FANdemonium Network: Chris Hemsworth interview: 'James Hunt's behaviour was inexcusable'

Monday, September 2, 2013

Chris Hemsworth interview: 'James Hunt's behaviour was inexcusable'

Both as Thor and in real life, Chris Hemsworth is one of Hollywood's true good guys. Which is why he loved playing fast-living 'bad boy' racer James Hunt in Ron Howard's new film, Rush. He talks to Helena de Bertodano.

The Australian actor Chris Hemsworth may play flamboyant racing driver James Hunt in the new film Rush but in real life you are more likely to find him a nervous passenger in the family SUV driven by his Spanish wife Elsa Pataky. “It has a baby seat and surfboard in the back, it’s a pretty mellow thing,” he says. “I go ‘Slow down, what’s the rush, there’s a red light.’ She says: ‘Shut up, when did you become a driving instructor?’”

Hemsworth’s assured performance as Hunt marks him out as one of Australia’s leading actors, on a par, according to Rush director Ron Howard, with Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman. Best known for his role as Thor in the superhero movie Thor (2011) and Avengers Assemble (2012), in Rush Hemsworth makes a rare foray into a reality-based film. “I love the fantasy world and the movies I’ve been doing but it was nice not to be wielding some sort of weapon,” he says, referring to Thor’s magic hammer. “I was looking for something more character-driven.”

We meet in a Beverly Hills hotel, where he is promoting Rush with remarkable enthusiasm. It helps, says Hemsworth, that the reaction to the movie has been so positive. “Sometimes,” he says about press interviews, “you feel like a car salesman: ‘Trust me, you missed it, go watch it again, you’ll love it…’ Rush is special.”

He looks, of course, effortlessly handsome, wearing a blue-grey T-shirt with a pair of Ray Bans tucked over the neckline, faded G-Star jeans and scuffed blue Vans. “I’m for comfort not for style,” he says. His hair is shorter than usual and slicked back. He wears a thick silver wedding band, a beaded string bracelet and a Mont Blanc watch.

Less than a decade ago Hemsworth, who turned 30 last month, was working as a bartender in a Melbourne nightclub. Now he has manoeuvred himself onto the Hollywood A-list, his face on billboards everywhere, his net worth already $12 million. He handles his new-found fame with equanimity, keeping a low profile off screen and living a quiet life in Santa Monica with Pataky, an actress seven years older than him whom he met in 2010, and their baby daughter India Rose. “Matt Damon once said to me, ‘Just stay boring. Don’t go spilling out of a club at four in the morning and you’ll be fine.’ The paparazzi got bored with us. Because we are pretty boring.”

It couldn’t be further from the way in which Hunt chose to handle fame. The epitome of the playboy rock-star driver, Hunt drank to excess, snorted cocaine and reputedly slept with more than 5,000 women. So how did Hemsworth access the character? “Yeah,” he says, laughing and raising his eyebrows. “What I love about him, and I like to think I have, is a sort of childlike quality. There’s a cheeky little kid aspect to him. That sense of fun and adventure is something I find appealing.

"And sometimes I would love to act like he did. I’m not talking about the women,” he adds hastily. “I’m talking about how he says what he wants to say or the reaction he has to the reporter.” (He assaults a journalist who insults Niki Lauda, Hunt’s chief opponent but also his close friend, a dichotomy the movie captures well.)

'Hunt had a childlike quality': Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt in Rush

Hemsworth says that he had some wild days when he first became famous in Australia starring in the soap opera Home and Away. “I had a taste of that kind of world, the drinking and everything. No one was really watching too closely. I was able to experience all that before I got to Hollywood. After that I kept to myself a bit more.”

Preparing for Rush was difficult. Whereas he’d previously had to bulk up for roles, particularly for Thor, he had to lose weight for this one. “I went from about 215 [lb] to 185. That was painful. I’d much rather put on weight than have to lose weight. Basically I went from lifting weights and eating lots of protein to just the opposite: running, cardio, overtraining and undereating. My wife was pregnant at the time and she reminds me that I was moodier than she was.”

Rush focuses on the dramatic 1976 Formula One season, when James Hunt and Niki Lauda battled it out for the championship title, Lauda almost dying in a horrific fireball accident at the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, then returning as if from the dead (he had been given the last rites), to race again just six weeks later. Hunt went on to win the title, retiring only three years later and becoming a commentator. He died aged 45 in his sleep, his heart apparently weakened by the years of excess. Earlier that day he had proposed to his girlfriend of four years, Helen Dyson. “It’s tragic, really,” says the man who plays him.

Hemsworth is excellent as Hunt, perfectly capturing the spirit of the man. “He seemed to understand James Hunt’s charm,” Howard said recently. Most challenging was trying to capture his upper-class public-schoolboy voice. “That is what I was most anxious about,” says Hemsworth. “I find the American accent much easier.”

During shooting of the movie, the actor Daniel Bruhl, who plays Lauda, could turn to Lauda himself, now 64, for advice about the most minute details - such as when he would put on his racing gloves before a race. Hemsworth - who admits he did not really know who Hunt was before reading the script - did not have anyone to consult. But he says that he found it easier that way. "I consciously wanted to distance myself. I wanted to become the guy, not just mimic him. I didn't meet any of [Hunt's] family either. I read as much as I could about him and watched plenty of interviews."

He thinks that Hunt had a sort of attention deficit disorder. “There was an immense amount of talent there and if you funnel it into something it’s great but if it’s pointed in the wrong direction then it can be chaotic.”

Hunt drank himself to oblivion, took drugs and ricocheted through women. “But the thing I found interesting,” says Hemsworth, “is that his ex-girlfriends all had very positive things to say about him. Over the last couple of years I’ve met three or four women who have said ‘I used to date James’ or ‘I slept with him’. And they all said he was a very sweet guy.”

I ask if he thinks that Hunt’s behaviour was excusable. “No,” he says adamantly. “There were things he did that were absolutely inexcusable, like urinating in public. He said he was drunk and on a sleeping pill. Who knows? He was drunk at his own wedding.” Hemsworth laughs. “I was sober at mine. A little.”