Anna Faris isn't just unqualified—she's also unfiltered.
In her memoir Unqualified (out now), she writes about her
"relationships, both disastrous and heartwarming," and shares
stories from her youth in Edmonds, Wa., and her life in
Hollywood. Anna holds nothing back as she tells stories about
her actor ex-husbands Ben Indra and Chris Pratt ( who wrote
the forward ), and she also includes never-before-seen,
embarrassing photos.
Here, EmI's News selects a few highlights from Unqualified :
1. On Losing Her Virginity
Anna lost her virginity at age 17, just a year after she got
"drunk" and had her first kiss during a hotel party. At the
time, she was still in high school and dating Chad Burke , an
older student at the University of Washington. "We were in
the frat house, deep into our red Solo cups of jungle juice, and
suddenly Chad grabbed my hands, looked into my eyes, and
said, 'Anna, I want you to lose your virginity to me,'" she
recalls. Anna did, too, but told him she wanted to wait until
after her 17th birthday. "I don't know why that age marker
was important to me, but my birthday was 10 days later, so I
figured we wouldn't have to wait much longer." But, just a few
days after her birthday, her vagina "started hemorrhaging" and
she lost about 50 percent of her blood in three days. "I had a
cyst on my right ovary—the particularly gnarly kind that has
hair and teeth is just incredibly gross." After a weeklong
hospitalization, she needed to heal. So, in January, she told
him she wanted to lose her virginity at lunch. "That's what we
did. And it was horrible."
"It was a solid C. I certainly didn't come, but nobody comes
their first time. At that point in my life, I had never
masturbated. I had never even explored, so I had no help to
offer Chad in terms of getting me off. But I wasn't really in it
for sexual pleasure," she recalls. "I was just head over heels
for this guy, and at the time I thought if I was going to keep a
man I had to give my p----y over lunchtime at his parents'
house." It took Anna "many more years of sex" before she felt
comfortable and confident. "If it hadn't been for my massive
insecurity about my body, I probably would have been incredibly
promiscuous. I was totally intoxicated with the idea of feeling
like a sexual being, and I wanted men to want me. But I was
also completely ashamed of my body, especially my boobs (or
lack thereof), and insecure about my abilities as a lover."
Anna adds that she has slept with five men in total—and she
married two of them.
2. On Getting Married—Twice
Anna believes in marriage, but unlike some women, the 40-year-
old actress hasn't spent a lifetime planning her big day. "It's
not just the fuss. The modern rituals of weddings—the big
surprise proposal, the bridal party, the show of it all—they make
me uncomfortable. I know. I'm a buzz kill. But a lot of women
question those out dated rituals, right? How can you not?
Both Ben and Chris asked my father if it was OK to propose to
me, and in both cases my dad said while of course he thought it
was very considerate of them to ask, it was 'unnecessary because
it is completely my daughter's choice,'" the actress says. "I
thought that was pretty cool of him."
Anna, who met Ben on the set of the 1999 horror flick Lovers
Lane , reveals he first proposed on their way to get lunch—
with their friend Alex in tow. "We walked into an antique
watch store that also had a lot of jewelry. Ben looked at the
wedding rings and said, 'Which one do you like?'" Anna
replied that she simply "wanted to eat Mexican food," but he
told her to take another look at the display case. "I pointed to a
vintage ring with a Victorian look and said, 'I don't know.
This one is kind of cool,'" she writes. Ben purchased it and got
down on one knee. "I think my exact words were, 'No, no, no,
no, no. This is not how this is happening.' Alex was there, and
we were on our way to eat burritos. I didn't even know if I
wanted to marry Ben at all, but I certainly didn't want to
commit in that moment with Alex and the jewelry watching."
Ben proposed a second time, about six or seven months later.
The actors had dinner and drinks at the Mondrian Hotel, and
Ben suggested they get a room to spend the night. What Anna
didn't know is that he'd covered the bed in rose petals. "When
we got upstairs he got down on one knee and said all the nice
things you might imagine for a marriage proposal. That's when
I said yes," she says. "I remember thinking in that moment
that I didn't want to tell my parents."
"In retrospect," Anna admits, "I should have examined that
more."
Things were different with Chris. In 2009, they traveled to Bali
for a friend's wedding. Chris had already asked Anna to
marry him, and after they learned there was a "wedding option"
when they booked a room, they decided to take the plunge. "It
was a gorgeous ceremony that was just for the two of us. 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," she writes. "It took us three years to make it
happen, and we had a big celebration that ended up being the
wedding we'd been trying to avoid, but this time it was pretty
incredible. We hosted 70 people at a lodge in Washington. My
dad officiated the ceremony, and it was exactly the way we
wanted it."
3. On Getting Divorced
Anna filed for divorce from Ben in April 2007, citing
irreconcilable differences. Towards the end, she realized they
had rushed into tying the knot without really getting to know
each other. "It felt like I was crossing something off the list,"
she says. "Live together, check. Marriage, check."
Shortly before Anna filed for divorce, she and Ben spent two
weeks exploring the English countryside. "It was great, except
every day we were searching for conversation," Anna writes. "It
was as if I suddenly realized, after almost a decade, that we had
almost nothing in common."
4. On Finding Love Again
Anna and Chris met on the set of the 2007 comedy Take Me
Home Tonight (which was shelved for four years).
"When I first met Chris, the most striking thing about him
was that he knew how to be happy and he knew how to make the
best out of a bad day," she writes. But at the time, she was
still married, meaning she was "technically off the market."
After Ben visited her on set, Topher Grace pulled her aside and
asked, "Anna, what the f--k are you doing with that guy?"
According to Anna, his bold question was like "a wonderful
splash of water to the face."
Though she had been Chris' wingwoman, Anna could no longer
deny that her feelings for him were more romantic than platonic.
"I needed someone to come along and show me something different
than the relationship I knew," she writes. Though they weren't
physically involved for some time, "I couldn't deny that
something was happening between us...I was head over heels,
and that made me feel helpless in a period of my life when all I
wanted was to feel powerful and understand my self-worth."
So, after her conversation with Topher, she talked to Ben on
the phone and told him it was over. "Pretty soon I was
knocking on Chris' door and was basically like, 'Hi. I'm ready
to get boned.'" Things moved fast between the actors. "I think
the real problem was that as soon as Chris and started dating,
I wanted to marry him," she says. Once they began getting
sexual, "It was hot and heavy in a way I'd never experienced
before."
Anna still regrets how her first marriage ended. "Sure, I get
to proclaim I didn't f--k Chris before I left Ben, but what is
there to celebrate in that? It didn't make me a hero. After all,
I wanted to, desperately. And I had feelings for him, obviously,
even if I wasn't honest with myself about what those were,"
Anna admits. "So while I didn't cheat, I'm not completely
innocent, either."
5. On Getting Plastic Surgery
After her first divorce, Anna was cast as a former Playboy
Playmate in 2008's The House Bunny . It was around
that time that the actress decided to get lip injections. But,
after a friend politely warned her that it was becoming too
obvious she'd had work done, she began weaning herself off.
Anna calls her plumper pout a "mistake," simply because "it
wasn't the right choice for me."
Anna has no regrets about getting breast implants, however.
Chris was supportive of her decision to go under the knife,
telling her, "Honey, I love your body no matter what you do."
Ten years later, Anna is still "happy" she went through with
the surgery. "I'm happy I waited until I was 30. It's a
personal decision and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to
everyone. But it does bother me that women are very much
criticized by other women for these kinds of choices," the
Mom star explains. "I don't know why we're quite so hard
on each other about it."
6. On Becoming a Tabloid Target
Before the couple announced their separation in the summer of
2017, they worked hard to maintain an image of perfection . "A
while back, Chris asked me if I felt a lot of pressure from being
in a high-profile relationship and I told him that I did. That
he was asking the question made me think that he probably felt
that way, too," the actress writes. "We felt that a good
offense was the best defense. So instead of being a couple who
never spoke publicly about their relationship, we posted silly
photos. We tried to let people into our lives to some degree."
Everything "changed" after Chris filmed the 2016 movie
Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence. "Even 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.
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,'" she recalls. At the time, "I
didn't think it would bother me. But then, when it actually
started and magazines began running rumors , it was totally
hurtful." Anna spoke about her feelings in a few interviews and
on her podcast, yet the rumors persisted. "Jennifer and I are
really friendly, and she was apologetic even though she didn't
need to be because she hadn't done anything wrong. She's
awesome, but of course it's hurtful and also embarrassing when
people are saying your husband is cheating on you—even if it's
patently untrue." When rumors like that refuse to fade away,
she says in Unqualified , "You still feel and look like a
fool."
7. On Becoming a Mother
Anna and Chris tried for a year to conceive a child, and the
actress got pregnant at age 35. Their son, Jack Pratt , arrived
prematurely, at 30 weeks and 1 day. He was rushed to the
NICU, where he remained for about a month. On the fourth
day, the doctor sat the new parents down and said Jack had
some severe brain bleeding and there was a chance he could be
developmentally disabled. "Chris and I did what we could, which
was hold hands and hope and face it together."
"I felt so incredibly close to Chris in those moments," the
actress writes. "It was all so unexpected and we knew we might
be raising a child who was completely different than we had
imagined, and I felt so lucky to have a partner who would be
able to rise to the occasion with me." Today, their son is "full
of wonder and mischief." Jack "has a couple of physical
problems—his legs have high tone and often appear stuff, so he
walks on his tippies a lot. He wears glasses and has to wear an
eye patch for 20 minutes a day to strengthen his vision. But
given that those are the biggest challenges," she says, "we count
ourselves as extremely lucky."
