The Post-Modern Hunk Actor Chris Hemsworth for GQ US September 2018
Photography by Alasdair McLellan and maximize your Chris Hemsworth leading man vibes by snagging a copy of GQ.
Written by Lauren Larson, discovers how Chris Hemsworth threw out the old macho playbook and became a new kind of leading man.
“Badass, Feminist Hero, Super Dad”
The other dads had dressed to move, but Hemsworth was wearing jeans and boots.
There was a big crowd. Hours before, having watched his daughter’s events—the egg-and-spoon race, the 100-meter and the 200-meter dash—he offered his 6-year-old some fatherly wisdom: “I was like, ‘It’s great, honey. It’s not about winning.’ ”
The private lives of action stars tend to disappoint, action-wise. The superhero costume is replaced by swim trunks and flip-flops.
The mighty hammer is abandoned for the beer. But when the stakes get truly high, Chris Hemsworth can unleash the Thor within.
Such was the scenario on field day recently at his daughter’s school, as Hemsworth and a slew of other fathers prepared for the “dads race.”
They assembled like young maidens ready to catch the bouquet at a wedding—all feigning disinterest, all ready to kill for victory.
About Chris beginnings
Back when Hemsworth was first starting out in Hollywood, it was better to be a rebel than a dad.
He had appeared for a few years in the Australian soap opera Home and Away—the launchpad that also produced Naomi Watts and Heath Ledger—and arrived in America in 2007, during what might be described as a golden age of the Hollywood bad boy.
It was an era when a sex tape or a drug problem was easily excused with a wink, or even rewarded. Back then, the path to stardom seemed clear enough.
“I remember trying to be Colin Farrell. Thinking, ‘People love the bad boy.’ Going out and being sort of reckless.
But no one cared,” Hemsworth recalls. “There wasn’t the presence of paparazzi, nor the presence of social media, nor the immediacy of all these platforms.” He’s quick to clarify that he wasn’t doing anything bad bad in his salad days—“just, like, being drunk.”
Chris most recently
More recently, filmgoers have finally gotten to see what he is. Having done his time in hunk purgatory, Hemsworth has lately re-emerged as an actor eager to skewer the old stereotypes.
He tested those waters as a bimbo secretary in 2016’s female-led Ghostbusters. And last year, in the third installment of the Thorfranchise, he played a re-invented version of his old macho character—a hero suddenly less sure of himself, gleefully emasculated at the hands of co-star Tessa Thompson.
Hemsworth and director Taika Waititi wanted to create a Thor who could show more vulnerability—they had more Kurt Russell in mind than Clint Eastwood. “Not to say that Kurt Russell has ever been ‘less masculine’ than contemporary heroes,” Waititi explains. “[His characters were] just more flawed than contemporary heroes.”
“I really do feel a sense of ease for the first time in years,” Hemsworth says. “I don’t say that as an assessment of my achievements. I’m just telling you I’m content with what’s going on.”
The Post-Modern Hunk
The charm of Hemsworth’s life by the sea can be glimpsed on Instagram. That publicist who once told him to be cryptic and withholding about his personal life might be surprised by how the world has changed.
“The social-media side of it is just trying to work out: How do you keep up with the times?” Hemsworth explains. “You see that Sylvester Stallone has an Instagram account, and you kind of go, ‘This is the world we’re in.’ ”
Gone are those old uncertainties—the occasional feeling that he was a passive player in his own career.
Gone, too, are the old assumptions about what it might take for him to thrive. “I came into Hollywood thinking I had to be Russell Crowe. I loved his performances, and because of my physicality and my size, that was the obvious choice. I think I was aware that it could kind of get me in the door,” Hemsworth says. “But it wasn’t me.”
Photographer: Alasdair McLellan @alasdairmclellan
Stylist: Jon Tietz
Model/Celebrity: Chris Hemsworth
Excerpts via gq.com
To be so Damn adorable and handsome all in one… Chris, Great Job on this one! Wow- I’m Impressed…
Yes he’s adorable in this whole interview and looked so gorgeous too.