Chris Hemsworth quotes: on rags to riches, raising kids to not be little assholes, staying relevant, and more.
“Here’s your opportunity, now you’ve got to make something of it.”
“Keeping an open mind is always important.”
“What’s the secret formula? There’s no single answer, but it’s about staying open to advice and learning and constantly growing.”
“When you’re constantly self-analyzing, it’s ultimately a selfish endeavor. It was about looking a little deeper and asking, ‘What is this fear based on? What is it trying to tell me?’ And analyzing that.”
“Beating yourself up after the event because you screwed up doesn’t work. You can’t control that. When the fear comes, it’s easy to think that everything depends on a single moment. But nothing does. No single moment ever defines your journey.”
“Being more comfortable in my skin. I’ve stopped trying to go, ‘Who do I have to be? What personality do I have to shape in order to succeed?’ And just going, ‘Truly be yourself.’ And that’s when things started to change; that’s when I felt happier. I got a better response; my work got better. It’s an interesting one, to have people who inspire you, your hero – if you try to mimic that, it’s just not true to yourself. You can allow them to be an inspiration on step one, I guess. But the real work is, who am I?”
“Someone said to take a bat-and-ball approach to auditions. So there’s your audition, then boom, on to the next one. You can’t be thinking about that last one. That’s where the fear comes… when you’re like, ‘Oh God, everything’s relying on this one single moment.’ Which nothing is. No single moment ever defines your journey. There are so many complicated pieces of the puzzle. I’ve found it comforting letting go a bit.”
“I think it’s important to be aware of different people’s styles and how you adapt or change or steal their ideas.”
“Growing up, my parents were my heroes in the way they conducted their lives. My dad works in child protection. As kids, our experiences shape our opinions on ourselves and the world around us and that’s who we become as adults, because of that experience. He’s certainly been my hero. A hero is someone who puts themselves on the line and sacrifices their own safety for the greater good and for others. And I think anyone in any sort of profession where the welfare of other people, instead of individual, is inspiring and important.”
“Any time you have someone come up and say they love what you do and they get great joy from it is a very humbling experience.”
“I have sporadic OCD cleaning moments around the house. But then I get lazy and I’m cured. It’s a very inconsistent personality trait.”
“I love a fragrance. It’s like putting on a great suit. It makes you feel confident and gives you a different energy.”
“Once you have children, every instinct and every moment of your time is consumed by that. You’ve got nothing for each other – so make sure you have date night even if it’s once in a blue moon, because most of the time you’re just too tired and you’d actually prefer to sleep.”
“It’s all about you before kids. And then you have children and you still try to hang onto that – you say ‘I am who I am.’ And then it goes out the window. A lot of my decisions now are based on how things are going to affect the family.”
“My dream would be for them to talk about me as a parent one day and say that he was always there, he played with us, he was present, he listened, he paid attention.”
“As a kid, you run around the house pretending to be a superhero, and now to be doing it as a job, I feel very lucky. Being a superhero is a lot of fun.”
“I enjoy working on a movie that lets your imagination run wild. It’s great to be a part of and watch.”
“I almost feel more anxious lately about, ‘Here’s your opportunity, now you’ve got to make something of it.'”
“I went from sort of trying to get work to all of a sudden being signed up for the next few years on something, and something of this scale with some of the best people in the business involved, acting and directing. It was a dream.”
“I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but you can go through the lists of people who are bang up there one minute, and then just disappear.”
“I get to stay active and that is my job at the moment, so I can’t complain.”
“I maintain my fitness because it makes me feel better.”
“I don’t want to admit that there are things in my 20s that I can’t do now. I’m careful not to plant that in my psyche that I’m getting older and falling apart.”
“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel.”
“It’s been a real dream of mine, since I was a young boy, to be a man. I achieved that when I was 18, but this obviously is the icing on the cake and the true recognition of what it takes to be a man – the highest honor. I’m just going to continue to do manly stuff throughout my life and uphold that title: chopping firewood, wrestling crocodiles, all sorts of manly business.”
“Being a father is certainly a task. But the best one that I could ever ask for. Being home, being with the family, that’s what it’s about.”
“[On being uneasy about making big money] I feel gross about it. I remember saving up for a surfboard when I was younger. The surfboard was 600 bucks and I saved up for a whole year with dad’s help. I didn’t even want to surf on it for fear of damaging it. It taught me so many lessons about appreciation and working hard for something.”
“When I think about my kids, I don’t want them to miss that joy… we talk a lot about how we instill that same appreciation and respect for things. I don’t want them to feel like they’re privileged in any way. The fact that we have money and their parents are famous, that somehow they’re special, that scares me because we grew up with no money.”
“Once you get the jobs, you wonder: did you actually just want to be famous? Was it purely about money? An artistic expression? I’ve arrived at a place of truth and while the attraction was a few things, one was definitely financial. I did not want to be broke, like we’d been broke when we grew up. I wanted to take care of my parents and my family.”
“There’s times when I’ve thought, ‘Wow, because having kids is more important to me, some of my roles have suffered.’ There’s definitely a couple of films I could’ve put way more energy into but I was like, ‘No, I’d rather be with my kids.’ I don’t regret that, but I’m aware. You can’t completely dismiss what that pursuit does for you either. I often find myself saying it’s all for my family but in all this I definitely have personal things I need to achieve, too. The difference is you have to open yourself up and go, ‘Well, you had kids so you forfeited a bit of that.'”
“It can’t be a truly individual, selfish endeavor but we still need to take care of our own. Now my identity is another team, another community – the community being the family. You have to adapt and be malleable.”
“For me, life is about experience and being a good person.”
“Every day we’d be on set, laughing. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Why wouldn’t I do more of this?'”
