Chris Hemsworth has silenced every doubt, but after doing some soul searching while filming his National Geographic series Limitless, he’s about to step away from the spotlight for the first time since his meteoric rise
13 years ago, an article appeared in one of the big film trades, lambasting the casting for the next Marvel Studios blockbuster, Thor. The film was doomed to failure, the insider wrote. After all, part of Marvel’s secret sauce to that point had been bringing in a huge name in Robert Downey Jr, and catapulting him even higher as Iron Man. Thor wasn’t even a popular character. How was some Aussie named ‘Chris Hemsworth’ supposed to make people care?
Needless to say, the kid found a way. And not only that, he spent the last decade and change silencing every doubt that arose in the wake of Thor’s success. Hemsworth was a key cog in the first Avengers crossover film, helping change the nature of Hollywood forever. He then pulled the character out of his self-serious Shakespearean phase with the help of Taika Waititi, filling him with humour and pathos that far exceeded the decades the character had managed on the page, making him truly his own.
The man even proved that he could stand alone as a movie star and earn a name all his own, carrying his action film Extraction to number one on Netflix’s all-time most-viewed list with a viewership in the hundreds of millions, and since turning it into a franchise in its own right.
As I sit with Hemsworth in Dubai at the tail-end of 2022, it feels like the end of an era.
“I feel like I’m coming down from a ten-year sprint,” he tells Esquire Middle East. “And I’ve arrived at so many places that were distant dreams along the way.”
The man has nothing left to prove, and he knows it. Why does it feel like something’s missing?
Perhaps in part it’s a flaw of character. The man is too nice. At every juncture, he’s focused on those around him, rarely thinking about himself.
“He’s the best of us,” his older brother Luke once told me at lunch in Dubai, speaking of him with a reverence that exceeded just brotherly love. He’s the caretaker, the person everyone turns to.
I’ve seen his good-egg-iness for myself. I’ve met the man three times now, and each time since the first he’s remembered me when by all accounts I shouldn’t have made an impression, either shuffled past him with a group of 20 on the set of one of his films, or put in front of him in a room for five minutes to pepper him with questions on camera, one of probably 100 that week.
This latest time, he’s focused on my recent realization that diet and exercise make a pretty good combo.
“By the way, you’re looking fantastic,” Hemsworth says. “The last time we saw each other you were not looking as incredibly physically impressive as you are right now. Well done.”
If he has trouble focusing on himself, he’s aware of it now, and he’s working on it. His friend Darren Aranofsky saw to that, recruiting him for a National Geographic docu-series in which Hemsworth would have to finally look inward, and take stock in where his journey had taken him.
The series is called Limitless, and it’s probably not what you’re expecting. Hearing the basic premise implied the title—Chris Hemsworth pushes himself to his physical limits—I personally expected to see him swim with sharks, maybe one up a mountain, and call it a day. What I got was a lot more profound.
Take the last episode, for example. In it, he dies. I’m serious—sort of. The episode is called “Acceptance”, and it’s all about learning to accept his own mortality, culminating in a simulated death that takes him to a vulnerability he’d never before displayed on screen.
“It’s much easier to play a character in front of the camera, hiding behind whatever mask you’ve chosen, than it is to be yourself. That was honestly the main attraction in doing it,” says Hemsworth.
The show also brought him some uncomfortable revelations, including the very-real knowledge that he’s predisposed to Alzheimer’s, putting a potential end to his life in unsettling clarity.
Where did that send him? Inward. What did he find? A way to focus on the people around him like he always has, but in a more conscious way.
“It’s about finding balance. Saying to myself, okay, I’ve arrived. Now I’m going to appreciate these moments without putting something else ahead of me that I’m checking rather than focus on what’s right in front of me,” says Hemsworth.
“I was asked at the end of that last episode, what would make a good death? Who would you have around in those last moments? What do you want in front of you? I realized, It’s everything I have right now. It’s every Sunday afternoon we have friends and family over and we’re together. It was this lightbulb moment of gratitude and awareness, and I keep trying to bring myself back to that feeling I had when that realization kicked in.”
Now, he’s done hunting for the next achievement.
“I was in a state of fight or flight constantly. I wasn’t managing my stress. I wasn’t spending time in my internal environment. I was too external. Now I’m maintaining a stellar environment where I can maintain a reflective state. Sure, going into an ice bath and trying cold water immersion was a physical test, but it also made me think about how I manage things on the inside. That allows my outside world to exist with a different kind of intention,” he says.
So, what’s next for Chris Hemsworth? For the first time since his career took off, he doesn’t know. And that’s exactly how he wants it.
“Theres a battle in me between culture and nature, wanting to be around people and parties, making movies and attending events. Then I have this other force pulling on me that just wants to be in the woods alone. I find myself moving more and more towards the woods,” says Hemsworth.
“I don’t have anything lined up for a while. I want to just sit, and really light that fire inside me. It’s time to recharge, it’s time to be with my family. It’s time to keep getting to know myself.”