‘Thor’s’ Chris Hemsworth says Marvel magic often faded: ‘I got sick of the character’
Chris Hemsworth dedicated more than a quarter of his life to playing Thor for Marvel. Naturally, taking on the Mjölnir-wielding Norse god grew stale.
Nearly a year after starring in the critically panned “Thor: Love and Thunder,” Hemsworth, 39, opened up in a far-ranging interview with British GQ about his time in the Marvel films, his ambitions and his next steps.
“I really wanna do some other stuff for a while,” the “Extraction 2” star said in the interview published Tuesday.
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In 2011, the Australian born-actor launched into superstardom with the first “Thor” film. As a sculpted, caped fish-out-of-water with luscious blond locks, Hemsworth brought “Thor” to a new generation of moviegoers, helping to lay the foundation for Marvel’s “Avengers” and several “Thor” sequels.
Within a decade, Hemsworth had portrayed Thor in 13 projects, including video games and the blockbuster movies “Avengers: Endgame” and “Thor: Ragnarok.” He explained to British GQ why he was happy to “do something fairly different” with each film.
“I got sick of the character pretty quick every couple of years,” he said.
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Hemsworth’s Thor has taken a variety of shapes — from a serious god trying to find a way back home to a Lebowski wannabe providing comic relief amid The Blip — when people were snapped out of existence for five years — in “Avengers.”
Large-scale action movies like “Avengers” have been Hemsworth’s bread and butter for more than a decade, but the pictures have come under fire from filmmakers the actor says are his “heroes.”
In 2019, Martin Scorsese likened the hero flicks to “theme parks.” Then in November 2022, director Quentin Tarantino said that actors in Marvel films are “not movie stars. ... Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star.”
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Hemsworth told British GQ that those comments were “super-depressing.”
“There goes two of my heroes I won’t work with. I guess they’re not a fan of me,” he said, before clarifying that he would still be open to working with the directors.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hemsworth admitted that the “Thor” films were more “aesthetic body work,” as opposed to the “Extraction” movies, which he said required more athleticism.
In a separate interview with the New Yorker publish Monday, Anthony Hopkins also weighed in on “Thor” work. He starred as King Odin of Asgard.
“They put me in armor; they shoved a beard on me,” the Oscar-winning actor said. “Sit on the throne, shout a bit. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s pointless acting it.”
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Hemsworth, who expressed interest in directing and recently starred in the National Geographic series “Limitless,” might be taking a break from “Thor” but he is open to eventually reprising the character.
“If I was going to do something again, it would have to be tonally different. And we’d have to do something very drastic to keep people on their toes,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just the fatigue of those characters and those films, where people are like, ‘I’ve seen it.’”
Hemsworth stars in the Netflix action film “Extraction 2,” which premieres June 16.
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