Chris Hemsworth appeared on a recent episode of the “SmartLess” podcast while continuing to promote his latest movie, Amazon MGM’s “Crime 101,” and spoke honestly about his decision to move out of Los Angeles with his family during the height of his Marvel fame. Hemsworth and his wife, actor Elsa Pataky, were five years into their marriage when they decided to leave L.A. and relocate their family to Hemsworth’s home country of Australia.
“It was right around the time my boys were born, and it was just, we kind of were set up in L.A. and not enjoying it, you know?” Hemsworth said. “Like nothing was shooting there. We were filming kind of everywhere else and then… you’d come home and paparazzi and all the sort of the trappings of, you know, living in that space.”
Hemsworth said moving out of L.A. was the “greatest decision,” one that did not disrupt his professional career as an actor since he was also traveling elsewhere to shoot a lot of his projects.
“You know, when you come back from work, you wanna go on a holiday? Like coming home for me is — it feels like a holiday,” Hemsworth said of living in Australia. “We have a big farm and horses and motorbikes and surf.”
The actor’s exodus from Hollywood was years before the COVID pandemic, and Hollywood strikes even further reduced the amount of productions being shot in Los Angeles. As Variety reported last month, L.A. production days for film, TV and commercials fell 12.3% in the final quarter of 2025 compared to the previous one. That continued a downward trend that has persisted since 2022. For 2025 overall, production volume was about half what it was in 2019.
Hemsworth made his Marvel debut as Thor in 2011, two years after his Hollywood debut as George Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 “Star Trek” reboot. He had three Marvel sequels (“The Avengers,” “Thor: The Dark World” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron”) under his belt when he decided to leave L.A. for Australia. He continued to act in major Hollywood productions like 2016’s “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” and “Ghostbusters.” Hemsowrth will be back as Thor at the end of this year with December’s “Avengers: Doomsday.”
Listen to Hemsworth’s full interview on the “SmartLess” podcast in the video below.
variety.com
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