Chris Hemsworth Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

each film i've tried to take something i've one of the costumes which was shipped from the uk back when i did thor 2 and i brought it up in a big shipping container and i thought great i'm going to put it in my you know in the games room or somewhere you know it's still at my parents place in the garage in that box [Music] when i got the film it was a number of things went through my head firstly it was great to be employed it was great i was going to extend my visa i was going to be a part of something which sounded big and exciting but i didn't have a whole lot of detail beyond that and it was you know a leap of faith on one hand as far as what was being pitched but pretty easy leap in the sense that um i didn't have any other options i don't think you've been completely honest with me no this son of cole you and i we fight for the same cause the protection of this world from this day forward you can count me as your ally if you return the items you have taken from jane stolen borrowed each time you play character it's about what you bring to it obviously but so much of it is about who you're interacting with and that can be other actors the writers the producers director the crew you know everybody has some sort of influence in some way that's what's been such a joy about playing the character over the course of 10 11 years is working with different directors and seeing what different directors expect want to pull out of the character you know we had built this incredible world with kenneth branagh and i think we really nailed the sort of vulnerability and the fish out of water and this this individual coming to terms with who he was and what his place in the world was and and then with taika waititi it was about doing something different and unexpected and so we really dismantled the world we dismantled the character we put him in a very different place and environment than he'd been in the past uh we changed his look a dramatic haircut which was you know um a risk to the the comic book fans for a minute there [Music] please kinda do not cut my hair it was a constant exploration of what else we could do and staying away from what felt familiar that was our duty at that point to service the character in the world in a different unique fresh way for the audience yes hey hey we know each other he's a friend from work i had the the tricky task of having this otherworldly god-like figure that i was playing but trying to make it relatable and i think when the character didn't work at times was because we didn't have relatable features within his his personality and his experiences that anyone could really sort of gravitate toward or empathize with or understand or connect with end game in particular yeah there was the dealing with sort of the mental health of the character um and he's sort of the altering of moods and depression if you if you will i know you think i'm down there wallowing in my own self-pity waiting to be rescued and and saved but i'm fine okay we're fine aren't we oh good here mate so whatever it is that you're offering we're not into it don't care couldn't care less goodbye [Music] and due to tragedy loss suffering which you know all of us as human beings have experienced in some way shape or form and those elements i do believe allowed us to have some great connective tissue between an audience and and and this larger-than-life character and each time since then i've we've really had to dissect that and say well what mental state is he now where's his mental fitness or his mental toughness is he um healthy enough to deal with this if not how does he deal with it [Music] what am i looking at oh sometimes it takes a second the original hammer actually a friend of mine called me and said is this yours and we'd used it in a documentary that i was shooting that she was a part of and it ended up at her place and she said do you want it back and i said yeah i think i think i should get that one back the opportunity to work with ron howard um was the initial attraction i didn't know anything about the story of nikki louder and james hunt my dad used to race motorbikes so i was understood the sort of that world a little this was obviously formula one in cars but there's such a you know it's it's it's a very similar sort of space to [Music] make up for that inhabit [Applause] the leaders have spun out so it wasn't unfamiliar but i had a lot of work to do as far as understanding who this character was and what the mindset of a formula one driver was at the time and especially in the 70s you know they were the statistics were incredibly intimidating as far as would you survive the season or not incredibly dangerous sport to partake in we looked a lot at what the discipline and mindset of those individuals were and nikki louder embodied the absolute precision and the prep and the quiet discipline and focus whereas james hunt went i'm going to launch myself into the adrenaline side of things and have it be as as visceral and animalistic as possible and he had huge talent obviously as a race car driver um but a very different mentality to nikki lauda that move was called the suicide what if i hadn't break we'd have crashed we didn't did we thanks to your impeccable survival instincts you what's your name james simon wallace hunt remember it my little jelly friend of all her members the physicality of the character was completely different to what i'd been doing um i had to like lose a lot of weight off the back of huntsman and thor and get and fit into the race car and then comes the challenge of playing a real life individual and someone that people adored and look up to and and it inspired many many people in a generation of drivers and so on and had fans across the world that was a pretty nerve-wracking task i just kind of allowed that fear um to to motivate me into my prep and it's andretti who has the lead but hunt is attacking the outside of andretti we had a number of days where we were in the cars ourselves um there were replicas of those cars and it was exhilarating and exciting and uh some of the most enjoyable prep i've had to do we then had you know these cars that were driving set up with cameras all over them sort of smaller cameras mounted on our helmet super close up you know i'm focused on one eyeball at times on each wheel behind us in front of us and so on and so as we drive around the track and weave through with the other drivers we were getting real in camera action that uh you know you couldn't really produce on a vfx stage as much i think without that authenticity and then we had a stunt drive stunt crew and stunt drivers come in and do the extreme stuff and they were kind of bumper-to-bumper and weaving in and out as they would in a real race the blending of us being inserted into that environment and and and those guys as well gave such impressive footage and as you say experience for the audience member it was a really exciting thing to to be a part of i had just done saturday night live i think and i did a cameo and a film vacation and so i'd done a little bit of comedy which paul feig had seen and thought oh he should play this character and the script was great and fun i loved all the the women who were going to work in the film we're going to play those parts but i said to paul there's not a whole lot on the page like what what do you want me doing he said oh we'll figure out when you get here so i said okay why not let's go and i got there uh turned up to the studio the day before we started shooting and he handed me the script i read the script and i said there's still nothing in here like what am i what am i doing and he said it's okay we're going to improvise and have fun and my immediate reaction was i this is not on the end of my career but i'm going to ruin this film i'm going to let everyone down i haven't done this before what am i doing and then i met melissa mccarthy christian wig the whole crew the cast and i just became a whole lot more comfortable because there was such a sense of camaraderie and and and collaboration there at play um and they took me under their wing and we just went on this adventure this wacky adventure of discovering who this character was what have you been doing with your whole life great question oh well um lots of different jobs um i did the um did the actor thing uh worked for tonight just real quick um can i ask why no no glass oh oh yeah they just kept getting dirty so i took them out i don't have to clean them anymore no boy i gotta i gotta try to keep that in mind 90 of it was improvised and in the moment and um not often do you have an environment to really do that in you know people talk about improvisation but usually it's they've got a couple of things tucked away in their pockets and they're going to say that on camera which is not quite improvisation whereas this was you know melissa would say i want to try something and just start coming at me with a line and then i'd have to sort of sink or swim and try to come up with something to throw back and so on and incredibly freeing because there was still a lot of you know the sort of anxiety bubbling under the surface but it just became so much fun it just became about trying to not laugh about trying to make the other person laugh it reminded me of a drama class or being back in high school or something and thought i want to take that into everything i do you know i want to be able to have that much fun i want it to be a wonderful collaboration and exploration as that was the character was a pretty broken individual one who deep down had a lot of courage in there somewhere but it was buried through very depressive experience the loss of his his wife and family and so he was you know searching for answers at the bottom of a bottle but that kind of attitude this sort of rashness the it was a carefree um chaotic sort of nature to him which allowed us to have a lot of fun with it i seem to drunk at all but you're welcome to it when it comes out again again i was still happy to be employed and to be working in big big films and big entertainment popcorn blockbusters if you will that was the films i loved growing up but i also had an appetite to do um some more smaller character-based kind of films where special effects and big action scenes weren't necessarily the most dominant force much has been made about the punch that you caught from kristen stewart oh yeah have you forgiven her for that oh yeah no i i was more upset that she didn't continue on through the take she kind of hit me and then immediately went oh my god i'm so sorry i was like that would have been that would be the perfect uh most truthful take we had i think she was more upset than i was [Music] it was unlike anything i'd read before um the world that was created was unique and fresh the character itself was vastly different to anything i'd done before i was intrigued by the questions it was posing and um you know this search for understanding of human emotion and can we manipulate that and can we have mood-altering substances and and drugs and and so on from a pharmaceutical group jeff heather can i have your permission to administer n40 drip on acknowledge oh yeah acknowledge thank you for me i just saw an opportunity to explore a space and try things i hadn't done before just about every actor loves that process and you know where it is just about performance you're working with different individuals and if you have an idea of how you think they're going to play it and they do something different and immediately you've got to pivot and adjust and so on i like the spontaneity to that i like being forced into a place of unknown and then you are truly in the moment come on guys words words words okay yeah she's starting to look pretty good there was a great script there joe kaczynski was already directing and it was right in the middle of covert and lockdowns and restrictions and everything we also wanted a film that we could shoot on a sound stage with three or four or five actors in a confined space controlled environment and this red like a play it i think it could be a stage play the way it presents itself and unfolds so we were all really excited about the practicality of being able to shoot during that time yeah i could i could good what jeff [Music] i think it was going to shoot maybe in in in the us at one point i was in australia um so as far as a producing element of it i said look there's some great spaces in australia to shoot you know incredible crews and casts that we could utilise and to their credit and netflix and the product whole production team to be able to pivot from wherever they were shooting before and put it in australia and set it up i think within you know felt like six or eight weeks and then to shoot it in about six weeks i think was pretty remarkable

Channel: GQ

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Keywords: celebrity, chris hemsworth, chris hemsworth characters, chris hemsworth gq, chris hemsworth interview, chris hemsworth james hunt, chris hemsworth marvel, chris hemsworth movie, chris hemsworth movies, chris hemsworth on thor, chris hemsworth thor, gq, gq chris hemsworth, gq iconic, gq magazine, gq thor, hemsworth, iconic, iconic characters, marvel, niki lauda and james hunt, niki lauda thor, thor, thor 2022, thor gq, thor: love and thunder

Id: T-Bfsud5yYM

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022