Chris Hemsworth got "bored" of himself and suggested playing Thor has stopped him from being "stretched".
The 40-year-old actor was delighted to land the role of warlord Dementus in his new movie 'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' because it left him feeling invigorated, having spent so long feeling he was "stuck".
Admitting it is his favourite role in over 10 years, Chris told Sunday Times Culture magazine: “I felt stuck in what I had been doing. I’d run out of things to say creatively and Furiosa reinvigorated the artistic energy that was dormant. I felt spent at the end of a day, rather than... It’s a departure.
“I was bored of myself, yeah. I was not bored of the opportunities I’d been given, but it all started to feel familiar.
" I’d done film upon film that fell into a similar space and I wasn’t stretching myself. If you play a character again and again you owe it to the audience to bring something new and make it fresh for yourself too.
"We did so with 'Thor: Ragnarok'. But for 'Love and Thunder', for me it got a bit jokey. Too improv.”
Chris admitted he has felt "pigeonholed" by playing Thor.
He said: "If I ever went back to ['Thor'] I’d wonder how we could change it again. But there is a superhero curse in the sense you get pigeonholed, and I’ve felt a little hamstrung with what I could do, so desperately wanted something to scare the s*** out of me. And 'Furiosa' did.”
The Australian actor is "bothered" by the comments made against Marvel blockbusters by the likes of directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
He said: "It felt harsh. And it bothers me, especially from heroes. It was an eye-roll for me, people bashing the superhero space. Those guys had films that didn’t work too — we all have. When they talked about what was wrong with superheroes, I thought, cool, tell that to the billions who watch them. Were they all wrong?
“And cinema-going did not change because of superheroes, but because of smartphones and social media. Superhero films actually kept people in the cinemas during that transition and now people are coming back. So they deserve a little more appreciation.”
But the former 'Home and Away' star is particularly infuriated by actors such as Idris Elba and Christian Bale who have appeared in Marvel films but then later been critical.
He said: “Nah. It’s, like, ‘They’re films that are successful — put me in one. Oh, mine didn’t work? I’ll bash them.’
“Look, I grew up on a soap opera and it used to bother me when actors would later talk about the show with guilt or shame. Humility goes a long way.
"One of the older actors on 'Home and Away' said, ‘We don’t get paid to make the good lines sound good, but to make the bad ones work.’ That stuck with me."
