A room at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles. Nine reporters and nine recorders. This is what passes for menial labour in the Hemsworth family business. It's six o'clock, everyone's last interview of the day, and the mood in the hotel suite is raucous. "The talent" has been asked most of the questions he is about to face over and over again, in an endless loop, in which only the wallpaper and the faces change. He does a remarkably good job of hiding it.
It's not hard yakka – Hemsworth's mum, who taught in Melbourne schools, and his dad, who worked in child-protection services and on cattle ranches, would laugh at the thought of it – but it must be gruelling in its way. Chris, the middle child, second in line but top of the bill, has been doing this for a fortnight already. As soon as he's finished with us he'll be catching a flight to San Francisco to do it all again.
We're here to talk about Blackhat, Michael Mann's cyber-thriller, but naturally, before we can get to that, there are more important matters to discuss. Hemsworth has just been anointed the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. A journalist from Venezuela tells him that in a poll, the country's women have declared him "papachongo" – a hottie. A French writer reveals that when she mentioned the interview to male friends, "two out of three said, 'Ooh, if I was gay, I'd do him'."
"It's the pinnacle of my career. It's all downhill from here. I can let myself go now," says Hemsworth, laughing.
Another woman notes that in Blackhat, his shirt is unbuttoned half the time, exposing that flawless, catalogue model upper body, the product of good genes, Muay Thai and a lot of boxing and surfing.
"It's really hot, that's why," Hemsworth protests. "You try shooting in Hong Kong in the middle of summer. No, that was Michael. He just kept undoing those buttons."
Today, Hemsworth's hair is cropped short and he's dressed down in jeans and a tight blue sweater. Only the tattoo on his forearm and the bangles on his wrist hint that he'd rather be at the beach. He's a few pounds lighter than Thor and looks better for it.
So far, the trajectory in Hemsworth's career has been strictly upwards. He didn't get the big exit that he wanted for Kim Hyde, his character on Home and Away, who survived a fire, a cyclone, a helicopter crash and an ecstasy overdose, only to slip away to the city. But he did score an eye-catching part almost as soon as he landed in Hollywood in 2007, as Captain Kirk's father in JJ Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek franchise.
His only sustained period of doubt followed: eight months in which he couldn't get hired and tried too hard at auditions. "There's always two sides to my brain, and that's one side that absolutely believed it and wanted it and the other side was like. 'no way, it's not going to happen'," he says. But that came to an end when Joss Whedon picked him for the film The Cabin in the Woods, and then recommended him to Kenneth Branagh, who was looking for a Norse god.
Hemsworth's Thor is a thoroughly modern beefcake, the blonde tresses half his own and half extensions, brandishing a cartoon hammer and prone to Shakespearian roaring. He has featured in three movies already, and Hemsworth is signed up for three more, at least, either in the lead role or as a member of Marvel's all-star line-up, the Avengers. By the time he's finished, even if that's it for the two franchises (a doubtful prospect, given Hollywood's tendency to wring proven hits dry), he will have given 10 years of his life to the part.
He is aware that, when he talks about his outback childhood, spear-fishing in the swimming hole while his dad hunted buffalo, he ticks "every box on the Crocodile Dundee form". To make a virtue of it, he sometimes compares Thor to Paul Hogan's bushman, observing that both are mighty in their own worlds, and must adapt to an alien environment, in which they are initially powerless, to survive.
When Hemsworth starts a sentence "aw, look" he sounds as Australian as Ricky Ponting, but on screen he has displayed an impressive facility for accents: olde-English for Thor, non-specific suburban American for The Cabin in the Woods, as swinging Londoner James Hunt in Rush and now as Chicago-raised hacker Nicholas Hathaway in Blackhat.
Ron Howard, who cast him in Rush (and was sufficiently impressed to hire him again for In the Heart of the Sea, a forthcoming film about the whaling ship that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick) has compared Hemsworth to Harrison Ford, for his ability to alternate action movies with roles that require more sensitivity.
I ask Hemsworth if there's an older actor whose career he aspires to. Matt Damon has become a friend and mentor to him since he bought a house near Damon's in the beachside Los Angeles enclave of Malibu two years ago. "I love what Matt's done," he says. "George, Brad. From a personality point of view, the way those guys handle themselves and enjoy it. There's a mix of … 'one for them, one for you' sort of thing – a balance of commercial and critical success that is especially hard to achieve.
"I think Leonardo DiCaprio, the line-up of directors that he's worked with, I would dream to be in that position. Works with the best of the best and is incredibly consistent."
This is the company he wants to keep, and as he effortlessly charms every writer in the room, it's not hard to imagine him getting there. Someone asks if Edward Snowden qualifies as a good hacker or a bad hacker – a Whitehat or a Blackhat, to use the film's terminology, and he dodges the question with practised ease, just like Leo would.
Until last week, the $US70 million ($89 million) film was scheduled to be released in Australia on February 19. But after its poor showing in the US, where it took just $US4 million at the box office on its opening weekend in January, the cinema release was shelved and it was announced the film would go straight to DVD, likely in May. It's a rare setback for Hemsworth.
On paper, he looks to be cast against type as a hacker – he's much too good-looking and too sporty to be convincing as the sort of person who is most comfortable in the virtual world. But as Blackhat is a Michael Mann film, he spends most of his time running through exotic back alleys and ducking for cover as the city gets shot to pieces around him.
He did learn to type like a hacker, though, and to write code, in a three-month boot camp run by "hacking consultant" Chris McKinlay, a member of the Anonymous collective. "People have no idea what's going on, what's possible, what's safe and secure," Hemsworth says. "When I want something to be private, I'll keep it in my head instead of the computer."
Now that Hemsworth and his wife, Spanish actress Elsa Pataky, have twin boys to go with their two-year-old daughter, they guard their privacy more closely than ever. When they bought their five-bedroom house in Malibu (coincidentally from Hogan), gossip websites took readers on a virtual tour of the property, using photographs gleaned from an estate agent's listings.
At the start of Blackhat, Hemsworth's character is in jail, midway through a long sentence for stealing credit-card information. Before filming began, Mann took the actor to prison to talk to some inmates in preparation.
"It was fascinating," Hemsworth says. "We actually walked through the cellblocks at one point. I was being heckled and all sorts. I had blonde ponytail, pulled back in a bun. It was intimidating … And it was at that moment I realised" – a beat – "that I was the sexiest man alive."
Brotherly love?
When Liam Hemsworth was little, his older brothers, Luke and Chris, used to wrap him up in protective clothing, let him loose in the backyard and take pot shots at him with air rifles. A few years later, Liam threw a knife at Chris's head during a particularly rough fight.
Every dynasty needs a creation myth, and Australia's latest gift to Hollywood is no different. Who cares if the stories are true, half-true or barely true at all? Together, the Hemsworths are worth more than the sum of their (beautifully-sculpted) parts, and they're entirely aware of it.
Luke was the first to get into acting, and the first to fail. A stint in Neighbours – all three brothers have appeared in the soap at one time or other – was followed by a few years of solid but unspectacular work on Aussie TV shows. At one point, disillusioned with showbusiness, Luke started a flooring business, but when his little brothers made it big in Hollywood, he decided to have a crack himself. When Chris started getting full of himself, thinking he was too good for Home and Away, it was Luke who told him he was "sick of hearing it".
When Liam's on-again, off-again relationship with Miley Cyrus was going through a bad patch, the brothers reportedly intervened, telling him he'd be better off without her (thus pushing into the waiting arms of Hunger Games co-star Jennifer Lawrence).
"I've watched Liam do things I did at his age, like being in relationships he shouldn't be in, or being reckless just to prove a point. And I had no empathy," Chris recently told GQ magazine. "My mum had to remind me I was the same way."
