Liam Hemsworth Is Back in Action
LIAM HEMSWORTH IS nearing the end of an unpaved trail at the top of the Malibu hills when he first rebuffs an offer to borrow my shoes. He’s barefoot. He’s been barefoot for the past 45 minutes of our hike, and as I glance back at the trail behind us, and I look around at the ash staining the surrounding undergrowth—the result of the 2018 blaze that scorched nearly 97,000 acres, including the earth on which we stand and the actor’s nearby home—I can’t help thinking the man has earned some rubber-cushioned relief. Nope. “I’m really tough,” he says, displaying what even a casual moviegoer might recognize as the Hemsworth family grin. “I can take anything.”
He’s joking, kind of, but given the events of the past 18 months, he’s also kind of not. His house went up in flames and burned to the ground along with almost everything he owned. He spent some time in a hospital with a painful kidney condition. And just a week before our hike, he officially ended a decade-long relationship amid extremely invasive tabloid coverage. (He’s open to talking about the first two setbacks, but not the third, and we don’t blame him.) I ask him straight up if he’s in rebuilding mode. “Rebuilding?” Hemsworth leans back and laughs, turning the word around in his mind. “Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.”
He was only 19 when he left Australia and arrived in Los Angeles, and it didn’t take long for success to arrive for him. “I was here for three months before I got a job,” he says. “And from then on, I sort of jumped from film to film.” The Hunger Games franchise. The Independence Day sequel. Some misses amid the run of blockbusters, projects that weren’t well received by critics, fans, or even Hemsworth himself. And through it all, there were comparisons to his older brother Chris, who beat him out for the role of Thor and with whom he shares a natural likability, extremely blue eyes, and a close friendship.
Hemsworth is 30 now, a rocky stretch of road behind him, and he’s starring on an action thriller called Most Dangerous Game that’s streaming on Quibi, the new video platform built around short episodes. On the day we meet, he’s battling the flu, but high above the California coast, he’s still the picture of health, so much so that he doesn’t bother to put his shoes back on after ditching them for a photo shoot. He’s happy to feel the grit and gravel beneath his feet, and as we talk and hike, and hike and talk, he opens up about strength, pain, fire, happiness, ice baths, spinach, family, and what the future holds.
Men’s Health: So about the rebuilding. The past year—actually, the past decade—has kept you pretty busy with both the good and the bad. What are some of the lessons from your 20s that you’re excited to bring into your 30s?
Liam Hemsworth: Appreciating the little things. It’s something I always try to remind myself to do, especially in times that maybe things aren’t going the way I planned or the way I wanted things to go. Appreciating what I do have and searching for things that make me happy and things that make me a better person and . . .
What have you found in that search?
Honestly, the past six months . . . I’d say exercise and fitness is a big thing for me to just feel balanced and levelheaded.
A very Men’s Health answer!
I went into a job [Most Dangerous Game] at the end of last year that was extremely physical. I spent most of the project running and getting beaten up. It was just brutal. I leaned out a lot. Running is so jarring. Your knees, your ankles, your lower back. After that I teamed up with Jason Walsh, who owns Rise Nation in West Hollywood. We do high-intensity stuff, a mix of calisthenics, sled pulls, sled pushes, and lots and lots of free weights.
Has your diet changed?
I was vegan for almost four years, and then February of last year I was feeling lethargic. Then I got a kidney stone. It was one of the most painful weeks of my life. I was doing press for Isn’t It Romantic. But I had to go to the hospital and get surgery.
Jeez!
It’s all good now, thankfully. But once you get one kidney stone, you have a 50 percent chance of getting another one if you continue eating the way you were eating. Well, my particular kidney stone was a calcium-oxalate kidney stone. It forms from having too much oxalate in your diet. Oxalates are really high in a lot of vegetables, specifically spinach, almonds, beetroot, potatoes. Every morning, I was having five handfuls of spinach and then almond milk, almond butter, and also some vegan protein in a smoothie. And that was what I considered super healthy. So I had to completely rethink what I was putting in my body.
Why did you go vegan? For health reasons? Or environmental ones?
Health for sure. I go from one extreme to the other. My mom always makes fun of me. She’s like, “If you could just find a happy medium in between all these things you do, then you’d probably be better off.” It was right before I started shooting Independence Day: Resurgence. The first two years, I felt great. My body was strong, my cardio was high. What I say to everyone is “Look, you can read whatever you want to read. But you have to experience it for yourself. You have to figure out what works best for your body.” And if something works well for a period, great, keep doing it. If something changes and you’re not feeling great, you’ve got to reassess it and then figure it out.
Are there other ways you’re experimenting to look and feel great?
For the past year and a half, I’ve been doing a lot of ice baths and watching these Wim Hof YouTube videos and doing the breathing. When I’m working out really hard, if I’m including an ice bath among all that, my recovery is better. When you come out of an ice bath, your body feels electric and your senses are heightened. We were doing it when I was back in Australia and I was staying with Chris, and we’d do a cycle from the sauna to the ice bath. We’d just do that a couple times, and we’d come out just so happy: “Ah, how is this life? How is this?”
You’ve already been part of huge franchises, like The Hunger Games and The Expendables. Who do you look up to in the industry? Who do you want to work with?
I really look up to my brother Chris. I’ve worked with a lot of people that have been in really great positions in the past 11 years, and Chris has a stronger work ethic than most. He’s so focused. I’m thankful that I have him and am able to use his resources and his knowledge. I call him all the time about scripts and get his opinion. “Should I do this? Should I do that?” We’re looking to do a film this year together, which is like a big action-comedy thing.
I didn’t include any Chris questions, because I wanted it to be about you, but . . .
I love my brother Chris. I don’t mind talking about him.
Was there ever any doubt in your mind that you’d make it in Hollywood?
I had a really naive confidence. I got flown over to do a screen test for Thor. So I had some confidence, and I was doing auditions as much as I could. I was cast in the first Expendables film, and then the script got rewritten and they cut me out of it. My parents always said, “Have a backup plan.” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was like, “I’ve probably got to do a trade, be a builder or landscaper.” But also, I was like, “I’m going to make this happen.” And acting was what I set my mind on.
Do you have a project that stands out that you’re most proud of?
I’ve worked really hard on every film I do. I enjoyed them all for different reasons.
On the flip side, are there any that you wish you could redo?
Yeah, there are a couple. [Laughs] I’m not going to say which ones. Something that everyone in this town says is “Nobody knows which films are going to work.” You can have a perfect script, an amazing cast, a fantastic director, and the film can still turn out terrible. So it’s always a gamble.
Changing the subject, it’s been about 18 months since the California wildfires. What was that like?
I was shooting a film in Alabama and then had come back just by chance that weekend to Malibu, not knowing that there were fires. And then Friday morning, the fires started heading toward Malibu, and my brother Luke called and said, “Get ready, they’re going to issue an evacuation.” The whole time that I was packing up these animals, I had moments where I’m like, “It’s not going to get this far; this is a waste of time, and my house isn’t going to burn down.” And of course it did burn down, and it was a shitty thing to live through.
What advice would you give to people dealing with that kind of emotional turmoil?
I wouldn’t want to tell anyone how to feel. But I was able to appreciate the fact that I got all my animals out, and pretty much everything that I had in my house that burned down is replaceable to a point. There’s a select few things that hold a little bit more sentiment that I’ll never get back. And I also acknowledge that a lot of people didn’t have insurance, and they don’t have anything else to fall back on. I have insurance and it’s a frustrating process, but I’ll get taken care of, so I’m thankful. Life is the most important thing, and hopefully your animals and the people that you’re with got out safely. I’m more conscious these days of how short life is and how things can change so quickly.
Your life’s constantly under a microscope. How do you deal with that?
For a long period of time, it was very stressful, and it really got to me. Yeah, look, there are times when you want to lash out and say something . . . because from my point of view, the majority of the time things that are written about me are completely false. There are times when you want to speak up and there are other times when it’s not worth it, because you’re just going to draw more attention to it, and then it’s better to just not think about it and let it all wash away. These days I don’t want to invest any more time in worrying about that sort of stuff. I remind myself of what to appreciate now and to enjoy every moment as much as possible, whether that be working or with my family or whatever I’m doing. Just trying to find a positive in it all and enjoy life as much as possible.
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