesn't regret her boob job. As a "huge point of insecurity from an early age," the idea came to her while also filming The House Bunny.

Sewed into a padded bra daily, "I started to embrace [my character's] kind of sexuality and it was really liberating," she says. At the same time, she was dating Pratt: "I feel silly saying this, but he brought out something in me that made me want to be feminine in a very traditional way."

When she told him of her idea, he said he'd love her body no matter what. Done deal. "I did it for myself," writes a proud Faris. "I wasn’t doing it for Hollywood — I'd be wearing padded bras for my whole career, so it wasn’t like I thought that implants were going to suddenly help me get ahead. But I wanted to feel sexy in a way that I hadn’t been feeling, and I'll be honest, after getting the surgery, I did."

Her one request: Stop the shaming. "It does bother me that women are very much criticized by other women for these kinds of choices."

Credit: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

They went into "solider mode" after Jack's birth

After trying for a year, Faris' pregnancy was dubbed geriatric because she was 35. And though she gained nearly 70 pounds, the first 30 weeks had no bumps.

Until August 10, 2012. At just 30 weeks and one day, "I woke up at two fifteen to a massive gush," she recalls. "The bed was soaked, and even though I felt the fluid coming out of my vagina, I smelled it to make sure it wasn't pee. For those of you who haven't had babies, let me assure you: you can't really mistake your water breaking for peeing. They are entirely different sensations. But when you aren't due for two more months and you're taken by surprise by a sudden burst of fluid, you will pray that it's urine, and you'll go as far as sticking your nose in it if necessary."

At the hospital, she was told she could not leave until the baby was born and was immediately put on bed rest. "This was not the kind of easy bed rest where you hang out on the couch but can sneak out to pee or get a snack," she writes. "This was hospital bed, catheter, no showers, no standing up, ever."

Seven days in, she went into labor: "The pain was so crazy that I could barely speak."

Born premature, Jack, now 5, was in the NICU for a month, though Faris was released after just two days. "For the next four weeks, I spent all day there, pumping milk for my baby until my nipples were bleeding and blistered, because it felt like the only thing I could do to help him," she recalls. "He was fed the milk through a tube up his nose."

The hits kept coming. Four days after welcoming Jack, a pediatric neurosurgeon told the new parents that their son had severe brain bleeding and there was a possibility he would be developmentally disabled. But they wouldn't know until he was 18 months old.

"I only half heard the words as they came out of the doctor's mouth. I was in complete shock," notes the actress. "We held hands while the doctor spoke, and we held hands — and smiled! — as we left the hospital, because we were getting paparazzi every time we left, which, frankly, was horrible. How do you smile when you're spending your days worrying about your sub-four pound baby? But you don't really have a choice because if you're frowning, then who knows what the tabloids could say."

When a four-pound, three-ounce Jack was able to eat on his own, he was finally brought home on September 12. Faris continued to shuttle him to daily doctor appointments with brain, heart and eye specialists, as well as physical therapists.

"He was speaking at an early age and people were constantly telling us how smart he was, which I know people probably say to all new parents but it took on even more meaning for me," admits the mom. "But our instincts were right and it turned out that Jack's development was progressing completely on par for his age."

Today, Faris and Pratt are in endless awe of their son. "He still has a couple of physical problems — his legs have high tone and often appear stiff, so he walks on his tiptoes a lot. He wears glasses and has to wear an eye patch for twenty minutes a day to strengthen his vision. But given that these are the biggest challenges, we count ourselves extremely lucky."

Credit: AFF-USA/Shutterstock

Everyone gets jealous

Yes, superstars included.

"Even though Chris was becoming hugely famous and I’d been sort of famous for a while," reveals Faris, "The two of us led such boring lives that the tabloids left us alone."

That is, until her husband signed on to Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence in 2016. "Before they met in person, my publicist, out of the blue, pulled me aside. 'Anna, listen there are going to be paparazzi all over them,' she said. 'There are going to be shots of them laughing together on their way to set. There are going to be stories circulating, and you have to brace yourself for this.'"

And she was right. The stories were "totally hurtful" recalls Faris, who admits she tried to ignore them "but I couldn't block them out, either."

Lawrence even went out of her way to help an "insecure" Faris feel more comfortable. "Jennifer and I really are friendly, and she was apologetic even though she didn’t need to be," writes Faris, "because she hadn’t done anything wrong."

Pratt too had his envious moments. In 2011, Faris and Chris Evans starred in the rom-com What's Your Number? Her husband, who had a small role in the flick, "was never overt about it but he would bring up my kissing scenes with Chris Evans casually. 'So, when do you have to do that love scene with Evans?' he’d ask," she admits. "It was thinly veiled, but very sweet. That passed within days, though."

After a night out on the town Chris 1 and Chris 2 instantly became BFF. "They couldn't get enough of each other," reveals Faris. "They were so enamored of each other that I still ended up being the jealous one clamoring for attention. 'Hey guys! Look at me!'"

Credit: Jim Smeal/Shutterstock

Chris Pratt is the perfect romantic

Warning: Faris knows the following may make you queasy.

"I wouldn't be honoring my relationship with Chris if I didn't acknowledge that he was great at grand gestures but also stellar at the tiny ones," she admits.

First, he can French braid. "We'd be in bed at night watching football and he'd say, 'Let me braid your hair,' and I would sit between his legs and let him do my hair. He was always the instigator," Faris reveals. "He cuts Jack's hair too. They play barber together. Chris is a great caretaker in general, but especially when it comes to hair."

And he sends handwritten notes from his travels. "I'd get a letter from a gorgeous hotel in Moscow or Paris or wherever work took him, though he was usually home by the time they arrived. They were like old-timey war letters that said things like, 'Honey, I'm dreaming of the day I get to hold you again.' For such a dude, he's really thoughtful."

Oh, and he's also an artist! "About a year and a half ago, he drew a picture of himself on our bathroom mirror with a love note, and the picture looked remarkably like him. He also wrote me a long poem once that was framed in our home. Do you want to throw up yet?"

Credit: Matt Baron/Shutterstock

She still gets nervous filming Mom

Even after four seasons, shooting the CBS sitcom in front of a live audience makes her anxious.

But she has a routine. Every Friday, before taping, "I make an announcement to the crew," writes Faris. "It goes something like this: 'Hey, everybody, I have an announcement. I just want to tell you guys all how much I love you and what an amazing team we are. You are the best. I feel so lucky that I get to drive to working knowing that I'm going to see you."

Her reasoning: "Why not spread the love? Even if it means that I come across as an idiot."

Another ritual: Flowers from Pratt. "I'll admit that sometimes I felt almost embarrassed, not because I wanted to hide them, but I didn't want to always be the, 'Look what I got!' girl who rubbed her romantic husband in her coworker's faces," she jokes. "But yeah, a giant bouquet of flowers in my dressing room wasn't bad."

And while Faris has yet to be nominated for the show, she's ready if and when the day comes thanks to her costar. "I've delivered plenty of drunken acceptance speeches at Allison Janney's house, where her six Emmys are perfect for my practice runs."

For more from Faris, pick up Unqualiifed, on book shelves now!