He may be best known for playing Thor, but before he landed the superhero role, Chris Hemsworth has confessed he was ready to give up the big screen.
Following a stall in his career in 2009, the actor has said he was close to leaving behind Hollywood and heading back to his native Australia in the hope of finding work back on the set of Home and Away.
Chris had played Kim Hyde on the show between 2004 and 2007, before going on to secure major roles in Star Trek, The Avengers and Snow White and the Huntsman.
Speaking in a new interview with Men’s Health, to mark the release of his new fitness app Centr, Chris reflected on the eight-month lull he endured in his career and said: ‘I was about to quit.
‘I was at the stage of thinking, “I’m going to go back to Australia. I’m going to knock on Home and Away’s door and ask them for a gig.”‘
Chris explained that anxiety and nerves got the better of him during that period, but wanting to pay off his parents’ house sparked his ‘mentality to change’.
He said: ‘It was right before Christmas, I had one more audition and I just thought, “Do this for Dad’s house, think about reasons other than yourself.”‘
The audition was for Cabin In The Woods, with Chris later securing Thor – despite not initially being cast for the superhero and his younger brother Liam Hemsworth also auditioning for the role.
At the time, the two boys were pitted against one another, but Chris dismissed any reports of rivalry.
‘It made us sound like we’re these macho b*stards who are battling all the time,’ he said. ‘We’re competitive people, but no more so with each other than with anyone else.
‘Something like acting… you wouldn’t dare pull one another down because, trust me, you do enough of that yourself, you know? Self-bashing. I do, anyway.’
Chris has recently turned his attention to fitness and launched an app with his wife Elsa Pataky that includes Hemsworth-approved meal plans, workouts and mindfulness exercises.
Known for his buffed-up physique, Chris joked in his latest interview that he does feel the pressure to stay in shape.
He said: ‘Occasionally, I’ll see paparazzi poking out of the bushes and I’m, like, “How’s my rig look? Am I on point, or have I slacked off lately?”‘
Chris’s full interview appears in the March 2019 issue of Men’s Health UK, on sale January 31st.
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