Never underestimate the power of a little sibling rivalry to put a fire under yr backside; particularly if a pair of you are both eyeing off the same career-changing, multi-million dollar-making film role.
Though the idea of anyone else being Thor other than Chris Hemsworth is now is pretty weird, as it turns out the role was almost filled by a very slightly different DNA profile.
The elder Hemsworth – the middle one overall, but for the purposes of this article we’re excluding Luke (soz m8) – has revealed that younger brother Liam Hemsworth was the one that the family was expecting to land the role of the Norse God in Marvel‘s at-the-time burgeoning cinematic universe.
Chris sat down recently with W Magazine and revealed that, when the film was being cast, he initially thought he’d blown it, with Liam hotly tipped amongst industry circles to take the role.
I came into the audition with (director) Kenneth Branagh and thought I nailed it and then never heard anything back. Months went by and then my brother, my little brother, Liam, was in Australia and sent a tape across and he got a call back, then another call back and then was down to the last kind of four or five people for it. I remember sitting in Vancouver, shooting Cabin in the Woodswith Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon. Both of them were looking at the trades at this sort of top five guys for Thor and saying, ‘Why aren’t you in the mix here? What happened?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I blew my audition I guess.’
Call it luck, call it fate, call it the will of the Valhalla, but Marvel bosses ultimately passed on Liam, leaving the door wide open for Chris to swoop back into contention thanks to a little Hollywood wheeling and dealing.
My manager then called up and said, ‘You know, he’s got an older brother. Can we bring him back in?’ 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. 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.
Really though, the big takeaway from this yarn is that there is absolutely audition footage out there which includes Leonie Hemsworth reading the part of Odin and that special bonus feature cannot arrive on BluRay soon enough THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
‘Course it’s also pretty handy that things happened to work out decently for the pair of ’em.
Definitely could’ve been worse.
