Chris Hemsworth ditches Hollywood to raise his kids in his native Australia
"Avengers" and "Thor" star Chris Hemsworth found L.A. living a bit too "suffocating," so he packed up his wife and young children and moved them back to his native Australia.
"I love what I do as an actor, but when you are surrounded by it constantly, it becomes a bit suffocating," he told Modern Luxury Miami magazine during an interview. "It's nice to have conversations with people and be a part of a community that doesn't live and breathe that world."
That realization -- and the big move itself -- was spurred on by the arrival of his children with wife Elsa Pataky. "It's no longer all about me, which is quite refreshing," he said "Acting is the most self-absorbed world, where you are thinking about your feelings. You are constantly having to self-analyze or analyze a character you are playing, so you are internalizing and thinking, thinking, thinking about me. ... It's just a horrible, noisy conversation. Once the kids arrived, I was like, 'Wow, this is what life is about.'"
But it wasn't just how self-absorbed a life in the company town that is Los Angeles could make him. Something about the city's general lifestyle was also grating on the Australian native.
"L.A. is a tough place to get around with kids. There's not a whole lot of foot traffic. It was all about loading up the car and car seats," he explained. "We were living shoulder to shoulder in the suburbs and thought that's not how we want our kids to grow up."
Australia, he insists, has been a welcome change: "Here, we just walk out the door and head to the beach down the street. It's a much more simple life," he said. "Moving to a kind of farm setup back here on the coast in Australia has been the best thing."