The Love & Thunder Of Chris Hemsworth
Amongst the hard-hitting jugganauts of the acting industry—Oscar-winners, A-listers, stars with their thin smiles and erratic (some would even say ‘rude’) gestures of dismissal to the media on red carpets—there sits a secret underground group of acting do-gooders. Of ‘nice guys’. Of actors who seem to be so excited and stoked with life. At whatever movie premiere they’re promoting, they’d eagerly talk to anyone listening (at heightened volume, a dazzling glint in their eyes) about their latest accomplishments. They always share a joke, or a smile. Funnily enough, the majority of this Hollywood group is called Chris. Chris Pratt, for example—what a nice guy he is. Chris Pine—champion. There is one Chris, however, who reigns supreme, in our opinion, as a true Hollywood nice guy.
Maybe it’s his baby-blue eyes, his muscular physique or his ‘tall-poppy’ humbleness that attracts us. Maybe it’s the fact that he too was born, raised and founded in the Southern Hemisphere that we instantly go: ‘oh yes look, one of us…’ Maybe it’s the fact that he’s actually a really cool guy with a heart of gold. Maybe, it could be his style—he is the global ambassador for German luxury fashion-house, Hugo Boss and has garnered the title of Manliest Man by GQ. The ultimate Chris. The man, the myth, the legend. Our buddy, Chris Hemsworth.
Let’s face it…We all know Chris Hemsworth for his role as Marvel’s Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, and son to King Odin. Whenever we see Chris pop on screen, we are taken back to the time where we first saw Thor, with his long blonde hair, wielding his hammer. We know Thor’s origin-story pretty well, but what about Chris’? Was he too born amongst the gods?
Hemsworth was born back in 1983 on Melbourne’s Phillip Island to an English teacher and social services counselor; Chris spent most of his childhood in the gorgeous back-beat town of Bulman in the mighty Australian outback.
“My earliest memories were on the cattle stations up in the Outback,” Chris told Frank Lovece in a 2011 interview with FilmFestivalTraveler.com. “Then we moved back to Melbourne and then back out there and then back again. Certainly most of my childhood was in Melbourne but probably my most vivid memories were up there [in Bulman] with crocodiles and buffalo. Very different walks of life.”
Drama was never an ambition of his as a child, nor did he come from a ‘theatre’ family. But it was after a serious shoulder injury whilst playing football (which unfortunately caused him to wave goodbye to his dreams of becoming a professional player), that he decided to start treading the boards.
He thrived in the arts at school, making his mark in local productions and performances, so much so that his parents took notice. His brother Luke had already caught the bug, and suggested that Chris give it a shot. It was in 2005 that both Chris and younger brother Liam followed their brothers’ suggestion and landed their first acting coach, Louise Talmadge. During an interview with TV Tonight, Talmadge gave some insight into how it felt managing the Hemsworth brothers.
“[Luke] used to come in wearing overalls from a job that made him greasy,” she recalled, adding that Chris and Liam would shadow their brother in the back of the class, dressed in their school uniforms. “They would come from Phillip Island at night, after working. They were all a little bit afraid of me because I’d really give them hell if they didn’t know their lines. But the Hemsworth’s were hard workers.”
It was with those classes Chris took with the senior acting coach (and also landing his first agent, Jennifer Hennessy) that he started making a name for himself on TV. His first ever on-screen roles were playing King Arthur in Guinevere Jones and playing Kim Hyde in the infamous Australian soap, Home and Away; the latter role earning him a Logie, an amazing achievement for an actor just starting out. And he was (and still is, mind you) effortlessly cool, witty, likable and charismatic, really showing off that true-blue Aussie character.
It was with the role in Home and Away that he was chosen to star in Aussie’s Dancing with the Stars in 2006. If you search up his dance efforts at breaking out in a cha cha chassé on the hit Aussie show on Youtube, you’ll see Hemsworth clad in a black singlet and DIY tights, fully immersed in his character, sashaying around the ballroom to Santana’s Smooth with some wayward reckless abandon. Audiences connected to him for a multitude of reasons, and he successfully stayed in the show for many weeks before being voted off. Awkwardly, it is reported from a reliable source that Hemsworth’s involvement with the show raised some eyebrows around Marvel Universe’s producers catalogue and almost cost him his role of Thor in later years.
“It made me more nimble on my feet, I guess,” Hemsworth said in an interview. “I needed to be with the cape. You might see a bit of that Dancing with the Stars quality in Thor.”
After the days of Dancing with the Stars and playing Kim Hyde in Home and Away, big screen credits of Hemsworth’s started to slowly roll in—A Perfect Getaway, directed by David Twohy, had him playing hot-headed Kale for one. The movie ended up being a bit of a flop, with a 62 percent rating on movie-review site, Rotten Tomatoes. One Google review, posted by thilaga raj, gave it a fat ‘LOL…’ and went on to say that both Milla Jovovich and our mate Chris Hemsworth had “wasted their talents for this junk”.
Chris redeemed himself a year later in action-packed Ca$h starring alongside much-loved Yorkshireman, Sean Bean, that allowed himself to exercise many creative muscles. He was witty, likable and ready to lock into any role that he was given. The work he gave in Ca$h landed him a role in American horror-comedy film, Cabin in the Woods, directed by Drew Goddard and produced by Joss Whedon.
In the film, Hemsworth played one of five kids who take a holiday to a cabin in the woods that is controlled by a bunch of weirdos in an underground lair called the Facility. At the end of his character arch, after escaping from a masochistic-zombie-bunch-o’-rednecks, Chris’ character Vaughan jumped on his motorcycle to try to get help, but died quickly after hitting an invisible wall and falling to his impending doom. Bugger. It’s funny to think how this role was the stepping stone for Hemsworth’s entering the Marvel Universe; Thor would’ve never surrendered to such an ill-bequeathed fatality.
It’s at this point, the story took an interesting turn for the young actor. Joss Whedon was interested in Chris from his work in Cabin in the Woods, and was quite chummy with much-loved English Shakespearean-thespian Kenneth Branagh, who was scouting for the titular character for Marvel’s 2011 flick, Thor. Branagh wasn’t so sure about Chris (maybe the Dancing with the Stars thing had put him off) and was heavily considering Chris’ brother, Liam, and Tom Hiddleston for the role.
Chris had dipped his toes in the Hollywood pond before he was considered, playing George Kirk (father to James Kirk of Starship Enterprise) in the opening sequence of JJ Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek, but only in the opening sequence. Hemsworth hadn’t had a big opportunity to wrap his teeth around a character, and he yearned for the opportunity to play Thor. It wasn’t until Joss had a word with Kenneth that Branagh even reconsidered.
“I was about to go back for the audition for Ken,” Chris told Amy Pascale, author of a biography of Whedon, “and Joss called him just, you know, without me even knowing and said: ‘Hey, look….I really like this guy. He’s talented and fights for the right things.’ Ken really respected his opinion, and I’m sure that helped me get the job.”
It was actually whilst crossing the street in Vancouver that he got the call that he’d scored the role. After being a bit hesitant at first, and considering turning the opportunity down, due to creative concerns on his part, he accepted graciously. It was at that point Hemsworth was crowned Asgardian warrior, hammerless and banished to Earth in Branagh’s Thor.
Cut-scene to the post-credit shot in Jon Favreau’s 2010 masterpiece Iron Man 2. Phil Coulson, high-ranking officer of the special espionage agency, S.H.I.E.L.D., discovers a large hammer – Thor’s Mjöllnir – in a desert. That little easter egg got every Marvel fan from here to Timbuktuh very, very, very excited.
Though less well-received than the other Marvel characters, Hemsworth’s portrayal of the Freudian-style Norse God was garnered by critics world-wide and was surely the character that introduced Hemsworth to the world stage and the glittering lights of Tinseltown.
Starring alongside acting legends, such as Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, and Tom Hiddleston, Chris was in good company. In the film, after reigniting a dormant war, Thor is banished from Asgard to Earth, stripped of his powers and his hammer Mjölnir. As his brother Loki (Hiddleston) plotted to take the Asgardian throne, Thor made any move imaginable to prove himself worthy.
After the immense financial success of Branagh’s Thor (earning $449.3 million worldwide), two sequels were released – Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World in 2013 and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. The character also joined forces with other Marvel superheros in several The Avengers films, most notably in the 2019 Endgame where Hemsworth (spoiler alert) donned a very impressive fat-suit.
Set to be released in cinemas across NZ on 7 July, Hemsworth’s fourth time in the role as the God of Thunder will see him in a bit of a different light—in search, to put it bluntly, for inner peace. Rumours have been floating around the internet that the Marvel film will also feature Hemsworth ‘partially nude’—lads, hide your mothers.
Thor: Love and Thunder, directed by Kiwi Taika Waititi, begins with Thor having put down his hammer following the events of Avengers: Endgame, to have a ‘midlife crisis’ (Taika’s words, not ours). Those plans are squashed, however, when forced out of early-retirement to recruit a team of gods—and Natalie Portman, now the Mighty Thor—to stop Gorr the God Butcher (extra points to the guy who comes up with these names) from massacring the deities.
“I don’t know that I would’ve done another if Taika hadn’t said yes, he was going to do it,” Hemsworth told Vanity Fair. “He had written this beautiful script which was a wacky, crazy, romantic comedy set in space and that I hadn’t seen before.”
Even though Thor: Love and Thunder may be Hemsworth’s farewell to the Marvel Universe (with this being his fourth run with Thor), in a recent interview with America’s culture magazine, WIRED, he explained how much he loved playing the role. He noted how he loved living in the world created by several of Hollywood’s greatest minds, but now needed to pass the reigns.
“It felt very fresh and it felt like we were trying something we hadn’t tried before. It was, in Taika’s words, a wacky, wild, romantic comedy set in space…I love playing Thor—I played it for many many years and would continue to do so if people wanted me to. The most challenging part of playing Thor is reinventing it each time and not having it be predictable for an audience and having it be something they’ve seen before…”
Alongside playing Thor, Hemsworth has successfully kept the ball rolling with other projects, like his portrayal as the Huntsman in the 2012 dark-fantasy film, Snow White and the Huntsman. He appeared in the 2016 Ghostbusters film, alongside Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig. He acquired rave reviews playing Formula One driver, James Hunt in Ron Howard’s 2013 Rush, and gave the world a full-blown degustation on action in his role as Tyler Rake in Sam Hargreaves’ Extraction, available on Netflix. The directorial debut of American stuntman Sam Hargreaves and produced by the Russo brothers (who directed Hemsworth in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame), Extraction was Chris Hemsworth at his action finest.
“I got to invent a new character that isn’t held to any restrictions from something done before or a comic book or a real-life figure,” he told Indian news media group, The Hindu.
Chris’ latest gift to Netflix—released in early June this year—is his role as Steve Abnesti in sci-fi thriller, Spiderhead.
Adapted from a short story by award-winning author, George Saunders, Spiderhead follows a prisoner in a drug testing programme run by Abnesti (played by our lad Chris). Within only a month of its release, this film has garnered rave reviews of Chris’ performance.
“Chris Hemsworth really gets to flex his acting muscles,” one viewer wrote, “he’s amazing!”
Abnesti, portrayed as a slack and sleazy, ‘prophet’-type character, is (as Vulture.com put it) “the best thing he’s done”. It’s noted on several review sites that Chris’ comedic timing in the film is truly exceptional, paralleling his natural Australian character and his work in Ghostbusters. And, of course, everyone loves him. He’s Chris Hemsworth, after all. Just think, two decades ago, Hemsworth was just starting out in small television roles, whereas now he’s (in our opinion) Hollywood’s coolest Chris. He’s also one of the most highly paid ones too, earning a whopping $20 million payday in Thor: Love and Thunder. Money well-earned, I’d say!
As well as working hard on Thor’s latest saving-of-the-universe film, Hemsworth is also signed on to starring in the latest Mad Max film for the hit franchise, with the working title of The Wasteland. In the film, Hemsworth will be starring alongside other brilliant actors such as Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Anya Taylor-Joy and Tom Hardy.
From his early days in Home and Away to Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, Chris Hemsworth has truly become one of Hollywood’s greatest accomplishments. He’s a cool guy, for sure. We all love a ‘rising-from-the-ashes’, superhero origin story with all the key elements leading the central character to saving the world. We fell in love with Chris as Thor as he embodies just that. He too rose from nothing to save the world.
Whatever the reason, Chris Hemsworth seems to be the coolest of the ‘cool guys’ to come out of Hollywood in recent years, and he’s bringing his hammer along, one last time, to boot.
