The movie that inspired Chris Hemsworth to become an actor: “I wanted to be there”
When you talk about making the most of advantages, it’s usually money-based. An example of this would be, let’s say, you’re born into money and you want to start your own company. Well, the good news is you don’t have to worry about the mortgage or bills or a part-time job while you do it, so you can spend all your time focusing on it.
Similarly, if you want to be a successful Hollywood actor, it helps to be insanely, ridiculously good-looking, like Chris Hemsworth.
The Aussie actor has worked his way up from parts on the daytime Australian soaps to being one of the most in-demand and well-paid actors on the planet, but much as he has undeniable talent and charisma, he wouldn’t be in the situation he is if he had a face like a bag of smashed crabs. This is no place for petty jealousy, however, so let’s put that to one side and instead focus on what made Hemsworth want to be an actor in the first place, aside from the fact he’s so pretty, and so it wasn’t very difficult.
According to Hemsworth, his three years spent as Kim Hyde on the popular soap Home and Away between 2004 and 2007 didn’t win him much respect in the industry, but it did make him better known to the public, and when he was signed up to appear on Dancing in the Stars, it coincided with Hollywood beginning to take an interest.
While Hemsworth then landed a part in a huge franchise in the form of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, it was another big-budget series he really would have loved to star in, albeit he was about ten years too late.
As a teen, he loved the Peter Jackson-directed Lord of the Rings movies, telling Variety: “I don’t mean I wanted to act in them: I wanted to be there, in Middle-earth, fighting Orcs.”
Sadly for him, Middle Earth isn’t a real place, but Hemsworth is obviously a Tolkien fan, he was seen buying a copy of The Lord of the Rings in a bookshop back in 2016, and while Jackson is a New Zealander rather than an Aussie the pair have both invested money into the same company, which I suppose is a fellowship of sorts, if not of rings.
The Lord of the Rings series was undoubtedly a game-changer when the first film was released in the winter of 2001. The three films were made back-to-back and put out to the public in consecutive years, each one seemingly more epic than the last, grossing almost $3 billion in total and scooping 17 Academy Awards from a mind-boggling 30 nominations.
It has gone down as one of the greatest cinematic achievements in history, and Jackson would then release another three Tolkien films with the Hobbit adaptations a decade later, although feedback for those was decidedly mixed.
Hemsworth of course, while not being able to be Legolas which he probably would have been great as, instead became Thor, and the rest is history. Speaking of trilogies, he is now busy shooting a third instalment of Netflix’s Extraction franchise, the first two of which did extremely well for the streaming giant.
He will resume his role as a fearsome black ops mercenary battling bad guys and usually getting some helpless soul out of a bleak situation while almost dying himself in the process.
