Elsa Pataky is riding high
Showjumping, mucking horse stables and walking red carpets with husband Chris Hemsworth is all in a day’s work. But the actor and mum-of-three wouldn’t have it any other way.
Despite being about 1000 nautical miles offshore, tropical cyclone Lola is making itself known along Queensland’s southern coastline, whipping up sand and white-capping the surf off North Kirra Beach.
The morning’s weather conditions aren’t ideal for a beach photo shoot, especially one featuring Elsa Pataky and co-starring a 13-year-old retired racehorse named Bruce.
There’s an old English proverb that warns, “When the wind is in the east, ’tis good for neither man nor beast”. And in today’s circumstances, ’tis good for neither hair nor portable changing tents. The atmospheric anomaly has also brought a nervous excitement among the crew, which peaks as Bruce and Pataky, the Magic Millions global ambassador for showjumping, prepare to get acquainted on the alabaster sand.
Pataky arrives late, adding another layer to the shoot’s heightened energy, but considering the menagerie she’s tasked with feeding each morning, it’s understandable. The 4.2 hectare Byron Bay estate she shares with husband Chris Hemsworth, their daughter India Rose, 11, and twin sons Sasha and Tristan, nine, is also home to three dogs, a couple of rabbits, a cat, a parrot, a herd of guinea pigs, a brood of chickens and a lizard. “Oh, and we have donkeys,” she adds.
“When I was living in the city I was never able to have pets, so now, when my kids ask for any pet, I’m like, ‘Sure, why not?’” I ask how Hemsworth feels about the myriad animals. “He’s just like, ‘You’re crazy, you’re a crazy lady’.”
As it turns out, mealtime responsibility is a team effort. “India has the birds – she’s really into birds – and the cat. Chris feeds the dogs and I feed the lizard and the guinea pigs.” They also have nine horses, which are stabled at the family’s private ranch, a sprawling 35 hectare property in Broken Head complete with equine stable, exercise arena and state-of-the-art dressage and showjumping facilities.
Before the first shot of the day is taken, the Spanish beauty places a hand on her equine companion’s muzzle, and through an unconscious choreography of tender strokes and whispered words, reveals the deep, emotional rapport she shares with these gentle creatures.
A sense of calm falls on set, and it’s not long before Pataky, sparkling in Bulgari jewellery and a Miu Miu “riding jacket”, is astride the chestnut thoroughbred, guiding him confidently along the sand. She might love all animals but it’s obvious which species has her utmost devotion.
It was a weekend-long trail ride through the mountains near her hometown of Madrid as a child that sparked the 47-year-old’s affinity with horses. “It was hard, but it was one of my most beautiful experiences, spending that much time with the horse,” she recalls as we drive to the next location and enjoy a brief reprieve from the gale-force winds. “We’d stop and have a picnic with all the horses around. I fell in love with them, and it was then I knew I wanted to ride.”
After landing a role in the popular Spanish soap Al Salir de Clase in 1997, the then 21-year-old bought her first horse, hoping to further hone her showjumping skills and compete professionally.
A burgeoning acting career – which has since included roles in the Fast and Furious franchise and, in 2022, a cameo alongside her Marvel hero husband in Thor: Love and Thunder – put Pataky’s equestrian ambitions on hold but her desire to pursue it never left, nor did her dream of owning a home in the countryside with enough space to keep horses.
With the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strikes – the longest in history – now over, Pataky hints that there are acting projects on the horizon next year, but right now she’s focused on spending time with her kids and fostering India’s love of showjumping.
This story appears in the December issue of WISH Magazine, out on Friday, December 1.
“I put her on a pony; I was in England and I was just like, ‘Yep, off you go, she’s almost three, just get her on’,” Pataky recalls, proudly adding that all three of her kids are “adrenaline junkies”.
“It runs in the family,” she says. “My kids are totally wild.” A look through her Instagram feed illustrates the Hemsworth clan’s love of adventure. It’s peppered with photos of the family testing their limits on the ski slopes, scuba diving in Fiji, on safari in Africa or racing each other on dirt bikes.
“Giving that to my kids is something really special, so I don’t think I will be able to go back and live in a city,” Pataky says. “We’re just so used to being wild in that way.”
While her sons are more interested in motorised sports, India’s sights are firmly focused on showjumping, like her mum.
“She’s already started beating me!” Pataky admits wryly. “[India] keeps saying, ‘I want to jump higher’, and I have to just stop her, but she’s getting to 90[cm] now and she’s really excited about it.
“It’s been such a good thing to share with her; we travel together, we get the horses and we camp, and we go to events.” India shows signs of her mother’s work ethic too, spending weekends caring for the family’s horses and earning money via the sale of bags of “horse poo” to fund her hobby.
While turf clubs are notorious for signing glamorous celebrity faces whose links to equine pursuits are tenuous (and in some cases non-existent), every ambassador within the Magic Millions “family” – comprised of Zara Tindall and her husband Mike Tindall, Argentinian polo player Nacho Figueras and wife Delfina Blaquier, sports journalist Hamish McLachlan, NRL star Billy Slater and Pataky – is both invested in and passionate about horses.
Being the most recent addition to the ambassador stable, Pataky was nervous about joining such a close-knit group, hand-picked by Magic Millions owner Katie Page-Harvey.
“It was hard because they were such good friends and have the best relationship; they were like a total family,” she says. “But we went to London for the Magic Millions Festival of British Eventing, another thing Katie does that’s amazing,” she says, referring to the annual event held at Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucestershire every August, “and I met Zara and her daughter, and I went with my daughter so they were playing, and we had such a good time, she was so nice. Then I met Billy and [his wife] Nicole and Nacho and his wife, Delphina, and we started a WhatsApp Group immediately.
“When they come here [to Australia] we go to dinner together. I love them all, and they represent such an amazing image for this event.”
With her strong equestrian ability, international acting career and natural grace, few are better placed to promote showjumping in Australia than Pataky. And on January 7 she will showcase her skills, having been issued a celebrity wildcard for the final of the inaugural Queensland Off the Track Cup.
Any prize money she wins at the event, which was launched to support the retraining of retired thoroughbred racehorses in disciplines such as polo and showjumping, will be donated to Equine Pathways Australia, an organisation that offers people with disabilities or recovering from illness or injury the chance to participate in equestrian sports.
“We work with thoroughbreds, whether it is in breeding, training, ownership or at the racecourse, but few people know that so many of us enjoy a life outside of work with retrained racehorses – showjumping, polo, dressage and eventing,” says Page-Harvey. “Horses are our 24/7 passion, and this new showjumping class is a chance for those passions to come together and be appreciated in a fantastic competitive environment.”
Pataky was previously more familiar with warmbloods, a breed commonly trained for showjumping, but she has developed a soft spot for thoroughbreds and so feels a close synergy with the initiative.
“With warmbloods, I feel they’re more stubborn; it’s like their way or they won’t even try,” she says. “But the thoroughbreds, they try to adapt to you; I feel like they want to please you and make an effort. They’re strong horses, so you can go trail riding, you can jump with them, you can ride full canter on the beach, which they seem to enjoy too, so I fell totally in love.”
For the inaugural event, 15 finalists who qualify from the Queensland Off-The-Track qualifying round in Toowoomba (November 26) and the Magic Millions Sydney Summer Classic (December 7-10) will compete for part of a $50,000 prize pool.
“I really admire Katie for all the work she’s putting into making showjumping bigger and holding competitions like they do in England,” Pataky says. “The riders can make money, there are good prizes and it helps grow the industry.”
Right now, Pataky is in training for the event, working with champion show jumper Tom McDermott. Once this event wraps, she hopes to take a welcome Christmas break, hopefully in Spain.
She is coming around to the idea of an Aussie summer Christmas, but the Interceptor star is keen to continue the traditions of her own Spanish upbringing, too. “For me it’s still shocking, being in the pool and at the beach at Christmas time,” she says.
“My kids always say Spain has so many traditions, which I love and I try to get them to be familiar with too. We have the grapes on New Year’s Eve,” she says, referring to the tradition of attempting to eat one grape for each of the 12 bell strikes, “and the Three Kings Day on the fifth of January”.
But no Hemsworth family holiday is complete without a bit of thrill-seeking, right? “Yeah, we’ll probably go skiing,” she says with a laugh.
This story appears in the December issue of WISH Magazine, on sale now.
More Coverage
