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.
“I’m a HUGE FAN of [HENRY CAVILL] . . . but my job was to portray [the character] in a way that MADE SENSE to me"
Optimism, for Hemsworth, doesn’t mean denial. It means discipline. He acknowledges there’s plenty of things happening in the world to be grim about, yet he also knows the only levers worth thinking about are the ones he can actually pull – his next scene, gratitude for his job, the text to his mum, the walk in the park to find the deer. Control what you can control and let the commentary eat itself.
“There are a lot of things that we can look at around the planet right now that we can feel unhopeful about. I just try and focus on the things that we can be grateful for. I look after the people around me and try to be a good person.”
Ask where his resolve comes from and he points home. His dad worked in child protection and Liam comes from a household that shunned excess; his mates had fathers who worked with their hands – whole communities built on trades. The upbringing internalised a work ethic that tells him to turn up, don’t make a fuss and finish the job.
“I have been doing this job for so long,” he says, “and it forces you to have discipline and show up every day. It’s incredibly demanding and requires a lot of focus. But I feel so fortunate to be an actor. It’s rewarding at the end of the day, and I never want to take it for granted.”
Now his life runs on a rhythm that borders on meditative, taking him from home to set, set to home, home to gym, gym to sleep. Weekends are reserved for repaying the sleep debt, walking with the deer and training sessions that keep him sane. It’s not the sprint of his twenties anymore. It’s the marathon.
THAT DISCIPLINE FACED its toughest test on The Witcher, in a role that turned Hemsworth’s moviemaking sprint instincts into a capacity to handle the long haul. What began in late 2022 as a casual phone call on the set of Land of Bad became a three-year immersion into one of the biggest fantasy franchises on the planet.
“My agent called and said, ‘Netflix wants to know how you feel about stepping into The Witcher,’” he recalls. “I had seen a little bit of the show at the time, and I knew about it. But I’d played the video game on Xbox a few years before and loved that game massively. It requires about 500 hours of playing Xbox, so I got really excited about it, digging into that character [Geralt of Rivia], and this world.”
It wasn’t exactly a new role – it was an inheritance. Henry Cavill was stepping away, fans were sharpening their knives and Hemsworth was being asked to replace someone who lived rent-free in the heads of millions. He didn’t flinch at the challenge, intent on being respectful to Cavill’s legacy without resorting to imitation.
“I’m a huge fan of Henry’s and a massive fan of what he did in the show,” Hemsworth says. “I wanted to be hugely respectful of what he did, but my job was to portray [the character] in a way that made sense for me. So, we just had to push forward and explore it. At the end of the day, I just had to find where it all sat comfortably with me and what felt right.”
That meant showing up on set every day from February through November in 2024 for Season 4 (which was released on Netflix on October 30), pausing briefly, then diving straight into Season 5, shooting for which wrapped the night before our conversation. “I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet that I don’t have to turn up to work again tomorrow and can catch my breath again. You get used to running on adrenaline and fumes and little sleep.” He can laugh about it, but the adrenaline is still humming through his voice. He’s proud of the work, but he’s also physically wrecked.
“Most of the stuff I’ve done through my career has had some element of stunts and being in decent shape,” he says. “And one of the first parts I try to tackle is what sort of shape a character needs to be in. For this, I felt like I needed to put on a bunch of muscle and be as big as possible. But when I did put on a bunch of weight, I was moving slower. I needed to be functional.”
Being Geralt requires sword work that punishes shoulders and knees, the kind of fast-twitch choreography that exposes weak links. When Hemsworth eventually slimmed down, the blade moved the way it should, but the injuries came anyway. “I’ve been dealing with so many different injuries throughout this shoot,” he admits. “It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?” he laughs of the aches and pains that come in the mid-thirties. His right shoulder groaned for a year and a half, and when he fixed it, the left one put its hand up.
When he started filming Season 4, a long-standing knee issue flared, although this one was almost welcome. “I had a knee injury, which was funny because at the beginning of my part of the story with Geralt, he has a serious leg injury. It was the same leg that I was dealing with, and I was like, ‘Yeah. Cool, mate. I’m right there with you.’”
If the physical demands tested him, the social ones presented an added challenge. “It felt like starting high school halfway through high school and everyone else was already friends and you go there trying to make friends,” he says of joining for Season 4. Joey Batey, who plays Geralt’s best mate Jaskier, became his anchor. “Joey was such a guiding light from the beginning and so welcoming and so supportive. He’s now one of my closest friends.”
The grind was relentless, but by the end, Hemsworth had stopped thinking about Cavill, the critics, the comparisons. He’d found his own version of Geralt. “The more you shoot that show, the more time you spend in that character’s head, the more it felt organic to me.
“I just want it to be out there,” he says of the new seasons and the wait since his casting. “I’m really proud of what everybody did. People put so much into it, and I was constantly in awe of them. I can’t wait for people to see what we’ve done.”
“I love to work REALLY HARD and then I love to DISAPPEAR after that”
WHILE UNDOUBTEDLY A huge franchise to add to his impressive CV, The Witcher is perhaps not the biggest franchise Liam Hemsworth has ever belonged to. That honour surely belongs to the Hemsworth franchise itself: three brothers, one surname, a global export of Australian-style masculinity. Luke, the steady craftsman; Chris, the Norse god; and Liam, the youngest, whose life and career have always looked different (and richer) up close compared to scanning it on the internet.
With the fame generated by his work and surname comes intense scrutiny, and it used to wear him down. “For a long period of time, it was very stressful. It was hard to deal with, and it really got to me,” he admits. “There have been times throughout my career when you do get caught up in focusing too much on the wrong things, and feeling like you’re getting crushed and overwhelmed by it all.”
As a remedy, he’s learned to go quiet. Privacy isn’t a brand move but a protective reflex. He doesn’t seek out rooms packed with humanity, yet he has often ended up in the centre of them. Nowadays, when he’s promoting a film or TV series, he steps into the light, does the job and then vanishes, most often back into the surf, or a field of deer. “I think it’s just important for me to keep certain things personal,” he says. “I don’t go out to the clubs. I don’t do things that attract attention in that way. I live in a small town and I’m doing pretty normal stuff every day. I love to work really hard and then I love to disappear after that.”
Hemsworth is proof that you can build a quiet life and still be very open about the joy you’re feeling. For the past two and a half years in London, model and fellow Aussie Gabriella Brooks has been living quietly by his side. The pair are now engaged, and the way he talks about her lands somewhere between gratitude and relief.
“I’ve had my partner Gabby here with me this whole time and that’s been amazing,” he says. “She’s been incredibly supportive, and I really don’t think I could have done this job if it wasn’t for her being here with me and picking me up off the floor when I’m exhausted and having mental breakdowns and physical breakdowns and all that stuff.”
The commentary, the comparisons and the constant background noise don’t touch him anymore. “How do you block out the noise?” he repeats. “It’s only noisy if I focus on that stuff. I’m just focusing on my journey. And the noise is external. It’s not like I’m walking around, and people are yelling in my face their opinions and things.”
What does cut through is family. He misses home in a way that hurts, though if that sounds like a sad story, he’s honest about his role in it. “I feel like I’m a terrible son or a terrible brother most of the time because I’m not great at maintaining that immediate contact all the time and texting and letting people know where I’m at or what I’m doing or how I’m feeling,” he admits. Weeks can slip by without a phone call to family. “Then I feel like I try and shut it all out because I get too sad that it’s still another six months before I see them.”
When a homecoming nears, that’s when Hemsworth reengages in the group chat. Reunions with the Hemsworth clan, when they happen, are unselfconsciously ecstatic. “It’s like a family of Golden Retrievers meeting for the first time in 10 years,” he laughs. “We all lose our minds.”
Soon he’ll swap stags for saltwater, London’s old haunts for the Northern NSW coastline. His pack of Retrievers will welcome him home. But before the excitement, a well-deserved holiday. “I’m going to go sit on an island somewhere and just stare at the water for a little bit.”
As for what’s next, Hemsworth is keen to get back to movies, it seems. “The last few months I’ve been looking at movies again. It’s nice to come out of [The Witcher] and to be looking for different characters and stories to tell in the future.” Hemsworth even hints at a return to earlier form, perhaps a Third Act, circling back to running metaphor that’s followed him throughout this phase of life.
“I prefer the sprint of working on a movie. I was always been a 100-metre sprinter in high school. That was always my race. I never really liked the long-distance stuff. But it’s been a great journey, nonetheless.”
He says this with a smile, and even though he’s itching for a change, you sense the marathon has served him well, demanding patience and resilience and leaving him steadier, grateful, more certain of himself.
In the meantime, don’t mistake his current stillness for absence. Hemsworth has spent the last few years being very present in places that don’t trend. On set, he’s been relentless, even if off it he’s stayed quiet. It isn’t coyness. It’s architecture. Foundations for something permanent.
The funny thing about long games is they look boring until they don’t. When the new season of The Witcher dropped on October 30, the commentary would have flooded in and the noise would have roared back. That’s fine by Hemsworth; the work’s already done. He’s found a way to be himself inside someone else’s story while keeping private the parts of his life that belong to him. And somewhere between the stags of Richmond Park and the surf at home, Liam Hemsworth has learned the only thing that really matters is when to run, and when to wait.
PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSISTANTS: Charlie Walker and Jos Rea
STYLING ASSISTANT: Zac Sunman
PRODUCTION: @the_production_studios.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Jude Spour
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Elliot Spour.
LOCATION: The Langham, London; langhamhotels.com
