The Marvel Cinematic Universe is so full of actors now that nearly every major Hollywood star has seemingly appeared in it. The cast of Thor: Love and Thunder alone is a who’s who of big names. But back in the early days Marvel didn’t have all the money in the world and so it largely cast unknown actors, and ended up turning them into stars. One of those stars is Chris Hemsworth who became Thor, though it could have been a different Hemsworth in the role.
In an interview with Wired, Chris Hemsworth talks about how his initial audition for Thor, in his words, “sucked” but that his brother Liam came very close to getting the role. In the end the feeling was that Liam was too young for the part, but that opened the door for his older brother to come back into the picture. Chris Hemsworth explains…
My younger brother had auditioned and he got very close--he got down to the last five people. And then didn’t get it. And they were like, ‘Look, he’s great but he’s a bit young.’ My manager then said, ‘Welp, he does have an older brother,’ which was me, I came back in, reauditioned a few times and just had a different attitude. Maybe I had a little more motivation that my little brother had gotten a look in and I hadn’t.
Chris Hemsworth has talked about nearly losing the role of Thor to Liam before. As an older brother I can appreciate the way one’s perspective can change when a younger brother finds more success in a given area. It can certainly enhance one's motivation. However, Chris Hemsworth says that his younger brother almost getting the Thor role wasn’t the only reason he was in a different place for his second audition. He’d also just done more in Hollywood, including a small but important role in the reboot of Star Trek, and had more confidence in himself the second time through. Hemsworth continues…
I also had done a couple of films in between those two auditions, so I had a bit more experience and confidence in what I was going to do. I was so excited. I had a slight hesitation of — it was a six-picture deal and did I want to be locked in and typecast as one character? Then I was like, ‘You don’t have a choice so shut up.’ And I pushed that voice aside and said, ‘Yup.’ But I didn’t really know — none of us did — if it was going to work and there was going to be an extension beyond that first film.
Typecasting and superhero roles used to go together quite often and Chris Hemsworth has made no secret about having that worry. That first phase of the MCU was about building the Avengers Initiative, something nobody was sure would work, and it was reflected in the concept of the movies themselves, building a cinematic universe in a way that nobody had tried before. Nobody was sure it would work either but it certainly did. This has led us to now, where Chris Hemsworth is starring in Thor: Love and Thunder, the first of the MCU actors to get a solo fourth film. It certainly has worked out for him.
