Thor star Chris Hemsworth, 39, is known for being extremely fit and enduring impossible physical tests, but after his show, Limitless, premiered on Disney+ on Nov. 16, the actor revealed he is taking a hiatus. “Doing an episode on death and facing your own mortality made me go, ‘Oh God, I’m not ready to go yet.’ I want to sit and be in this space with a greater sense of stillness and gratitude,” Chris told Vanity Fair. He also shared that the docuseries was the catalyst for his decision to put a pause on work. “It really triggered something in me to want to take some time off. And since we finished the show, I’ve been completing the things I was already contracted to do,” he said.
After he is done with his current obligations, the Marvel star will be taking the time off to enjoy being with his family. “Now when I finish this tour this week, I’m going home and I’m going to have a good chunk of time off and just simplify. Be with the kids, be with my wife [Elsa Pataky],” he added.
Chris went on to tell the outlet that he does not want to wake up one day and have missed his kids’ childhood. “And then you start talking about kids and family and going, ‘Oh my God, they’re getting older, they’re growing up and I keep slapping another movie on top of another movie.’ Before you know it, they’re 18 and they’ve moved out of house, and I missed the window,” Chris said. The 39-year-old’s new show on Disney+ is a documentary series, as mentioned above, that sees Chris take on a variety of life-threatening physical excursions that put his strengths to the ultimate test.
His decision to take time off from working also comes amid the discovery that Chris has an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The health scare was revealed during episode five of Limitless. The father-of-three, however, made it clear to Vanity Fair that it is not a final diagnosis. “My concern was I just didn’t want to manipulate it and overdramatize it, and make it into some sort of hokey grab at empathy, or whatever, for entertainment,” Chris said, before adding, “It’s not like I’ve been handed my resignation.”
The Australian-native shared that Peter Attia, the onscreen doctor for the episode, did not want to share the “warning” of the Alzheimer’s on camera. “They took all my bloodwork and did a bunch of tests and the plan was to on-camera tell me all the results and then talk about how you can improve this and that,” he said. “And Peter Attia, who is the longevity doctor in that episode, and overseeing a lot of the show, called [show creator] Darren [Aronofsky] and said, ‘I don’t want to tell him this on camera. We need to have an off-side conversation and see if he even wants this to be in the show.’ It was pretty shocking because he called me up and he told me.”
Despite it not being a hard diagnosis, the Hollywood hunk said that it was, nevertheless, a reality check. “Yeah, there was an intensity to navigating it. Most of us, we like to avoid speaking about death in the hope that we’ll somehow avoid it,” Chris shared. “We all have this belief that we’ll figure it out. Then to all of a sudden be told some big indicators are actually pointing to this as the route which is going to happen, the reality of it sinks in. Your own mortality.” Chris and his wife, Elsa, got married in 2010 and share three kids: India Rose, 10, Tristan, 8, and Sasha, 8.