Australian audiences knew Chris Hemsworth years before the rest of the world, thanks to his role on Home and Away and the down under version of Dancing With The Stars. But it wasn’t until he burst into the Marvel Universe as Thor that everyone else took notice. Since then, audiences have gotten used to Hemsworth’s beefy exterior, so it was a shock to see him go from a 215lb frame as a superhero to 185lbs in his latest role for In the Heart of the Sea. With everyone wondering how and why he slimmed down to an almost unrecognizable size, he sat down with Collider to open up about his weight loss.
He admitted that it was hard to drop the pounds, but that it wasn’t the first time, “It’s the second time I’ve done it, both times with Ron so maybe he’s got some obsession with me being skinny. I don’t know. [Laughs] But each time you put the muscle back on, your body has that muscle memory and wants to hang on to it, so you just have be well underfed and over-trained to get it off and it’s exhausting.” Later he noted teamwork when it came time to get ready and to lose the weight for the Ron Howard film, “Every film has challenges and all of us are doing it together, all the cast is doing it together so you keep each other motivated I guess and keep each other in check. And we all knew that that was what we had to do and what was required from the beginning. I can’t say I was looking forward to it necessarily, but it’s all good. [Laughs]”
Lastly, he mentioned that the hunger actually helped with when it came to his acting game, “If I need to be agitated or angry or frustrated or depressed or moody, yeah, sure. [Laughs] Definitely. It’s tricky when you have to do the opposite of emotions, you know? But I think it does, especially this stuff, coming back after we return and when we are lost at sea at the worst of it. Yeah, you don’t have to convince yourself that you’re exhausted and hungry; you feel it. So yeah, I think you definitely use it.”
In the Heart of the Sea opens in theaters December 11.
