Exclusive: The realisation that changed everything for Chris Hemsworth

Thor found calm in the chaos

As the god of thunder, the Hollywood megastar knows how to weather a storm. Yet after a particularly tempestuous few years, he’s learning to find a new sense of calm amongst the chaos.

It’s a disorientating experience talking to a star of Chris Hemsworth’s magnitude. Of course, there are the superficial trappings to be wary of: avoiding a jolt from his electric blue eyes and struggling to stay afloat in the deep timbre of his famous voice. Beyond the looks and charm, there’s an equal struggle to discern fiction from reality when talking to such a ubiquitous figure in popular culture. 

Having appeared as Thor nine times in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hemsworth has been a regular silver screen fixture since his early days on Home and Away through to his recent turn as Dementus in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Hemsworth loves an iconic franchise as much as audiences love to watch him star in them. And so, as we chat on a New York City evening, I’m thrown as I find myself faced with another, rarer Hemsworth variant: the founder.

Hemsworth still retains an air of movie stardom – after all, as we talk he is en route to see Jimmy Kimmel to promote his latest project, Transformers. Yet we’ve connected to talk about perhaps his greatest passion: health and wellness.

Our chat marks a real turning point for Hemsworth in terms of health. It has been five years since he launched Centr, his wellness and fitness app, into a market that has been rocked politically, economically and pandemically. The period has been equally eventful for Hemsworth on a personal level. Since the app’s launch, the father of three has turned 40, revived Thor, spent a year recovering from a back injury and come to terms with a diagnosed genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease.

Yet despite the ongoing changes in his life, Hemsworth has never been more optimistic about his health. “The imagined scenario is always worse than the reality,” he muses, while reflecting on his newfound clarity. “When you’re building or creating all sorts of disastrous outcomes for things, it’s very hard to make clear decisions with any sort of precision. It’s in the quieter moments of reflection and stillness that I can make decisions based upon real purpose and drive.”

This approach to both health and business has ensured lightning will continue to strike for the god of thunder.

Beyond the looks and charm, Hemsworth has a passion for health and wellness. Image: Supplied

Avengers: Assemble

As any fan of Hemsworth will understand, no matter how great the hero, they are nothing without their secret weapon. For Thor, that weapon is MjÖlnir, his hammer. For Hemsworth, it’s best-mate-turned-trainer, Luke Zocchi. Undoubtedly the main character in Hemsworth’s health universe, Zocchi has been the man behind the building of Thor’s body (and countless other characters) for more than 12 years.

The pair have been close since the age of six, forging a friendship that not only underpins their success, but sustains it, according to Hemsworth. While the jokes are free-flowing between the two, they’ve struck a balance that ensures the results achieved are always god-tier.

“It makes the time go faster if there’s a bit of banter,” Hemsworth says of their dynamic in the gym. “I think there should always be play in training.”

Zocchi is not only Hemsworth’s secret weapon, but quite literally a weapon in the physical sense, operating under the mantra of “Do as I say, and also as I do”. Part of his job requires the maintenance of a base level of fitness so high he’s ready to launch into any number of athletic disciplines to train alongside Hemsworth at a moment’s notice. 

When Hemsworth is preparing for Thor, for example, Zocchi not only designs the programs, but goes round for round, set for set and rep for rep with the Hollywood heavyweight. They’re both openly competitive, and the years of friendship have provided Zocchi with insights few trainers get with their clients.

“There’s a thing about Chris,” says Zocchi with a trademark smirk, a forewarning he’s about to spill. “The drill-sergeant kind of thing does not work at all. He’s super-competitive. If I said we’re going to do 50 pull-ups and 50 push-ups, he’d give me some made-up injury as an excuse to not do it. So, I’ll tell him, ‘All right, you don’t have to do it, but I’m going to.’ And then if I do the pull-ups, he’ll always do more than me.”

Hemsworth and wife Elsa Pataky. Image: Instagram/@chrishemmsworth

Hammer Time

Despite decades of healthy living, it wasn’t until 2017 that the idea of an app first came to Hemsworth. He had once again muscled-up to play Thor in Thor: Ragnarok, and many marvelled at his repeated ability to sculpt a god-like physique. An app felt like a natural extension of his life, an ongoing offering beyond his already significant contribution to cinema.

“I had a lot of people asking about how I put on muscle, or how I took weight off for roles,” he remembers. 

“I had access to so many different people, from great nutritionists and trainers with different methodologies, and so I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to bring all of that together?’ – all that expertise into one place, onto a platform that was available to people all over the world and to give access to the tools and the incredible people that I’ve been able to work with over the years.”

By his own admission, Hemsworth never set out to be a founder of a wellness or a tech business. “Creating Centr wasn’t me wanting to start a business or a company, and then see what fit. It was kind of the other way around. It felt authentic because of my love of health and fitness.” 

Although not his most recognisable role, to call Centr a side hustle for Hemsworth would be reductive, especially given it’s his own lifestyle that informs the entirety of the operation. He has always savoured the chance to talk fitness, nutrition and mindfulness, and seemed destined to have a place in the upper echelon of health, one way or another.

Hemsworth remains fastidious in his dedication to growth, in fitness certainly, but also as a wellness founder. Image: Instagram/@chrishemsworth

The first iteration of the app was released in 2019, and experienced unprecedented levels of interest from fans around the world keen to score a Marvel rig. Buoyed by yet another outing as Thor in Avengers: Endgame, Centr was an instant hit, launching with a curated selection of specialists which reflected his routine at the time, with disciplines including weightlifting, yoga, HIIT, boxing and nutrition. 

In March 2022, the app was acquired by HighPost Capital, co-founded by Jeff Bezos’ younger brother, Mark. The acquisition was not financially insignificant, with Bloomberg reporting at the time that the company was valued at over $295 million. 

It was during this period that Hemsworth was offered an opportunity to combine his two careers – health and screen – partnering with National Geographic on his Limitless with Chris Hemsworth documentary series, where the star crosses the globe investigating wellness and longevity protocols. 

While filming, Hemsworth underwent genetic testing which revealed that he has two copies of the gene APOE4, an indication that he is eight to 10 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s. While not a diagnosis, it did give the star pause and provided yet another dimension to his evolving health profile.

Despite the news, Hemsworth’s star had never been brighter, which was exactly why no-one could have predicted his next move: he took a break.

Self-love and thunder

“I would go from job to job and be stressed,” says Hemsworth of life before slowing down. 

“I was always giving an extra 20 per cent of my time. Sometimes it just ended up being excessive, and sometimes it had diminishing returns.” He came to the realisation his lifestyle wasn’t sustainable without some correction and taking a moment to, well, centre.

The break was always planned; an opportunity to spend time with his wife Elsa Pataky and their three kids, riding waves, dirt bikes and horses on their idyllic Byron Bay compound.

“When there is some calm amongst the storm, I think it’s much easier to navigate family and work. There may be a project I’d love, but doing it means less time at home. Alternatively, I can see that I’ve been at home enough to feel like I’m not going to go to work and be full of guilt that I should be home. And that’s sort of the daily conversation we all have in our lives, whether you’re in this business or another.”

And while family was the priority during his rest period, the timing couldn’t have been better, allowing Hemsworth to recuperate after a back injury sustained when he was filming Thor: Love and Thunder. However, news of the hiatus, APOE4 discovery and his injury coincided, creating a perfect storm of tabloid fodder for media outlets all too keen to conflate the separate narratives. The internet went to work. 

Chris Hemsworth's trainer Luke Zocchi. Image: Supplied

“Chris Hemsworth is retiring!” came the cry. He was not. Rather, it was a homecoming after an intense decade of constant work, and he’s now reaping the rewards. Hemsworth is thriving nowadays, managing to balance vital family time with muscling up for Furiosa, voicing Optimus Prime in Transformers, committing to season two of Limitless and continually expanding Centr – all of which would not have been possible without time to reflect and an injection of mindfulness.

“I’m able to think clearer,” says Hemsworth. “The thing that you’re going to stick with is what you find there is a passion for and you find enjoyment, and surrounding yourself with people you enjoy. I have more clarity around when I am working and what my work requires.”

Hemsworth soon discovered a framework for recovery after a decade of pushing his body to the limits of human ability. 

“The chaos, that was largely self-inflicted internally, affected my entire organism. I know this sounds obvious, but you don’t eat as well when you’re stressed, you don’t sleep as well, your interactions with people aren’t the same, your motivation is lacking, your curiosity for life and enthusiasm is lessened. I wasn’t finding moments of quiet and moments of solitude. I realised how important it was for me to find the quieter moments, so meditation became a much bigger part of my routine.”

Hemsworth is the first to admit that slowing down wasn’t easy (even joking about meditation – “so boring” – in Love and Thunder), but it was necessary to forge a path forward, and it’s now a non-negotiable component to his wellness routine. “Being patient with the process is important, and not smashing yourself. That’s the thing that’s going to handbrake any progress.”

The Thorties 

Having turned 41 earlier this year, Hemsworth is acutely aware of the role his approach to health is not only going to play in his vocation, but also his longevity, and he’s learning to lean into a more sustainable way of being.

“I’m a little kinder and gentler with myself when I go into the gym,” he says on how his approach to training has changed. “I used to have the mentality that if I’m not crawling out of the gym, I haven’t worked hard enough, which isn’t necessary. I’m also listening to 

my body more, being patient with the process and not just smashing myself in every single session.” 

To maintain a level of fitness that provides a launchpad for a myriad of roles he could potentially undertake (including a rumoured return to Thor in 2025), Hemsworth sticks to functional training rather than lifting too heavy, which he admits gets tedious. 

Image: Centr

“I lift a lot less now. After doing eight months of heavy weightlifting in preparation for a role like Thor, the body really screams for something else. You still want to be stressing the muscle, but you can do it in different ways that aren’t destroying your joints or overloading the muscle and causing injury.”

Between major roles, as he is now, Hemsworth and Zocchi keep to shorter, more intense workouts, prioritising 40-minute bodyweight circuits.

As he tours the world in movie-star mode, it’s his own app that keeps Hemsworth accountable with his nutrition, training and mindfulness, connecting him with Zocchi et al wherever his commitments take him. 

He relocated to LA earlier this month for a period of filming, but he remains fastidious in his dedication to growth, in fitness certainly, but also as a wellness founder.

“I want to continue to grow and expand my knowledge and experience, and have Centr be the place where the most recent information around health, fitness and wellness is. We have the digital platform and now we’ve moved into the physical space, selling equipment.”

And with an ongoing commitment to balance, there is one element of Centr Hemsworth refuses to use, for a reason unique to him. “I read a lot of sleep meditations on the app, and so I don’t listen to my own voice to go to sleep,” he says, laughing at the absurdity of the idea that, to many of us, is the highlight of the app. “That would be a slightly odd experience, and probably ineffective.”

I laugh, too, finding calm in the knowledge that I’m not alone. Even Hemsworth himself finds his baritone disorientating, a feeling that many who find themselves in this megastar’s increasingly magnetic orbit – whether cinematic or otherwise – can relate to.

Originally published as Exclusive: The realisation that changed everything for Chris Hemsworth