Elsa Pataky on the power of women over men
SHE admits she is better known as “Chris Hemsworth’s missus” here in Australia, but actor Elsa Pataky believes it’s easy for women to control the men in their life.
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Elsa Pataky believes women aren’t reconciled to their own power until their mid-30s. Coincidentally, that’s the age she was when she met her husband Chris Hemsworth.
“Maybe we would have met in another moment and you never know,’’ the 42-year-old Pataky tells Stellar. “But we met in a great place for both of us. I was totally confident within myself. It worked out really well, I think.”
No kidding...
Eight years after their impulse wedding, during a Christmas family holiday in Sumba, Indonesia, the golden Hollywood couple represents the public face of Australia.
One might almost argue that they’re our sun-kissed, sand-smoothed answer to royalty. Tourism Australia’s 2016 appointment of Hemsworth to the role of global ambassador pretty much sealed the deal. And Pataky handles her responsibilities — as Thor’s cosmopolitan First Lady — with the natural poise of, well, a Meghan Markle.
Being married to Australia’s favourite son can’t always be easy, although the Spanish model, actor and film producer insists she has been “treated really well here” and that being known in this country primarily as “Chris Hemsworth’s missus” doesn’t faze her.
“Not at all, because I grew up with that. He is my husband. I’m the person who came with him. I am the guest here,” she tells Stellar. “Australia is really proud of him and what he has done. And so am I. But I am also a little bit the same in Spain. Everywhere we go there, he is Elsa Pataky’s husband.”
Marvel superheroes might well speak an international language at the box office, but when the couple met, Hemsworth was unknown outside of Australia, where he had done a three-year star-making apprenticeship on the Seven Network’s Home And Away.
Pataky had a successful career spanning three countries — Spain, Italy and France — and three languages (she is fluent in five). After moving to Los Angeles, she landed a small English-speaking part in the deliciously cheesy creature feature Snakes On A Plane. A recurring role in the blockbusting The Fast And The Furious franchise followed.
One reason for the couple’s successful marriage could well be their seven-year age difference. “When I met Chris, he was just starting out,” Pataky observes. “I had started young and I had worked a lot. I was happy to take a break and just be a mum. I just wanted to be there for [my children] and I feel lucky that I could do that.”
Pataky and Hemsworth have both acknowledged the challenges they faced during the early years of their marriage. What neither of them could have predicted was Hemsworth’s meteoric rise through the superhero stratosphere.
Constant paparazzi attention, particularly towards the children, is one reason for their 2014 relocation to Byron Bay, where they settled on a house on a lush, secluded mountain just out of town for a reported $7.2 million.
Four years on, Pataky says Australia now feels very much like home. “My kids are growing up here. It’s part of me now. When I go to Spain, my friends and relatives ask, ‘Are you going to come home?’ And I’m like, ‘Um, I don’t think so.’”
As if to firmly cement her status as a true-blue local, Pataky is about to make her acting debut in this country in the supernatural crime drama Tidelands, Netflix’s first Australian original series.
The decision primarily came down to timing. Pataky’s daughter, India Rose, celebrated her sixth birthday in May. Twin sons Sasha and Tristan turned four in March.
“Now [my children] are going to school and I have more time,” she says. “I feel like I have done my job, so I can do again what I am passionate about and what I love. I missed it, but I don’t regret my decision for a minute. I loved the time that I spent every second with my kids.
“And we made the same deal, Chris and I. When I am working, he stops for a while because we both want to be there for our kids. This project came at the right time. And also it was here in Australia, which was amazing. I didn’t have to travel, because we travel a lot with Chris.”
Tidelands tells the story of a juvenile delinquent who returns home to the small fishing village of Orphelin Bay at the end of her 10-year prison sentence. When a local fisherman disappears in mysterious circumstances, Cal McTeer (Charlotte Best) must come to terms with the town’s dark past, uncovering some shocking secrets about her own family in the process.
All roads, it seems, lead back to the dangerous, cult-like Tidelanders — half-sirens, half-humans — who live on a commune on the fringes of the coastal town.
Pataky plays their leader, Adrielle Cuthbert, a ruthless enchantress with whom sex can be deadly. “She knows the weakness of men and how to use that to get what she wants,” Pataky says. “She totally plays with it. And since the character is not entirely human, there is more freedom about sexuality, I think. It wasn’t hard to play. As a strong woman, you use whatever you have to protect what is important for you.”
Pataky is hardly a predatory creature, but she relates to Adrielle on a broader cultural level. “It actually surprises you, in a way, how much power you have as a woman over men,’’ she says. “The most complicated part is when you are growing up. I think it takes teenagers years to understand it. At that young age, you are very insecure.
“Women from the age of 30 or 35 feel more confident because they know who they are and what they can do and what they want. It’s good to see how powerful women become as they mature. You know about the world and you have a lot of experiences; it makes you totally different.”
Pataky is supportive of the global #MeToo and #TimesUp movements but occasionally worries the pendulum has begun to swing too far in the opposite direction. “To have change, you must always go to the other extreme, just for people to see it and have a voice. But we have to be careful. Because I have two sons and I don’t want my sons to be scared, either.
“I feel like men are scared to speak [now] because they don’t know what to say, because they feel like we are going to jump on them if they say the wrong thing, the wrong word — even to just talk about the subject.
“And they should talk. They are our husbands and the fathers of our children. We need to be on the same page.”
Pataky describes her adopted locale of Byron Bay as pretty much her dream home.
“I grew up in a big city, surrounded by cars and pollution. I always wanted to be in a place that was surrounded by nature,” she says. “Chris is the same. He grew up being close to the ocean. It was important for us to give this to our kids and to be able to enjoy it, too.”
The couple has embraced free-range parenting — every now and then Hemsworth posts an image of one of his kids’ more outrageous stunts on Instagram. (There’s a great video of one of the twins free-climbing up the face of the family fridge to reach some chocolate.)
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Recently, Pataky posted an image of one of the twins sporting a brand-new cast. “He snapped two bones in his wrist,” she sighs. “It was pretty tough, but kids are always breaking bones and they heal so easily. Perhaps the mums suffer more than they do.”
Pataky acknowledges that her children are probably a little more feral than their city counterparts. “To be able to run around, to be free, gives them such confidence. When I come to the city, or we travel, I see them as wild kids in a way. But I love it. It’s who they are. They are not used to [traffic] — everything in the city scares them — but they are not afraid of big spiders or big lizards.”
Nor is Pataky, for that matter. Unlike most immigrants, Australia’s deadly wildlife doesn’t intimidate her. “I have always liked animals, been attracted to them, like my daughter is now. She’s an animal whisperer.”
Adrielle Cuthbert is not Pataky’s first villain. “My first big role in Spain [in Al Salir de Clase, a European version of Beverly Hills, 90210] was pretty mean. I was young at the time and in the beginning it was hard for me to feel that people didn’t actually like me. I would go out on my own and they would be hating on me. I was like, ‘I am not that person!’ But over time, I learnt to make peace with it because villains are fun to play.”
It follows that given his close and ongoing association with Thor, Hemsworth must be very much accustomed to the reverse reaction.
“Exactly!” Pataky says. “It must be really cool having all that love from young kids, to be such an inspiration.”
But even Thor forgets to put out the garbage from time to time. Or treks huge, muddy footprints all through the house. “Totally. There are a lot of jokes about it with friends and family, for sure,” his wife grins.
And it turns out Norse gods also have their blind spots — with Hemsworth, it happens to be languages. The couple’s three children are all bilingual. “I speak with them all the time in Spanish,” Pataky says.
“In the beginning, it didn’t make sense to them. There was no use for it. But when we started travelling to Spain, and they saw that it was difficult to communicate without it, they got more interested.
“Chris is always finding excuses: ‘I have to study this accent or that accent.’ He needs to make an effort if he wants to understand because, at the moment, he doesn’t. It’s like our little secret.”
Tidelands is streaming from December 14 on Netflix.
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Originally published as Elsa Pataky on the power of women over men
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