If you've watched Chris Hemsworth portray Thor often enough, you might think the actor is immune to the effects of aging. Even as depressed, cynical, beer-bellied Thor in Avengers: Endgame, Hemsworth manages to exude an aura of indestructibility. He can be like that off-screen, too. He's a passionate surfer, mountain biker, and Australian rules football player.
It turns out, however, that the Australian actor is human just like the rest of us. “I'm 39 now, and in the last few years, I've noticed that injuries don't repair as quickly,” Hemsworth confesses, “and I have a few aches and creaks when I get out of the bed in the morning.”
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His recent ruminations on aging coincided with an offer to participate in a limited-run TV series co-produced by National Geographic that would take him through a set of physical, mental, and emotional challenges in pursuit of living better and longer. “I was going to be a guinea pig in the name of science and research for longevity,” Hemsworth says. “I was really excited about some of the challenges. Others I was curious about, and some were completely insane. But it was with National Geographic, so I knew I would be in safe hands, and I thought, ‘Why not?’”
Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, which premiered November 16 on Disney+, features the actor on quests designed to explore specific outcomes. In a segment focused on memory, he gets lost hiking in the Australian outback. When the topic is maximizing strength, he climbs a 100-foot rope dangling over a canyon. In other episodes, he swims in an arctic fjord to learn about coping with shock and doesn't eat for four days (then hunts for a meal) to explore physiological recovery. Perhaps most difficult of all, he has to face up to his own potential frailty and mortality: The final installment includes Hemsworth lying in a coffin contemplating his own death.
“It was an incredible experience,” he says of filming the show. “We were originally supposed to shoot over two or three weeks, but it ended up being almost three years due to COVID-19 restrictions and different shooting schedules.” That extra time gave the show more depth and nuance, he says. “I was learning different things about myself in these challenges and going through changes in real time over a long period. It's unlike anything I've ever done or seen before. Then, after a long, strenuous, exhausting journey, we close on a chapter about death.”
While Hemsworth's energetic nature made him a good fit for Limitless, the series taught him something about his usual full-throttle pace. “There's always been a competitive element to anything I do, whether it's with myself or other people,” he says. “I'd be all about how much I can do, how much weight I can lift, and ‘more more more.’ Doing the show really opened my eyes to the idea that there's a far more efficient and healthier way of doing things—and also a more enjoyable one.”
In each of Limitless' six episodes, Hemsworth is counseled by an expert. For the segment on stress, he talks with social psychologist Modupe Akinola, PhD, professor of management at Columbia Business School. When he does the memory challenge, he speaks with Sharon Sha, MD, associate vice chair of clinical research neurology and neurological sciences at the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders. In the show about death, he interacts with Alua Arthur, a death doula and founder of Going with Grace, which provides death doula training and end-of-life planning.
“Taking the time to sit with my experiences and absorb knowledge from people who are versed in that space was quite humbling,” Hemsworth says. “I had to surrender to the process rather than trying to control every piece of it. In all these episodes, whether they were about strength and the body or memory or acceptance of death, it all came back to that stillness.”
Among the physical feats, swimming in frigid waters in Norway was the most taxing. “I'm freezing just stepping off the plane, and then I'm stripping off my clothes and walking through the snow to the water!” Hemsworth recalls. The challenge related to memory and the brain, meanwhile, proved difficult in other ways. “We looked at my blood work and genetics, and I found out a lot about my own risk factors, says Hemsworth, whose grandfather has been living with Alzheimer's disease and sometimes does not recognize his grandchildren.
Hemsworth was given the shocking news that he carries two copies of APOE4 gene variant, which is associated with an eight to tenfold increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. “The idea that I won’t be able to remember the life I’ve experienced, or my kids, or my wife, is probably my biggest fear,” he says while introducing the episode.
But Peter Attia, MD, a physician whose work focuses on the science of longevity, tells Hemsworth that having this information may motivate him to protect his brain health now in ways that most people don’t think about until their fifties and sixties, such as taking on new challenges to stimulate the brain and spending time in nature to reduce stress.
After receiving this information, Hemsworth goes with his friend Otis Hope Carey, a First Nations Australian artist, on a long overnight hike to a corroboree, a ceremonial meeting of indigenous people. “We [hiked] with no phones or other navigation aids, and we had to do it all using nature and memories and previous knowledge,” he says. “It was beautiful. I could breathe easier, I could think more clearly, and my senses were heightened. This was a real reminder that you've got to say ‘No more’ and work out what's more important. Holding on to my memories and being able to age with a clear mind, interact with my family—my kids and someday my grandkids—and have these experiences, that's what's important to me.” He has since publicly said he plans to take a break from acting after promoting Limitless so he can spend time with his family.
In the last episode of Limitless, Hemsworth spends several days in a senior living community called Sunset Pines, where the motto is “We live every day to the fullest!” He put on an “aging suit” that muffled his hearing, clouded his vision, and weighed his body down. “I had just wrapped Thor: Love and Thunder and was coming off the back of what felt like a 10-year run of films. I had a few injuries, and I was emotionally spent,” he says. “The last thing I wanted to do was go into that retirement village.”
But he was guided by BJ Miller, MD, a palliative care physician at Mettle Health in Mill Valley, CA who chose his medical specialty because he'd had a brush with death as a sophomore at Princeton University. On a night out with friends, Miller impulsively climbed on top of a nonmoving commuter train and was electrocuted by 11,000 volts. Quick action by his friends saved Miller's life, but he lost both legs below the knees and half of one arm.
“His gentle nature and the complete acceptance, positive outlook, and perspective on his experience are incredible,” says Hemsworth. “Dr. Miller helped me understand that by accepting our mortality and not resisting it, by letting go, we let life in.”
Listen now!
On the Brain & Life podcast, Dr. Miller shares how an accident that resulted in the loss of three of his limbs challenged him to look at life and death in a new and positive perspective.
At Sunset Pines, Hemsworth became close with some of the residents, including Aisea Vakalalabure, an 88-year-old Fijian man, who talks about the grief of losing his older brother and the self-doubt he experienced in taking on his brother's role as village chief. Nonetheless, he tells Hemsworth, “being an elderly person is the best thing.”
“Everyone I spoke to in that episode put things in perspective,” Hemsworth says. “I'm so thankful for my career, but I realized that if I don't stop and look around and appreciate the moment, I'm just going to run from this experience to the next experience and not ever absorb what is here and appreciate it to the extent that I can.”
At one point, Alua Arthur asks Hemsworth to imagine his last moment and what he would want to be doing. “I started describing my family and friends sitting around with me at my house, and then I realized, ‘Oh yeah, that's what I do every Sunday. How lucky I am! I have everything I'll ever need.’ It was quite peaceful and profound and something I've thought a lot about since then.”
In another deeply moving moment, Hemsworth is joined by his wife, actress Elsa Pataky, who has on makeup and prosthetics that make her look like an 80-year-old woman. “I'd been traveling a lot and we hadn't seen each other for a while, and all of a sudden here she was in this aging makeup, and I know she was feeling quite vulnerable,” he says. While shooting the episode, Hemsworth was continually reminded that he too was supposed to be 80 years old. “I had quite an internal battle with what's real and what's not. There was such a wonderful mash of emotions in the moment when I saw Elsa. There were just tears of joy.”
On the stress-themed episode of Limitless, Hemsworth has to walk along a crane attached to Sydney's tallest building, more than 900 feet high. He makes it across triumphantly, then realizes he has to go back. A quick glance down, and he begins to panic. His heart rate and breathing skyrocket. So he uses the mindfulness techniques he learned from Dr. Akinola, a specialist in stress management. Hemsworth focuses on being present and blocks out his negative thoughts—and gradually his heart rate and breathing stabilize, his body calms, and he's able to enjoy the experience.
One exercise Dr. Akinola teaches Hemsworth is called box breathing: Inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds. “When you feel your heart rate increasing, you can use this technique to help you breathe through it,” she says. “The stress signals connecting the brain and body aren't just one way. The body can send signals back.”
Another method involves heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB), in which you synchronize your breathing with your heart rate. A 2021 meta-analysis in Nature found that HRVB can ease depression, while an assessment in the April 2021 issue of General Hospital Psychiatry reported that it decreased the negative effects of living with chronic migraine.
Mindful breathing, visualization, and other stress-relieving techniques like the ones Dr. Akinola discusses on Limitless can help counter the cognitive effects of aging. “The brain has something called allostatic load, which is its ability to maintain its own steady state, to respond to the changing environment around it,” says Mia Minen, MD, FAAN, associate professor of neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “An excess of stress can affect the brain's ability to maintain that steady state.”
Read More: How Practicing Mindfulness Can Ease Stress
“Mindfulness doesn't have to mean meditation,” says Brian Levine, PhD, a clinical neuropsychologist and senior scientist at the University of Toronto's Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest. “It can be thinking about what you're supposed to be doing and what you're actually doing and asking if those things are in alignment.”
You can practice mindfulness at different times of the day, including meals. “When you're eating, recognize the [food's] texture, the feeling on your lips, the smell, the taste,” Dr. Minen says. “That's mindfulness. It doesn't have to be burdensome.”
Now that the series is complete, Hemsworth is still coming to terms with what he discovered about how his body and mind may change as he grows old. “We all want to live as long as possible, as well as possible,” he says. “I think that's about furthering our knowledge and understanding of our bodies and our minds, our mental fitness as well as our physical. That motivation can be driven by fear or by making the most out of every situation. Either one may steer us toward eating better, moving our bodies more, having stillness in the mind.
“But if any of it starts to feel like a chore,” he says, “then we're doing something wrong. If you don't like running on a treadmill, don't. If you don't like traditional meditation, there are plenty of other ways to calm the mind. Instead of ‘I need to do this because I want to live longer,’ it should be about ‘I love doing this.’ Then the stillness occurs, and it's an easier journey.”
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