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Chris Hemsworth is getting ready to celebrate his 40th birthday this summer, but he’s not even close to slowing down!
When the actor and his “Extraction 2” director, Sam Hargrave, sat down with ET’s Rachel Smith to promote their thrilling Netflix sequel this week, Hemsworth was quick to clarify comments that got “sort of blown out of proportion” about him taking a step back from acting.
Last fall, the “Thor” star told Vanity Fair that he planned to take some time off after promoting his unscripted Disney+ adventure series, “Limitless”. The decision, he said at the time, coincided with an episode of the show on death, as well as one in which Hemsworth agreed to take a genetic test, which ultimately revealed that his risk of developing Alzheimer’s is eight to 10 times higher than that of the general population — due to the fact that Hemsworth has two copies of APOE4 (the apolipoprotein E gene), one from his mom and one from his dad.
After learning the results on the show, Hemsworth said in a confessional that “the idea that I won’t be able to remember the life I’ve experienced, or my wife, my kids, is probably my biggest fear.”
However, Hemsworth said, the decision to take a brief career break was not as connected to the genetic test as it may have seemed.
“It all got a little sort of blown out of proportion,” he shared. “I wanted to take off because I’ve been working for 10 years, and I’ve got three kids that I want to spend more time with.”
Doing that show, each episode resonated in such a way that made me realize how life is just flying by, and I wanted to be still for long periods and more often,” he continued. “The information about the predisposition… allowed me to make all the changes — whether it be nutrition, my training, my mental fitness. Which is the point of the series. The whole point for me was to give people access to tools, knowledge, information on how to live a better, longer, healthier life.”
As for how his career might look different in his 40s — the actor hits the milestone birthday on Aug. 11 — Hemsworth said it’s simply about making more discerning choices now that he’s reached a comfortable point in his career and feels “healthier than I’ve ever felt.”
“I’ve been running from project to project for long time, just to avoid being unemployed or that fear that it’s the last job you’ll get, you know?” he explained. “I wanna be more curated about the choices I make, things I immerse myself in or I’m involved in. I want to have greater value and work with great people.”
One of those great people is pal Idris Elba, who reunites with his “Thor” co-star, Hemsworth, in “Extraction 2”, playing a mysterious character known as The Man in the Suit, who provides Hemsworth’s mercenary-for-hire Tyler Rake with a new mission.
“Idris is a really good friend of mine, and we’ve talked about working together,” Hemsworth recalled, sharing how he and Hargrave pitched the actor the idea. “He brings out something very different in these characters, something a bit more that I think people will love.”
And both the star and director were excited about the possibility of Elba returning for a third Extraction movie, after fan support got the sequel easily greenlit.
“It’s why we make the films — the response from the fans and their support,” Hemsworth praised. “[We] have a duty to go bigger and better on this one, with a deeper emotional storyline that resonated with the people. We made a film that we were really proud of, and the response has been amazing.”
“Extraction 2” premieres June 16 on Netflix.
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Brent Furdyk
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