If Leonardo Di Caprio is the actor’s actor, Chris Hemsworth is Australia’s Australian. And fair enough: the 36-year-old has a People’s Sexiest Man Alive award to his name, Marvel in his back pocket, works with top directors and regularly cuts his own poppies.
Also, as Lili Anolik wrote in 2015 for Vanity Fair, “Hemsworth is the… best-looking” of Hollywood’s latest. “Yes, I realize that standards of beauty are highly subjective… But if Hemsworth isn’t the fairest of the male-ingénue set, who is?”
In other words: he’s real-world hot.
“Channing Tatum’s a hot young hunk raring to go, and in terms of sheer sexiness, just raw, straight-up, wham-bam appeal, he’s the winner, hands down,” Lili continued. “He also, however, has a beefcake quality.”
Meanwhile, she added, “Ryan Gosling and Jake Gyllenhaal are, like Hemsworth, bona fide heartthrobs, except they’re an entirely different sub-species thereof – are less physically imposing, more sexually diffident, with an instinct for playing loners and oddballs.”
“Another point in Hemsworth’s favor: he looks better in person than he does on-screen.”
At the risk of over quoting, one final example from Lili’s Hemsworth encounter demonstrates this down to a (spilt) tea: “The hostess stand at Geoffrey’s faces the valet, and the girls manning it – L.A. girls, jaded girls, girls who can do blasé with both hands tied behind their backs… who make it their business… to be unimpressed – stopped breathing as he approached. When he got close, he smiled.”
“Let’s talk about this smile for a second… it’s killer, sure, highly trained assassin, white and broad and lustrous, but it’s also nice-guy. There’s a slightly abashed quality to it, too, as if he understands the impact his presence has on people and wants to soften the blow a little.”
This in mind, it’s no wonder Chris Hemsworth is the guy every Aussie man wants to be, and every Australian women wants full stop. However, in the years since the above (2015) Vanity Fair piece and now, Australia has gone beyond admiration for its homegrown star, and reached a fever pitch obsession with Chris Hemsworth’s every move, which came to a head earlier this week, as a 20 minute hotel room workout by Chris’ trainer dominated the news cycle for 48 hours.
A 20 minute hotel room workout by Chris’ trainer dominated the news cycle for 48 hours.
“Who is ready? I am. Let’s go. Booyah!”: Luke Zocchi, celebrity fitness trainer (and one of Chris Hemsworth’s best mates from school), says as he wraps up the video, after explaining to Escape writer Paul Ewart his 20-minute hotel room workout.
Zocchi’s workout video takes guests through 5 sets of exercises: The Hostage, Mountain Climb, Plank Walkout, Windmill Push-ups, and Burpees. And to be fair to Luke (and Chris) there’s zilch wrong with the workout: if you’re feeling sluggish at a hotel with no gym; it’s perfect.
What’s bizarre, and symbolic of Australia’s misguided obsession with ‘wellness,’ is that this two-minute video has garnered so much attention, being played across Escape, The Daily Telegraph, Adelaide Now, News.com.au, The Courier Mail, Inside Hook, The Daily Mail and even The Australian.
And that’s just page one of Google.
This also comes in a context where Hemsworth is Australia’s new (official) god of tourism and where politically minded publications like The Guardian have taken to writing articles like “How To Look Like Chris Hemsworth.”
Not to mention every time he drops a workout video the internet takes a collective moment to stick its tongue out and breathe heavily.
Sure: we have reason to be obsessed with this antipodean icon, but we’ve officially gone too far (ourselves included). If we don’t want Chris Hemsworth to become as oversaturated as an influencer’s Instagram feed, we need to stop shrieking over everything he does.