You can read the full article at the Esquire Australia website.
ESQUIRE AUSTRALIA – The youngest Hemsworth has learnt to block out the noise, shoulder the work without fuss – and head out to touch grass whenever he gets the chance
ON WEEKENDS, Liam Hemsworth goes wild. “I’ve got to be outside,” he says, the tension visibly leaving his body as he talks about getting out into nature. “Your mind goes to some odd places when you don’t.”These days, if the London weather permits, you’ll find him in the wild, strolling for hours through Richmond Park, moving quietly among the oaks and chestnuts, a hulking figure set against the fields, filling his lungs with the air movie studios often deny him, muddying his boots and finding tranquillity in the chaos of stardom. “That’s honestly been one of my favourite things keeping me sane and feeling calm. Being able to go walk in the park, breathing some fresh air.” While he still wears the face of one of the world’s most recognisable men, none of that matters in the park.
“There’s a shit tonne of deer in there,” he beams, recounting his new weekend ritual. “It’s become this fun weekend thing to walk into the park and find out where the deer are hiding.”
The deer don’t flinch when he finds them. He relishes the anonymity among creatures who neither know nor care about Hollywood franchises, red carpets or headlines. In their company, he isn’t Liam Hemsworth, the action star or tabloid fixture. He’s simply a bloke on a long walk, seeking escape in the quiet of the forest, using the park as an antidote to modern life.
It’s easy to romanticise the famous when they tell tales like this. With Liam Hemsworth, it’s easy to be kind. The Hemsworth hallmarks are all there: the absurd blue eyes, the surfer’s shoulders, the familiar deep timbre that makes small talk feel like banter between friends. He’s generous with his time, disarmingly polite and the sort of bloke who remembers to ask you how you are before you ask him.
Does Liam Hemsworth have flaws? Of course. You needn’t search Spotify for long to hear a one-sided, over-produced take on his mistakes. But the man sitting here in his West London cottage isn’t running from them. He’s learned from the turbulence, rebuilt on the rubble and stepped calmly into a new chapter of his life.
Now 35, Hemsworth is comfortable in this latest version of himself, evidenced in the way he carries himself. He’s a man who’s survived the sprint of his twenties and learnt how to play the long game, settling into an era defined by patience, gratitude and hard work. “What I’m doing is blocking out the noise and just focusing on what I’m doing and I’m not getting too caught up in all the other stuff,” he says.
Less distracted and more deliberate, this is Liam Hemsworth in Act II. The hunger remains, but it’s tempered by something much rarer in his line of work: perspective.
FOR HEMSWORTH, THE lessons weren’t subtle. “I’ve always been sort of all or nothing,” he says. “My twenties feel like such a blur.”
He was 19 when he left Australia with a carry-on full of naive confidence and a head full of certainty. “Acting was the one thing that I was sure I wanted to do. At the time I had a naive confidence about it all. I was sure that I was going to move to LA and then I was going to get work.”
Remarkably, the plan worked. Within three months he had his first job. Then came the run: The Last Song, The Hunger Games and Independence Day: Resurgence. “From then on, I sort of jumped from film to film,” he says, underselling roles alongside Harrison Ford, Kate Winslet, Gary Oldman and Woody Harrelson. He brought a brooding intensity to some of Hollywood’s biggest commercial franchises, his name climbing marquee lists while he was still finding his feet.
But the sprint eventually turned painful, as sprints tend to do. The Malibu fires of 2018 took his home. A 2019 health scare saw him hospitalised with kidney stones. A decade-long relationship was reduced to a headline, then a court document, then finally a hooky pop chorus.
Through it all, Hemsworth stayed locked into the work, the challenges only sharpening his resolve. He came out of his twenties more stoic than sour, with a message to those who ever doubted him: I’m still here.
His philosophy these days is equally stripped back. “Rule number one, stay calm, don’t panic and be optimistic,” he says. There isn’t a second rule. There doesn’t need to be.
