“I think this is where I used to live,” Chris Hemsworth says, slowing down the rental car and peering out of the window. “Yeah, that’s it.” To our right is a fir-lined avenue that empties into the ocean, and somewhere along the street is the tiny, one-bedroom flat that Hemsworth called home when he was 19 years old. It’s a nice street, in the beautiful suburb of Mona Vale, in a part of Sydney imaginatively called the Northern Beaches, because you get here by driving up and out of the city for about 45 minutes. Hemsworth’s old street is called Seabeach Avenue; it runs perpendicular to another known as Surfview Road, because of its view of the waves. Everything is straightforward here.
Mona Vale is full of memories. For three years – and over 100 episodes of the Australian soap opera Home and Away, where Hemsworth cut his teeth as an actor and which was filmed just a few beaches away – it was his entire world. It’s been nearly a decade since he was last in the neighbourhood, and while he used to drive this route all the time, these days it’s not quite as fresh in his mind. “Do you think a car crash would be cool for the story?” Hemsworth laughs, shortly after navigating a series of byzantine lane changes and crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. “Or a car chase?”
Hemsworth has lived in Byron Bay, a blissfully idyllic region on the northern coast of New South Wales, since 2015. We’re back in Mona Vale this afternoon to see a man about a surfboard. Hemsworth and I are getting a private design session with Hayden Cox, the Australian surfboard shaper whose high-performance Haydenshapes boards are beloved by professionals and celebrities alike. On the way, Cox asks us to text through some ideas so that his airbrush artist can prepare the paints. “Let’s go, like, lots of colour,” Hemsworth dictates to me as he drives. “Mushroom trip, acid swelling, ’70s vibe.” When we arrive, Hemsworth is presented with a buffet of fluoro. “All of ’em!”
Cox welcomes us into his studio, a laidback labyrinth covered in such a thick layer of foam dust that every time we move, a white cloud plumes into the air like snow. “Watch your head,” Cox says, as we duck under a low door frame. A board Cox just made, labelled Michael Bublé, is propped against the wall. Cox and Hemsworth have actually known each other since they were both 19, wasting their Mona Vale mornings hunting for the perfect wave. Is Hemsworth a good surfer? “Yeah, he rips,” Cox grins. Hemsworth feigns nonchalance, but is clearly delighted.
Cox’s surfboards start life as blocks of polyurethane foam before being sanded down, or “shaped”, and covered in resin. Cox has prepared a core that is about as long as a king-sized bed. Hemsworth thinks it might be too big. “But, you know, I can ride it in a bigger wave,” he offers, politely. Cox hands him some sandpaper to work out the remaining grooves. Hemsworth lines up his motions in long, smooth sweeps, leaning in studiously so his eyeline is parallel to the board’s curve. “Keep going!” Cox chides him. “The lines aren’t out yet!”
At this point, we’ve been talking for hours and quite a lot of it has been about surfboards. Twinnies, shortboards, grovellers, rail line rockers, rear quads. (A note: I do not surf. “You do now,” Hemsworth tells me.) “I’ve always loved surfing,” Hemsworth says. “It’s one of the few things that holds my attention completely and in its entirety.” When he isn’t near the water, he feels unmoored. Halfway through production on his latest film, Extraction 2, in Prague, he began flying to Hossegor in south-western France to surf every other weekend. “That got me through,” he says. And you better believe the surfing at home in Byron Bay is epic. Whenever Hemsworth isn’t there – when he’s working, when he’s on press tours, even when he jets off on a holiday – he wonders: why did he ever leave?
“There’s a cleansing every time I get in the water. If I’m having some sort of inner conflict or turmoil, it’s the one place I go.” Hemsworth breathes in. “There’s a feeling of starting again.”
Hemsworth has been surfing a lot lately. “I’ve just been enjoying downtime,” he explains. (Later, he has another word for it: “unemployed.”) It has been a “busy 10 years” he says, understating things: eight Marvel mega-blockbusters, a handful of other franchises, and a recent National Geographic docuseries called Limitless, which evolved into a six-episode meditation on the meaning of life. Hemsworth needed a break. Since November he has been parked up at home, alternating between surfing, taking his kids to school, and taking his kids surfing, until he just couldn’t surf any more and had to sit quietly with his thoughts.
Sitting with his thoughts is something Hemsworth has in the past actively tried to avoid; it’s partly why he is so drawn to surfing, where the mind folds into the body and for a moment you are at one with the waves. It’s also why he’s been working so furiously, notching up 22 films since the first Thor. “I find most of your problems are created through boredom, when you’re sitting around and you have nothing else to think about except, ‘Oh, what can I pick apart here, what else can I assess and criticise within myself?’” Hemsworth says. Having time off these past months hasn’t always been a pleasant experience in that respect. “All of a sudden, there’s a lot of questions that I probably haven’t answered… I’ve been conveniently distracted and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s look a little deeper.’” What were those questions? “Nothing overly dramatic,” Hemsworth says. You know, just the simple ones: “Who am I? What am I doing? What’s my contribution? Is what I’m doing of value?”
Earlier in the day, we’re sitting inside Hemsworth’s favourite restaurant at Crown Sydney, the swanky harbourside hotel where he stayed while making the forthcoming Fury Road prequel Furiosa in 2022. Despite the place being glass on all sides, like an exquisite fishbowl, we find a quiet corner upstairs where Hemsworth sits comfortably ensconced in the seclusion, facing the water. Hemsworth in person is as tall as he appears on screen, not quite as jacked, but still plainly, unpretentiously handsome. He arrives in black jeans and a blue jumper the exact same shade as his eyes, and orders an Italian take on steak tartare, two salads, some focaccia and an enormous Cotoletta Milanese [veal in breadcrumbs] to share. “I like doing this thing,” he says, gesturing between us, “where it’s an actual conversation with someone.” He finds television interviews hard. “It’s live, you have 90 seconds to be interesting, charming, sell the film and not say anything stupid or offensive. Oh god.” He cringes, laughing.
Hemsworth is someone who wants to be liked. It’s not a difficult task; he’s familiar and self-effacing and very funny, but it’s his honesty – open and disarming – that endears him the most. He apologises a few times for repeating himself, but it’s obvious that the questions Hemsworth has been asking himself these past few months are at the front of his mind, and our conversation loops back to them again and again. Who am I? What am I doing? What’s my contribution? Is what I’m doing of value?
It’s been just over a decade since Hemsworth burst onto our screens as Thor, looking like he’d won the genetic lottery. Weapons-grade charm, no chaser. “I mean, he’s god-like, right?” says Joe Russo, who directed him in two Avengers films and wrote both Extraction movies. “When he walks into a room, all the charisma points to Chris Hemsworth.” Hemsworth was 25 when he got the role. (“Marvel Rolls The Dice, Casts No-Names For Thor” read one headline.) The gamble paid off: he has since played the character in eight films and become the template for Marvel’s ability to take a lesser-known actor and turn them into a global megastar.