The actor shares three children with wife Elsa Pataky.
Chris Hemsworth says that when the time came to name his twin sons with wife Elsa Pataky, he looked no further than Brad Pitt's filmography for inspiration.
While promoting his upcoming projects, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Limitless season 2, in a new interview with Vanity Fair, the 40-year-old Australian actor revealed that after growing up watching Pitt, 60, in Legends of the Fall on repeat, the first inkling of the idea came to him as they prepared to welcome their boys a decade ago.
"There's never been a more beautiful man onscreen," the 2024 Met Gala co-chair says of Tristan Ludlow, Pitt's character in the 1994 film, which also stars Anthony Hopkins and Julia Ormond.
The Thor actor shares that when Pataky, 47, was pregnant with their boys back in 2014, they decided to watch Legends of the Fall together, which is when he had the lightbulb moment that led to one of two names for their twins.
"Is this not the coolest character in the world? I think one of our kids needs to be named Tristan," Hemsworth recalls, summarizing the conversation between himself and Pataky. The couple ultimately decided to name their other son, Sasha, after a stuntman friend of theirs. Pataky and Hemsworth are also parents to 11-year-old daughter India, who even made an appearance in Thor: Love & Thunder.
To this day, Hemsworth says that it's Pitt's character in Legends of the Fall -- as well as Patrick Swayze in Point Break and Robert De Niro in Heat -- that made him and his brothers, Luke and Liam, all want to pursue acting.
"Then it just became a complete obsession," Hemsworth shares of his love of film turning into his life's work and passion.
In the same interview with the magazine, Hemsworth addressed a difficult topic he tackled while promoting the premiere season of Limitless, when he discovered that a gene he has causes him to be predisposed to Alzheimer's. At the time, he revealed in an interview with Good Morning America that a genetic test taken for the show revealed his chances of developing the disease is eight to 10 times higher than that of the general population.
Hemsworth says that he hoped the interview would inspire others and not create a media circus, but the story ended up being co-opted by outlets running with the scariest parts and not focusing on his reaction to the news.
"It really kind of pissed me off because it felt like I had been vulnerable with something personal and shared this," he tells the magazine. "No matter how much I said 'This is not a death sentence,' the story became that I have dementia and I’m reconsidering life and retiring and so on."
The headlines only became worse after he shared that he was planning to take a brief break from acting following the season 1 finale of Limitless, which was just recently renewed for a second season. Hemsworth later clarified his acting hiatus comments in an interview with ET in June.
"It all got a little sort of blown out of proportion," he said. "I wanted to take time off because I've been working for 10 years, and I've got three kids that I want to spend more time with. The information about the predisposition... allowed me to make a whole bunch of other changes... from nutrition to my training to my mental fitness."
Since then, it's been full steam ahead for the dad of three and Marvel star. ET spoke with the actor alongside his Furiosa co-star, Anya Taylor-Joy, at CinemaCon earlier this month as they promoted the upcoming prequel to the Mad Max films.
Hemsworth also chatted with ET during that same weekend about Transformers One, in which he voices Orion Pax, a young Optimus Prime, alongside Brian Tyree Henry, who voices D-16, a young Megatron. The origin story is the first animated film in more than 30 years.
"The big appeal to both of us, being fans of this universe, is the opportunity to tell a different story," Hemsworth said.
He continued: "We historically know them [as] mortal enemies, but here, they start off as friends. It's a great connection and bond, and they're two individuals who have something to prove. Then the evolution into the characters that we either love or hate is an interesting sort of journey, but there's a lot of heart in the film, a lot of comedic elements. So it was it was a big adventure."
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