The other night I was out with some friends and I asked them which Hollywood Chris was the hottest. They both responded “Pratt” and I was so scandalized that I made them pull up photos of all four Chrises on their phones. There was no way they would stick to their answer once presented with the facts, I thought. I was wrong. Then one of my friends made an Instagram poll on her stories, and her friends agreed with me; Pratt came in dead last, and Chris Hemsworth ran away with 52% of the vote. I’m not sure he’s my favorite of the Hollywood Chrises (it’s Evans, I think), but he is the most beautiful. Chris was interviewed by GQ UK this month to promote his new Netflix movie, Extraction 2. I wasn’t expecting that much from the interview, to be honest, but he’s in a reflective mood. Chris talks a lot about how time off has forced him to come to terms with the choices he’s made, and the fact that he’s getting older. The topic of surfing comes up throughout, and he also acknowledges the issues Marvel is facing as a franchise and the disappointing response to Thor: Love and Thunder.
Surfing keeps him grounded: Halfway through production on his latest film, Extraction 2, in Prague, he began flying to Hossegor in south-western France to surf every other weekend. “That got me through,” he says. And you better believe the surfing at home in Byron Bay is epic. Whenever Hemsworth isn’t there – when he’s working, when he’s on press tours, even when he jets off on a holiday – he wonders: why did he ever leave?
“There’s a cleansing every time I get in the water. If I’m having some sort of inner conflict or turmoil, it’s the one place I go.” Hemsworth breathes in. “There’s a feeling of starting again.”
His kids’ friends teased him about the last Thor movie: Even Hemsworth’s kids’ friends were in on it with his most recent Marvel offering, Thor: Love and Thunder. They didn’t hold back. “It’s a bunch of eight-year-olds critiquing my film. ‘We thought this one had too much humour, the action was cool but the VFX weren’t as good,’” he recalls. “I cringe and laugh equally at it.” Released in 2022, Love and Thunder was a hit at the box office but received mixed reviews from the (grown-up) critics. “I think we just had too much fun. It just became too silly,” reflects Hemsworth. He pauses. “It’s always hard being in the centre of it and having any real perspective… I love the process, it’s always a ride. But you just don’t know how people are going to respond.”
He’s aware of Marvel’s creative problems: “That’s the trick: you have to separate all those stories,” Hemsworth replies. “The moment it’s like,” – he does his best trailer voice – “‘Your world is in danger, the entire universe!’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, so [it] was the last 24 films.’ It has to become a bit more personal and grounded.” He is always open to returning to Thor, “seeing what they have to offer creatively, if there is something new” for the character. “But I really wanna do some other stuff for a while.”
He’s feeling the passage of time: “I didn’t want to sit behind a desk and do the same thing every day, and punch in, punch out. I wanted to be on an adventure.” The adventure has lasted now for more than two decades. Hemsworth has a milestone birthday in a few months. “I don’t think I wanna turn 40,” he admits. “I still feel like I’m 25 and I’ve got heaps of time. Now I’m like, ‘Oh, I could be halfway. More than halfway.'”
It’s pretty charming to imagine a bunch of little kids making fun of a handsome movie star, as he describes. I didn’t see Love and Thunder because I got burned out on the Marvel Cinematic Universe years ago. I want to be able to watch a movie and have it tell a standalone story without needing to cross-reference a bunch of other movies to understand what happened. But I did read reviews at the time and it sounded like other people are getting burned out, too. Chris is clearly pretty over it at this point. I’ve always thought that he had great comedic timing as Thor, and is born to be an action star. I wasn’t sure if he had the depth to be effective in more serious roles. But he goes pretty deep in the interview, talking about how the death of his grandad (who had Alzheimer’s) and discovering his own elevated risk of Alzheimer’s, has made him reevaluate his life and career. Now I think he could get away with a more dramatic role, but Hollywood is so deeply in a doom-loop of sequels, superheroes, and remakes that I’m not sure the right project is out there for him. He seems to be enjoying his time off, and after working basically non-stop for ten years, he’s earned it.
The quotes about surfing are the first time I really related to Chris. I grew up surfing and haven’t been able to in the past couple of years because of an injury. But the way he talks about surfing is right on point. It’s an experience like nothing else. In the water you’re constantly making split-second decisions, and you have to learn to trust your gut. You have to act without thinking. It’s blissful, not thinking. It’s the most restorative experience I’ve ever known. Now I want to know if people out surfing with Chris ever recognize him. Surfers are very territorial and competitive if it’s crowded, and if he’s surfing Byron Bay it’s definitely crowded. And there’s a clearly defined hierarchy in the lineup. Obvious newcomers are boxed out of everything. If you’re a woman, like me, you will get cut off by very aggressive dudes. Greybeards like my dad are shown deference. Do people let Chris claim their waves because he’s Thor? Where does he stand in the hierarchy? I wonder.
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