While continuing to promote his latest film, Amazon MGM’s Crime 101, Chris Hemsworth appeared on a recent episode of his podcast SmartLess and got candid about his decision to leave Los Angeles with his family at the height of his Marvel fame. After five years of marriage, Hemsworth and his wife, actor Elsa Pataky, decided to leave Los Angeles and move their family to Hemsworth’s hometown of Australia.
“It was right around the time my sons were born, and we just kind of grew accustomed to Los Angeles and weren’t enjoying it, you know?” Hemsworth said. “It was like nothing was being filmed there. We were filming in other places, and then… we would come home and be photographed by paparazzi and all kinds of decorations of living in that space.”
Hemsworth said that leaving Los Angeles was the “biggest decision” to make, but it didn’t interfere with his professional career as an actor, as he also traveled to other locations to film many productions.
“When you come home from work, you want to go on vacation, right? For me, it’s like coming home, it feels like a vacation,” Hemsworth said of living in Australia. “We have a big farm and horses and bikes and surfing.”
The exodus of actors from Hollywood occurred years before the coronavirus pandemic, and the Hollywood strike further reduced the amount of production being filmed in Los Angeles. As Variety reported last month, film, TV and commercial production days in LA fell 12.3% in the final quarter of 2025 compared to the previous quarter. This trend has continued since 2022, and in 2025 overall production was about half of what it was in 2019.
Hemsworth made his Marvel debut as Thor in 2011, two years after making his Hollywood debut as George Kirk in J. J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot. When he decided to leave LA for Australia, he was in the midst of producing three Marvel sequels (The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron). He went on to appear in major Hollywood productions such as 2016’s “The Huntsman: Winter’s War” and “Ghostbusters.” Hemsource is scheduled to return as Thor later this year in Avengers: Doomsday, which will be released in December.
Listen to Hemsworth’s full interview on the “SmartLess” podcast in the video below.
