Thor blimey: can Chris Hemsworth escape the post-Marvel curse?
Chris Hemsworth has a tough mission in the new Netflix movie Extraction: his world-weary but well-groomed mercenary must rescue the son of an Indian drug baron. He is not explicitly told to shoot as many people in the face as possible in the process, but he throws that in for free. Offscreen, Extraction serves as an even tougher mission for Hemsworth. Think of the Australian hunk and you probably think “Thor” (possibly followed by “Phwoar!”). He has spent a good decade playing the Marvel god and little else (the less said about Men in Black: International the better). Without the cape and the hammer, will audiences stay interested? Or will they just think: “Why is Thor shooting everybody in the face now?”
This is a test that many retired superheroes are facing post-Avengers. Film-makers, too. Extraction is very much a Marvel-alumni project. Its producers are Joe and Anthony Russo, directors of the last two Avengers movies (Joe adapted the screenplay, too). The director is Sam Hargrave, formerly a stunt coordinator on Marvel movies. The Russos already tested these waters last November with 21 Bridges, a police thriller starring Chadwick Boseman, AKA Black Panther. Boseman isn’t quite so tethered to his alter ego as Hemsworth, and 21 Bridges was a decent movie, but it didn’t find much of an audience in a box office crowded out by Oscar contenders and blockbusters.
A more worrying indicator is the fate of Robert Downey Jr. Stepping out of his Iron Man suit after a decade, Downey went big. This year’s Dolittle was a broad spectrum, bells-and-whistles extravaganza, and it bombed spectacularly. Was that down to Downey’s diminished star power or his ropey Welsh accent? We’ll never know, but it’s sure looking cold out there.
Some are taking a more cautious approach: Chris Evans was part of a large ensemble in Knives Out. Others have chosen to remain in the Marvel fold, hence Disney+’s forthcoming series WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye – all featuring the original actors from the movies. The only major figure to have bucked the trend seems to be Scarlett Johansson, who moved on from Avengers to two Oscar-nominated roles last year (Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit). Then again, she still has her solo Black Widow movie to come, so it’s too soon to say whether she has really escaped the curse.
As for Hemsworth, he has another Thor movie in the pipeline: Love and Thunder, due 2022 (and co-starring his erstwhile co-Man in Black, Tessa Thompson). So whatever happens with Extraction, he should be all right. But many actors who assumed a superhero gig would be a springboard for their careers must be wondering if they’re not more of a final destination.
Extraction is available on Netflix from Friday 24 April
racter’s secretary, Miss Marmelstein; the part was enlarged to do her justice. Shortly after the play closed in early 1963, after a stellar run of 300 performances, the pair married. A year later Streisand was the toast of the business in Funny Girl, with an album at No 1. Gould has likened their marriage to both a souffle and a “bath of lava”. Streisand has been working on a book for some time, says Gould, and will often call him to draw on his recollections. “And I don’t spin. It’s so precious to me, that it has to be absolutely right.”
Gould’s picture of their marriage has Streisand putting her career above their family life and him rebelling against the limits of it. They divorced in 1971, five years after the birth of their son Jason and following a twoyear separation. Streisand later called Gould to ask why they had grown apart. He told her: “We didn’t grow together, and you made yourself more important than us, and all I care about is us. We made it very fast, and no one has what we have.” But, today Gould says: “I couldn’t play the part. I had to be able to find myself, to be able to be myself. I couldn’t let myself live in a mould.”
In 1969, Gould starred in Paul Mazursky’s wife-swap comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. His performance secured him his only Oscar nomination, for best supporting actor. A string of hits followed: Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, in which Gould cast himself as Trapper John McIntyre, and the student protest film Getting Straight. It was around this time that he got his second-best review – from Muhammad Ali, who told him: “You do what you do as well as I do what I do.”
In 1970, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, hailed as “the star for an uptight age” for his (as he explains it now) “unexpected success” at a time of political upheaval. Later I ask him if the current US administration causes him some distress. “Some distress? Oh my goodness,” he replies, pulling his hands down over his eyes theatrically. “It’s not just that and it’s not just him.”
He struggles to simplify his views: “I can’t even get an acceptable definition in my Webster’s dictionary.” But as a unionist, an idealist and a devout Jew, he believes “it’s all of us together, or none of us”. He says he intends to study politics more, though he seems to avoid talking about it where possible. Shooting the 2013 television drama Ray Donovan with Jon Voight, a Trump supporter, Gould told him: “No politics, Jon.” (When they work together “it can be like Laurel and Hardy on acid,” he adds.) He recalls a similarly loaded phone conversation with Jack Nicholson, who said to him: “I love being American, Ell.” Gould agreed, making reference to Canada and Mexico. Nicholson shouted back: “No, no, no! Just America!”
“I thought: ‘Gee, that’s rather Trumpish, isn’t it?’ Diversity is essential to me. It’s essential to all of us.”
In 1971, Gould was still cresting the wave and had just returned from Sweden, where he shot The Touch: the first English-language film for legendary director Ingmar Bergman. The director has largely dismissed the picture, but Gould was honoured to be chosen as his first non-Scandinavian leading man and sees working with the demanding director as a transformative moment. He recalls: “Bergman said to me, outside a 2,000-year-old church near Stockholm: ‘You’ve gone beyond your limits and you’ll have to live more to understand what you’ve done.’ “At that moment, I didn’t know limits.”
He was a bankable star, with a tendency to push back against authority. “I can be very aggressive, or equally shy and repressed.” He was also at times a compulsive gambler. The 1974 drama California Split, said by some to be the best film about gambling ever made, was semi-autobiographical. Decades later, spending time in casinos for Ocean’s Eleven, Gould says he realised those days were behind him: “As much as I love to win, I hate losing more, and there’s nothing I need that I can win.”
He has always denied ever having had a drug problem: on national television, in 1988; on the phone to Streisand (his response, in summary: “Bullshit”); and to me. “I had a reality problem,” is his oft-repeated quip. “Of course I smoked marijuana. I don’t do that now, because I’m centred and balanced and I don’t want to alter that.” As for “mindexpanding drugs” – mescaline, psilocybin, acid – Gould says: “I had some experience with that and did some work behind it.” He remembers telling Bergman (then in his 50s) about it. “He said it was interesting to him, but that he felt he did not want to do it at that time.” Was that experimentation part of his pushing back against directors? “No. No. No! But still, I saw too much – I knew too much.”
After making The Touch, Gould says he “should have stayed out of work for a while”. Instead, in 1971, he took on A Glimpse of Tiger as co-producer and star. The film was never made (though it was later retooled as What’s Up, Doc?, starring Streisand), but its story is infamous. Just five days in, production was shut down, following reports of Gould’s erratic behaviour and power struggles. His co-star Kim Darby was so frightened of him that security was hired. Gould says now that he tried to reassure Darby that he was “really very sweet” and that she could ask for “time out” at any time – “but it couldn’t work that way”. Of his attempt to undermine the director, Anthony Harvey, he says. “We didn’t communicate and I behaved very badly.”
Gould says he was “not sufficiently developed” to harness his newfound vision and naive about the demands of a production. “I wouldn’t compromise. I couldn’t. And I had to find out for myself, taking a chance, not knowing if I would ever get back. It’s pretty fabulous, to take the chance … and not be enslaved to one’s success,” he says. But the financial toll on Gould was significant and the fallout so disastrous that he was considered unfit to work for two years.
In 1973, M*A*S*H director Altman threw Gould a lifeline, casting him as Philip Marlowe in his updating of The Long Goodbye. “Altman says: ‘You are this guy,’” says Gould, exhaling as though he still can’t believe his luck. The studio insisted that he take a psychiatric test, as well as the standard physical. Gould says Altman’s faith extended to allowing him to improvise a scene where Marlowe paints his face with inky fingerprints at a police station. “It exhibited the confidence and trust that Altman had in me, because it would have taken 25 minutes to clean me up.”
The same year he married the actor Jenny Bogart. They went on to have two children – and two divorces. “Jenny married me three times,” says Gould.
Though they are no longer living together, he says he “will be married to Jenny for ever – until she can do better”.
Gould’s likably loopy Marlowe trumps Humphrey Bogart and Dick Powell for many – but to an entire generation he is Mr Geller from Friends. He almost didn’t take the part – “There wasn’t much in it for me” – but wound up doing 22 episodes in the show’s 236episode run. He remembers it as a “very good experience” and feels fortunate to be part of its enduring success.
Oddly, as Friends reruns onwards into the future, it may come to define a 50-year career that, Gould does not deny, has had highs and lows. Looking back, Gould says it would be “disloyal” to other crew members to regret any film he has worked on. “Sometimes things work, sometimes things don’t work, and we learn from it.” Even the 1978 Matilda, playing opposite a man in a cheap and unsettling kangaroo suit? He is tickled by the memory. “Oh, it wasn’t very good.”
We have been talking for three hours; even Gould is surprised that there is still coffee left in his mug. These days, he takes pleasure from nature, his children, his grandchildren and reflecting on life. He has been asked to direct but seems unhurried. Gould points to “career”, in his prized Webster’s dictionary, as having derived from a Spanish word meaning “obstacle course”.
“I see it as a circle,” he says. “Sometimes, when people ask me: ‘How’s it going?’ I enjoy saying: ‘It’s going round.’ It always goes around.” He sounds like his favourite critic.
glows cherry pink in the sun in an Aberystwyth charity shop. Mum, at 80, still had the pattern and immediately started knitting a replacement.
My daughter has become quite attached to this new sweater, wearing it every day in the run-up to the last election and now on Zoom calls while working at home during lockdown.
Hakan Karaosman
These challenging and uncertain times remind us the importance of justice, empathy, wellbeing and love. We need to rebuild the fashion system by using social, natural and creative resources constructively.
This custom-made silk shirt I am wearing is from the 1970s. I inherited it from my father and have been cherishing it ever since. The silk Gucci scarf was a gift from my mother-inlaw who had treasured this iconic piece in her wardrobe since the 1970s. Last but not least, I keep on proudly using and loving these jeans that I purchased back in 2002. These are some of my empowering pieces that remind me of my values and that inspire me to work harder in order to help the fashion system become more sustainable.
Mia Hadrill
As a child, I was either naked or in a swimming costume. My parents were not keen on kidswear bikinis, so when I was gifted this one, aged seven, on a camping trip in the Scilly Isles, Scotland, by a lady it no longer fitted, I was ecstatic. I have been wearing it ever since.
In 1998, the bikini travelled to Nevis, the Caribbean. Despite my mother saying it was ballooning and did not fit, I remember swimming in the warm sea with my friends and jumping off a fallen palm tree.
I’ve grown up in and with this bikini. I played in it as a child, chatted with friends in the mountains wearing it and romanced on the beach. Wearing it now, I’ve pondered existential questions and accepted that stretch marks are here to stay. It’s joined me for a beachside dance and a chance holiday romance.
I am happy to say that today, over 20 years on, it’s still a good friend and that my clothing love story has not reached the end.
Lily Pearmain
I don’t think about my work overalls when I put them on. I don’t think about how they make me feel or the fabric or the fit. That’s simply because they are an extension of me. I’m not trying to prove anything when I put them on, there’s absolutely nothing aspirational about them. They just signal “work, now”.
Trying to work without them just feels wrong. I took all three pairs home for a wash recently, and felt at a loss at the studio the next day without them, barely getting a single thing done. I can only conclude that the overalls are integral to my mindset and work.
Laura Nash
When my son, Roman, was born, my mother-in-law gave me a bundle of beautiful hand-me-down baby clothes, all lovingly handcrafted by her mother. The clothes had been worn by my husband and his sisters in the mid-1980s.
I’m particularly fond of this little waistcoat which is now a staple in Roman’s spring wardrobe. Not only is it beautifully made, it is also reversible with a blue paisley pattern on one side and red flowers on the other.
It has been so special to dress Roman in these clothes as he is growing, knowing that they were worn by his dad and aunties and have stood the test of time. Now his aunty Lily is taking the baton during isolation and has made Roman some fabulous yellow plaid trousers to add to the archive. Who knows, maybe Roman’s children will wear them one day.
Orsola de Castro
This is my love story for a map dress which I have worn hundreds of times. Here it is, refreshed and ready for another day on my body.
When I first bought it, I kept it exclusively for the evening, wearing it with my grandmother’s pearl necklace and monster heels. Many times after wild nights out (or in) I woke up still in it.
After a few years it graduated from evening to daytime wear – but still for special occasions only. However, I always knew that I wanted to wear it as a nightie / Sunday slouch, so I have been waiting for some kind of tear, or an indelible stain to appear.
But it’s so well made, so easy to care for (a quick steam under the shower and a lick of sponge and it’s all new again) that zero damage has occurred. And so now, in the midst of lockdown, I wait no more, self permission granted, and I wear it every day – my trusted friend, my second skin, my clothing hero.
Fashion Revolution Weektakes place 20-26 April.
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