Page 95 - SHARP Summer 2024

“Sport gave me something positive to focus on, as opposed to letting my mind take me to more dangerous places.”
IN RECENT YEARS, CHRIS HEMSWORTH HAS ASSEMBLED
a team — but not the one you think. Because, while its members may look like superheroes, the Marvel star’s latest squad is drawn not from the pages of comic books, but rather from different corners of the wellness world. His new Avengers are athletes, skilled in meditation, martial arts, cookery, and cardio — and they appear on smaller screens, via a smartphone app that the Australian actor began developing in 2017. Centr is a virtual coaching platform, a one-stop, fitness-boosting shop, and a venture that leverages Hemsworth’s lasting relationships with the most trusted trainers in the movie business.
The app officially launched in 2019, but Hemsworth, who turned 40 last summer, was a certified fitness fanatic long before Centr snagged its first subscriber (it now has more than a quarter of a million users). His enthusiasm for exercise and conditioning began even before he landed the plum role of Asgardian superhero Thor in 2009, cast as a relative unknown. In fact, it was instilled in him as a child, growing up alongside two brothers (Luke and Liam, also actors) in a family that bounced around Australia, moving between the Outback of the Northern Territory and an island off the coast of Melbourne. And, although these moves gave his childhood a certain volatility, the actor credits his early interest in sport with keeping him on the straight and narrow.
“It kept me out of trouble!” laughs Hemsworth, speaking to SHARP from L.A. “Sport gave me something positive to focus on, as opposed to letting my mind take me to more dangerous places. Like any of us, boredom is what gets us into trouble. So, being a kid and having surfing, football, and athletics was just a real gift, you know? But I think that it also set the stage, and paved the way for me to be athletic within the film space as well. And I’m very thankful for that.”
Hemsworth’s early roles kept him close to home in Australia — but few offered him the active element he so eagerly sought. He’d followed his elder brother’s path into acting, securing parts in a handful of children’s television series and the long-running soap opera Home and Away. He even competed in the Australian version of Dancing with the Stars (finishing fifth, he was slain by the salsa in week seven). By 2008, however, Hollywood had pricked up its ears, and Hemsworth was chosen to play George Kirk, the father of Chris Pine’s protagonist space captain in the rebooted Star Trek franchise. It was a small role, but the first rung on the action hero ladder, and proof that his competitive nature was well-suited to weathering the inconsistency of a young actor’s career.
“I think the sort of discipline that’s required with any sort of sport you commit yourself to is also essential in any line of work,” says Hemsworth, recalling his early days of castings and auditions. “With regards to acting, and the amount of doors that are closed, it’s essential to have a healthy amount of resilience, and persistence, and patience, and commitment. And I do attribute a lot of my work
ethic to my athletic background. Even the repetition of lines, or how to lock in a character through continually approaching it again, and again, and again.”
Once Marvel came knocking, Hemsworth’s aptitude for repeti- tion was really put to the test. In just five years, he starred as Thor in four films (two solo outings and two Avengers movies), and was propelled from new kid on the block to one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. Lesser men may have buckled under such scrutiny and pressure. But Hemsworth, who today champions meditation as a key tenet of Centr (in-app instructors include Vinyasa yoga expert Tahl Rinsky and Hemsworth’s own chef Dan Churchill), learned the value of mindfulness early on in his career.
“Look,” he reasons, “what goes on between my ears can be pretty noisy and busy. And, when you’re trying to exploit or manipulate some of those inner feelings for a character, it can be pretty hard to switch off at the end of the day. So, depending on how stimulated or heightened of a state I’m in, I can exhaust myself out of that state using exercise and movement. But, at other times, it takes stillness, and a gentler approach through meditation.”
Hemsworth was introduced to the art of clear-thinking when he enrolled in a course with Buddhist organization Rigpa. “It all felt very familiar and made sense,” he says of the experience. “And, while I’m not from a religious background, my parents are definitely spiritual people. They’re quite articulate and well-educated about philosophy.”
Family appears to be the foundation of Hemsworth’s life, and has even crossed over into his career. His wife and daughter appeared, albeit briefly, in the latest Thor film, and he has supported his two brothers’ many projects over the years (though he’s never acted alongside either). His most recent role, the straggly-haired warlord Dr. Dementus in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, was even partly inspired by the actor’s grandfather. It sounds strange, especially when Hemsworth’s imposing physique is on show throughout the film, but he says that he developed this particular character using something other than pure physicality.
“The biggest thing for me, as a way in, was the vocal quality of the character,” explains the actor. “I wanted there to be something abrasive and abrupt about it — an ear-piercing nasality. So it was an Australian accent, but not a contemporary Australian accent. And it had different influences, from horse-racing commentary and the musicality of that, to sideshow circus hosts. There was even a bit of my grandfather, who had quite a high level of nasality, and a high pitch.”
A more obscure reference, he adds, was seagulls — “loud, obnoxious animals, but with something that spoke to the char- acter.” And, it was only after Hemsworth strung these disparate influences together that he began work on Dementus’s physicality. “He’s definitely aware of the need to stand out to amass a large group of followers, to be flamboyant and entertaining — but also
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