There’s a massive number of recognizable Australian stars in Hollywood, and there’s a distinct chance that at some point during their early days, they appeared on either Home and Away or Neighbours, two of the country’s most prominent soap operas.
Isla Fisher, Naomi Watts, Margot Robbie, Heath Ledger, Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn, Samara Weaving and Brenton Thwaites are just some of the names to have shown up in one of the aforementioned shows over the decades, with New Zealand native Russell Crowe another notable alumni, but it turns out that Chris Hemsworth could have lost out on the role of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor after his 189-episode stint as Home and Away‘s Kim Hyde saw him recruited for the fifth season of Australia’s Dancing with the Stars in 2006.
He may have finished in a creditable fifth place, but when he was auditioning to play the God of Thunder in Kenneth Branagh’s superhero blockbuster, the casting team stumbled upon the videos of his routines. In a new interview, Dancing with the Stars‘ Derek Hough revealed that Hemsworth’s sweet moves came close to costing him his career-defining performance.
“Chris Hemsworth almost lost his role as Thor because he was on Dancing With the Stars in Australia. He was on Dancing With the Stars in Australia, and he’s dancing the samba and they literally cast him, or they were gonna cast him, and I think people called and said, ‘Yo have you seen him dancing the Samba? This cannot be our Thor’.”
The actor himself has long since corroborated this story, admitting that Kevin Feige was worried the fans would “eat us alive” if they were to see the imposing and all-powerful Odinson dancing the samba, which was a very real concern at the time when you consider that Hemsworth was a complete unknown among general audiences when he secured the part. Of course, next year’s Love and Thunder will mark his fourth solo movie and ninth MCU outing in total as Thor, so his Dancing with the Stars past didn’t catch up to him in the end.
Published: Jun 26, 2021 09:14 am