Chris Hemsworth Shared Ghostbusters Experience For Thor ( Photo Credit – Instagram )
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Back in 2016, Chris Hemsworth took a detour from hammer-throwing superhero action to join an all-new kind of team. He signed on for Ghostbusters, the reboot of the iconic ’80s franchise, this time led by an all-female cast including Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones.
Hemsworth wasn’t the main lead of the film, but he still had quite an intriguing character to play. He portrayed Kevin, the group’s dim-witted but lovable receptionist, and on the surface, it might’ve seemed like a step down for a Marvel star. But as it turns out, Ghostbusters taught Hemsworth something crucial, changing the way he approached acting.
In interviews with Esquire, Hemsworth has spoken openly about how much the Ghostbusters’ experience meant to him. For an actor who had been used to carefully sticking to the script, working with director Paul Feig pushed him to try and learn improvisation. “That was some of the most fun I’ve ever had on set,” Hemsworth said. “It was my real jumping-in point to improvisation. Before that, I wanted to be very confident in knowing exactly what was on the page.”
But Ghostbusters flipped that on its head, and that shift cracked something open for Hemsworth. He no longer needed to cling to certainty in his script. Instead, he found excitement in unpredictability as he unleashed his creative and spontaneous side. “It was way more freeing and a lot more creatively satisfying. Now I want to put myself in situations where I feel like I’m right on the edge of getting it wrong,” he shared.
That new mindset followed him straight into Thor: Ragnarok, where director Taika Waititi fully embraced improvisation on set. Hemsworth’s newfound confidence in going off-script became a cornerstone of Thor’s much-nuanced portrayal.
“It does [happen on the Marvel sets.] From Thor 3, definitely, it became hugely improvised. And I’m so glad I’ve been able to work with Paul prior to that,” Hemsworth stated. “So by the time I got to Thor 3, I was incredibly enthusiastic to do it. Taika Waititi, the director, had the same opinion. And we carried that into Avengers.”
While the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot didn’t light up the box office, it gave Hemsworth something arguably more valuable than a hit: growth. His time on that set reshaped his creative process and helped breathe new life into a character that might’ve otherwise grown stale. Sometimes, the roles that look like detours end up being the ones that take you the farthest.
