Chris Pine on 'Men's Health' June Cover

 He's a 32-year-old action movie star headlining two of Hollywood's biggest franchises, Star Trek into Darkness and Jack Ryan, but Chris Pine knows rejection. And dismissal. And paying his dues.



As a kid, he was a talented baseball player, till one year "you're smaller than everyone else and striking out." While waiting for his Hollywood break, he worked a cash register at an L.A. bakery. He flubbed his initial Star Trek audition "as badly as you can imagine," and lost out to Sam Worthington for the role of Jake Sully in Avatar.

And through all of that, he learned how to deal with the negative voices: "You either listen to the naysayers and fall into the pit of self-loathing, or you stay on the path and move forward," he says.

So the 6'1'', 170-pound Pine moves forward into Darkness, the follow-up to J.J. Abrams' 2009 blockbuster that opens this week. This time, Pine says, there's "much more action, much, much more intensity; and a lot more fighting."

Despite those action-star credentials, there's something completely disarming about the guy, whether he's evoking his memories of being a pimply faced loner in high school ("Even now, I'm better around people who are uncomfortable with themselves, the misfits") or answering a question about the last time he cried. "I cry all the time—at work, at the shrink's, with my lady. The Notebook killed me. Up destroyed me. Up was like the animated Amour."

And he's not afraid to ask for help, even turning to the original Capt. James T. Kirk, William Shatner.

"Bill's head space is, 'Enjoy every interaction, suck the juice out of each experience, and grab life by the balls.' We can all learn from that."