Thunder Struck

Somehow, Chris Hemsworth went from Home and Away to Hollywood and emerged more likeable, genuine and down to earth than ever. As he explains, the secret to realising your dreams is having the confidence to assert your most valuable asset: yourself.

- Ben Jhoty

Chris Hemsworth is standing on a ledge outside a sprawling, white-walled house in Byron Bay when he begins aiming kung-fu kicks out over the lush green hinterland that tumbles away at his feet. He accompanies each kick with a playful “hi-ya” as the sky reverberates to mighty thunderclaps, courtesy of a storm that’s rolling in off the sea. As blobby drops of tropical rain begin to fall, you have to shake your head and wonder: can the man who’s made his name playing Thor summon thunder on demand?

It would certainly be a nice touch – thunder at a Hemsworth shoot is like a white Christmas in New York. But after spending the morning with the actor here in his hometown, you begin to think there probably isn’t a whole lot this guy can’t do.

That includes transforming right before your eyes. Here today to share with MH exclusive details of his new holistic health and fitness app Centr (more on that later), when Hemsworth arrives at the shoot, dressed in a white T-shirt and board shorts, he’s looking tired, having flown in from India, where he’s shooting a film for Netflix, only a few days before. “Hi, I’m Chris,” he says, shaking hands as he inspects the view from the house’s cavernous living room. Lacking the polished sheen of the Tag Heuer ads and, save for his towering stature, little of the physical presence of the Norse god that launched him, there’s not a lot to distinguish him from the surfers inspecting the swell with their takeaway coffees down at nearby Lennox Head.