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Chris Hemsworth is the fittest hacker in history in ‘Blackhat’ – Metro US

Chris Hemsworth is the fittest hacker in history in ‘Blackhat’

When you hire the guy who plays Thor in “The Avengers” to be the lead hacker in your cyber-security drama, you kind of have to accept the fact that he’s going to be one of those rare hackers in really, really good shape. But Michael Mann wanted it to at least be a little plausible that Chris Hemsworth’s superhuman physique could belong to an expert coder. Luckily, we meet Hathaway, Hemsworth’s character in “Blackhat,” while he’s behind bars, doing time for scads of computer crimes — and also doing a lot of push-ups.

“Once I’m done with Thor, I get rid of that bulk and that size because that just sort of screams that character,” Hemsworth explains. “Me and Michael talked about the time he’d spent in prison. You go in one person and come out another, and through those experiences he was going to physically be able to handle himself.” And being able to pull that off meant more than the usual post-Thor slim-down. “I wanted to do more with my training than just running on the treadmill and trying to get rid of the weight,” he explains. “I’ve boxed a lot in the past and done a lot of Muay Thai.”

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Of course, hitting the gym wasn’t the only training Hemsworth had to undergo. He also had to pass muster behind a keyboard, something that was much more foreign to him. So time spent with the cyber-security experts hired for the film — some of them former black-hat hackers themselves — proved invaluable.

“I was pretty limited in my digital, cyber involvement. And it fascinated me,” he says. “I remember asking one of the guys, I said, ‘Knowing what you know’ — because it became evident pretty quick that the majority of us knew nothing compared to what these guys knew — and I said, ‘Knowing what you know, do you look at the world differently? Do you feel you have an upper hand?’ And he just started laughing. He said, ‘Man, people have no idea how exposed they are and vulnerable and what’s possible.’ And that’s it, that’s the power now, is the brains. Not just in the criminal world but anywhere, they’re the guys that are the superheroes, you know? That sort of highly intelligent, alien-type advancement that these guys seem to have within themselves was something that every day impressed me.”

Also impressive for Hemsworth? Mann’s insistence of shooting on location, in places as authentic to the story as possible — a mandate that took him to Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Hong Kong. “You could shoot on the backlot in L.A. somewhere, in some parking lot and mock it up on a green screen, which I’ve had plenty of over the years. But you have a visceral, physical response to being in those places,” he explains. “The sights and sounds and smells just bring something out of you, and you’re not having to fake or imagine that it’s there. It becomes as much of an actor — something you bounce off — as the other people you’re working with. That was such a treat, to work in those places, which are loud and noisy, and a lot of the time I remember the sound guy was worried about, ‘We can’t shoot this, it’s too much noise,’ and Michael was just, ‘No, no, keep going, this is great.'”

Follow Ned Ehrbar on Twitter: @nedrick