We’re just a few months shy of the latest installment of the Thor movie franchise, Thor: Ragnarok, and star Chris Hemsworth is starting to make the rounds to promote the film. In a new interview for W Magazine, the action hero revealed that even though he thought he was perfect for the role of the Norse God of Thunder, casting agents initially called back his younger brother Liam instead. (We’re shook too.)
During his chat with interviewer Lynn Hirschberg, Hemsworth recalled auditioning for director Kenneth Brannagh. “I remembered reading the breakdown for Thor and it said, ‘Must be over 6’3″ and 200 pounds,’ and so on. I thought, ‘Oh cool. This is the one thing that sort of fits me,'” he said, adding that because of his stature, he usually had to lie about his size to avoid being typecast as a football player or meathead. Although the elder Hemsworth thought he’d slayed his audition, he never heard back from Brannagh.
Later, while he was filming Cabin in the Woods in Vancouver, Canada, his younger brother Liam sent in a tape from back home in Australia, which earned him multiple callbacks. Hemsworth thought his chances were sunk.
After producers passed on the top five candidates (including Liam), they asked Hemsworth to audition while still in Vancouver, and history was made, with a little help from the boys’ mother, Leonie.
“So I did an audition in Vancouver in this hotel room with my mum reading Anthony Hopkins’ part. She must have nailed it because it got me back in the room and that second audition was a lot different than my first one,” he recalled. “I came in kind of with a little, I guess, motivation and maybe frustration that my little brother had gotten further than me. It’s a little family; sibling rivalry sort of kicked up in me. Then it moved pretty quick from there. It was cool.”
During the interview, he also shared that he has Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, in his home, and that there’s one scene in the first Thor movie where his wife, Elsa Pataky, got to stand in for his leading lady, Natalie Portman.
“The director comes up to me and he says, ‘So, basically, it’s just the final kiss of the movie. You have to kiss Natalie, but she’s not here, so we brought in these girls,'” the director told Hemsworth, asking who he’d prefer to kiss. “And they had these young ladies — who were all wonderful — and I said, ‘My wife’s around the corner. Let’s get her in and she’s the same height and I won’t have to explain to her what I’ve been doing at work from having to kiss someone else.’ So she came in and that’s the final kiss in that movie is between my wife and I.”
That’s some superhero-level romance right there.
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(Photo via Kevin Winter/Getty)