Chris Hemsworth Is Thor No More: Actor Shows Off Extreme Weight Loss

Chris Hemsworth recently shared a photo taken during the filming of his new movie, In the Heart of the Sea, and it’s pretty shocking. In the picture, the Avengers star looks less like a Norse god and more like Captain America before he got injected with super solider serum.

Chris Hemsworth showed off his extreme weight loss on Twitter, and the Aussie actor is almost unrecognizable with his thinner frame, dirty face, and bushy beard. Hemsworth’s In the Heart of the Sea look will definitely give you Tom Hanks in Cast Away vibes.

“Just tried a new diet/training program called ‘Lost at Sea,'” Hemsworth tweeted. “Wouldn’t recommend it.”

Moviegoers are used to seeing Chris Hemsworth with a considerable amount of bulk on his bod, so they might think that the actor had to lose a massive amount of weight to achieve the results above. However, Hemsworth told Entertainment Weekly that he actually only had to lose 15 pounds to play an emaciated sailor in In the Heart of the Sea because he had already slimmed down from his Thor weight for the hacker movie Blackhat. During an interview with Collider, Hemsworth revealed that he lost over 30 pounds between the two movie roles.

Today I watched @chrishemsworth talking about #IntheHeartoftheSea at the press junket @wbpictures @RealRonHoward pic.twitter.com/j0p9WU44ay

— Nathaniel Philbrick (@natphilbrick) November 20, 2015

To get the super-lean look, Chris Hemsworth and his co-stars went on a diet of just 500 calories a day. The actors were also forced to work out every day because director Ron Howard wanted them to have the “sinewy strength” of 19th-century sailors.

In the Heart of the Sea is based on author Nathaniel Philbrick’s book of the same name. It tells the true story of a whaling ship that gets stranded at sea for 90 days after a brutal encounter with a real-life Moby Dick. Hemsworth stars as the ship’s first mate, Owen Chase, and he’s likely chasing a few acting awards with that Oscar-bait bod of his. As BBC Culture points out, Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hanks are just a few of the stars who have won Academy Awards for taking on roles that required them to lose a lot of weight. However, Hanks didn’t win an award for wasting away in Cast Away — he earned his Oscar for thinning down in Philadelphia.

Earlier this summer, Chris Hemsworth talked to Entertainment Tonight about how hard it was to slim down for his own Oscar bait movie role.

“We have to shoot the really skinny stuff where we drop down to 5, 6, 700 calories a day, a good three or four weeks and it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable, but we’ll be together in our misery,” Hemsworth said. “I spend more time thinking about food than anything else at the moment.”

It’s been many months since Chris Hemsworth finished filming In the Heart of the Sea, so he’s had plenty of time to regain those 30-plus pounds that he lost. However, because of all of those pesky superhero movies, gaining weight can be just as hard — if not harder than — losing it. This is because Chris is expected to turn most of those freshly-packed-on pounds into muscle whenever he’s prepping to play Thor.

Luckily, Chris Hemsworth is a pro when it comes to tweaking his weight for movie roles. According to Bodybuilding, he also lost 30 pounds when he starred in another Ron Howard movie, the 2013 Formula One racing drama Rush. Right after Hemsworth finished that film, he had to bulk back up for Thor: The Dark World. To do this, Hemsworth revealed that he ate “buckets of protein” and lots of brown rice and vegetables. His sources of protein included eggs, salmon, chicken, quinoa, cottage cheese, protein shakes, yogurt, and mixed nuts. The actor made sure to eat something every three hours, and, of course, he started a weight-lifting regimen. Hemsworth described his workout as “good old-fashioned Arnold Schwarzenegger bodybuilding stuff.” He did chin-ups, box jumps, pull-ups, and “intense” kettlebell exercises.

Chris Hemsworth will have to get into superhero shape once again by June 2016. According to Comic Book Movie, this is when Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok will begin filming. In the Heart of the Sea hits theaters on December 11, 2015.

[Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images]