‘Oh God, am I getting old?’: Marvel’s most famous superhero is human after all

It’s a relief to learn Chris Hemsworth, universally loved A-list movie star, is like the rest of us. Sure, he may be nearly two metres tall, seemingly sculpted from marble and be worth a reported $200 million, but when filming season two of documentary series Limitless, Hemsworth was plagued by an all-too-familiar fear.

“We were midway through production, everything was sore, I was exhausted, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh God, am I getting old?’” he says, laughing.

When even Thor feels tired, we should all be concerned. However, there are few subjecting themselves to the gruelling punishment Hemsworth undertakes in Limitless.

In season one, the star performed extreme physical and mental challenges such as free diving, fasting, stress training and walking along a crane 275 metres above the ground – all designed to push him to the edge. Filmed over 175 days in 12 countries, Hemsworth counts it among his most significant professional achievements.

”I was really proud of what we’d brought to life – that series was incredibly challenging and almost killed me several times, so when we finished I drew a line under it in my head,” he says.

“But then came the response from people who watched it. I had parents from my kids’ school running up in the playground to tell me they’d learned something, or that they had reoriented their journey around health, wellness and life.”

While Hemsworth is no stranger to doing the same thing over again (he has played Thor in 13 projects, including video games and the blockbuster movies Avengers: Endgame and Thor: Ragnarok), for round two of Limitless he needed a new challenge.

“At this point in my life, I have a deeper, inquisitive sort of drive around some of the more existential questions as well as questions around adversity, pain management and being removed from your comfort zone,” he says.

The result is a more varied series that sees Hemsworth expand how he tests himself. There are still groan-inducing physical challenges, including training with special forces in South Korea and climbing a 183-metre dam in the Swiss Alps, but also plenty of attention paid to less visible muscles.

Episode one, titled “Brain Power”, gives Hemsworth the unenviable task of learning the drums in two months so he can perform live with Ed Sheeran in front of 70,000 people. The expected performance anxiety is accompanied by Hemsworth’s frustration that his brain won’t work as he’d like it to. “That topic is very personal to me and there was a lot of new, emerging science to tackle and dive into,” he says.

The brain is of particular interest to Hemsworth following a revelation in season one that he carries two copies of the APOE4 gene, making him eight to 10 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, which slowly destroys memory and thinking skills.

That news was not only a “warning sign” to Hemsworth, it also triggered a more existential crisis about the time that remains. “We’re not very good at our relationship to death, especially in Western culture, we tend to keep it out of sight, out of mind,” he says.

“But during [Limitless] I thought a lot about getting older, there are more injuries, people are passing away, loved ones are moving on, and things are dramatically shifting and changing.”

If Hemsworth sounds like a middle-aged man nursing a morbid curiosity, that’s because he is. Having recently turned 42, he admits to indulging in age-appropriate worries, such as how much longer his parents have left and is he spending enough time with his children.

Hemsworth lives just outside of Byron Bay with his wife, Elsa Pataky, and their children, 13-year-old daughter India Rose and 11-year-old twin boys Sasha and Tristan.

For their entire childhood, Hemsworth has been one of the most famous people on the planet, a role that comes with intense demands. Does he sense a gradual desire to step back from the business? “Yeah, absolutely, I feel like I’m continually grasping that and losing it,” he says.

“I think it has a lot to do with being in your forties – all of a sudden, you’re in the second half of life, then I look at my parents who are getting older now, and you realise the fragility of life.”

Hemsworth is in London filming Avengers: Doomsday, due for release next year, and rumours suggest it could be his final outing with the cape and hammer.

While Hemsworth won’t be drawn on Thor’s future, he knows the Marvel journey is closer to the end than the beginning. “This time around, being with some of the old cast and then a lot of new cast, I accept I’m now one of the elder statesmen,” he says, laughing. “I don’t know what the future holds for Thor, but I am so thankful for what’s come before.”

To make matters worse, one of his sons has decided to revisit Hemsworth’s back catalogue – a sure-fire way to feel older than ever. “My son, just the other day, was watching the second Thor film, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I look like a teenager’. My skin was so good, I was so fresh-faced,” he says. “It made me realise I seriously need to get some more sleep.”

Limitless: Live Better Now streams on Disney+ from August 15.

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Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at thomas.mitchell@smh.com.au or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.