Actor Chris Pratt was just 12-years-old when he got his first gun.

"My cousin bought it for me, with my parents' permission (and it was) one I paid for with money I earned," Pratt told GQ magazine, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

And the first toy the actor ever bought himself, after doing odd jobs around his local neighbourhood, was an air rifle.

He said: "I loved that BB gun. I must have shot it 10,000 times. It was my main toy. It was mine. I bought it - you know what I mean?"

The 37-year-old actor became a stripper when he was just 14 years old and charged $40 for his services.

"I put the word out there that I was going to start stripping. I marketed myself," said Pratt.

Pratt was first hired for a teenage girl's birthday party, but things didn't go according to plan.

Though he was initially "totally pulling it off", the girl's parents unexpectedly returned home, so he jumped out of the balcony, put his clothes back on, said hello to the couple who were then leaving again, and returned inside to finish his routine.

He said: "It was like something out of a John Hughes movie."

The former "Parks and Recreation" star then landed gigs at a 40th birthday party and a grandmother's birthday - which he described as "more funny than weird" but he quit stripping when he began to consider it as a full time career option and went for an audition at a local club, only to find one of the strippers sleeping outside.

"It just felt seedy and that I was moving into less innocent territory," he said.