The scene Disney banned Chris Hemsworth from shooting: “We need him”
Does anyone remember what Chris Hemsworth was doing before Thor?
He did his time on the Australian soap opera Home and Away in the early 2000s, then played a tiny but important role in 2009’s Star Trek as George Kirk, only appearing for a few minutes in order to die dramatically and give Chris Pine’s Captain James T Kirk a tragic origin story, but it was enough to ruin audiences for a decade to come.
Ever since this bit of doppelgänger casting, some of us have had to take out a metaphorical magnifying glass every time one or the other actor appears onscreen to figure out which Chris is which, and don’t get me started on the Pratt and Evans of it all.
While Home and Away, Star Trek, and 2010’s Ca$h would make any parent proud, they were all just stepping stones to Hemsworth’s ultimate destination of Marvel, where few performers have been as inextricably tied to the franchise as Hemsworth and his biceps. In the beginning, Disney just poured its money into luring movie stars into the Marvel fold, including Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, and Edward Norton, but for Hemsworth, Thor was the breakout role and, nearly 15 years later, continues to be his main gig.
He’s flirted with prestige in movies like Rush and Bad Times at the El Royale, and even walked away with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in 2024, but so far, Hemsworth is pretty synonymous with the glistening, long-haired physique that is the ‘God of Thunder’.
It is no surprise, given the monetary value of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that its overlords at Disney would be pretty darn cautious with their golden boy, where they might let him fly around on wires in front of a green screen and count calories in his trailer, but when it comes to having fun in the real world, the rules are clear: don’t.
In 2022, he starred in National Geographic’s reality series, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, in which the actor undertook multiple physical challenges in the name of health, wellness, and the pursuit of longevity or something, and one of the challenges that he planned on involved surfing a 40-foot wave. Hemsworth was already a keen surfer, so it’s not entirely out of the realm of the imagination for him to attempt this particular brush with death; for Disney, though, it was out of the question.
“[T]his was National Geographic, which is Disney+, which is Marvel,” he explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2025, “So they did have eyes on it”. The risk assessment was just too high for the MCU execs, who responded with something along the lines of, “We need him to go off and shoot Thor next. We can’t have him drown while filming a big wave episode”.
Instead of leaping with glee at the reprieve and opting for something more sensible, like taking up crocheting, Hemsworth decided to strike a bargain, and eventually, the Disney brass let him climb a 600-foot dam in the Swiss Alps.
If you’re doing the maths, that is actually higher, literally speaking, than the proposed wave, but it was not in danger of crushing or drowning him, so apparently there was nothing to worry about. He made it to the next Thor production, billions were made at the box office, and everyone was happy.
