Do we like Chris Pine?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record and clear public support for gay rights, but the record of good deeds we could verify is thin.
Chris Pine grew up in Los Angeles in an acting family: his father is Robert Pine of CHiPs and his grandmother was the actress Anne Gwynne. He studied English literature at UC Berkeley, then worked his way up through small roles, including The Princess Diaries 2 in 2004. The big break was playing a young Captain Kirk in 2009's Star Trek, and he's been a proper leading man since.
On the harm test, the record is good. In 2014 he called Russia's anti-gay laws “clearly awful, archaic, hostile nonsense” and said the US should do more than send gay Olympians to Sochi. In 2016 he backed Star Trek Beyond making Sulu gay, even when George Takei objected, saying the film's job was to make people feel less alone.
On wider politics, he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014 that he was uneasy about drone strikes and the power to assassinate people. In a 2019 Variety chat he reportedly asked whether “Make America Great Again” harked back to Jim Crow or slavery, which Breitbart and a couple of culture-war sites were cross about. Nothing we found shows him pushing conspiracy theories, anti-vax lines or attacks on trans people. We couldn't find a full list of his recent projects, so the company he keeps is only lightly checked.
Now the scandal, such as it is. A neighbour sued him in 2023, alleging that ficus trees he planted had invasive roots and that he was trespassing, and he denied it all and filed his own claim. She accused his side of dodging a deposition, and his lawyer said there was no reason to avoid it. By November 2024 they told the judge they had resolved it in principle, with no terms reported. It's a suburban stoush, not a character flaw.
Lately he's been in the news for Star Trek, not for anything messy. Paramount's new film is going ahead without him, and when Variety asked about it in January 2026 he took it with good humour. He then opened Sundance with Carousel, co-starring Jenny Slate, and talked up their connection.
The good stuff is the on-the-record stands above, because we couldn't open a solid source for any charity work. Plenty of sites list causes he supports, but none we could verify. That's why he sits at a seven rather than a nine.