Chris Pine says he got rattled early on in his career after losing out on the lead role for "The O.C." -- and it's all because he got passed up ... as a result of bad acne back then.
The actor went on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast and was asked about this sensitive subject -- which actually got brought up by the show's original casting director Patrick Rush in the oral history book about "The O.C." ... and Chris says he remembers it quite clearly.
He does say he wishes Pat wouldn't have mentioned it in his retelling of how the series came together ... but now that it's out, he acknowledges it was a painful time in his life.
Chris recounts it this way ... "I was going out for 'The O.C'., which is a teenage melodrama. I can understand that they wanted to have pretty people doing pretty things, and bad acne is not a key [to that]."
When host Josh Horowitz joked his career could've worked out a whole lot different had he bagged the role, CP responded ... "I don't want to say, I'm grateful for not having landed [the part]. I'm alright, but it is a little PTSD."
Chris says this acne issue followed him for a huge chunk of his adult life ... which he called "tremendously debilitating and emotionally incapacitating."
While Hollywood has seen a wave of leading ladies bravely sharing their body-shaming battles, Chris' experiences shine a light on a harsh truth often overlooked ... body image struggles aren't limited to one gender.
As for the role of Ryan ... it ended up going to Ben McKenzie, and sure enough, the show went on to be a huge hit between 2003-2007 -- catapulting Ben and his costars Mischa Barton, Adam Brody, Rachel Bilson and more into massive overnight fame.
Of course, Chris did alright in the aftermath of all that too .. cleaning up in Hollywood and becoming a leading man in his own right. Dude's one of the most famous A-listers around.