Chris Hemsworth

Chris Hemsworth grew up between Melbourne and Bulman in the Northern Territory and spent three years on the Australian soap Home and Away as Kim Hyde, the standard route out of Australian television and into Hollywood. His first American job was small, playing George Kirk in the opening minutes of the 2009 Star Trek. Two years later Marvel gave him Thor, and the question of what else he might do became academic for about a decade.

The early Thor films did not know what to do with him. He is a very large, very handsome man with obvious comic instincts, and they used him as a slab. The correction came from elsewhere. The Cabin in the Woods, shot before Thor was released, had already worked out that his real gift is playing a confident idiot, and Ghostbusters and Vacation both ran on the same discovery. When Thor: Ragnarok finally rebuilt the character as a comedy lead, it was the best thing that happened to the franchise and to him.

The dramatic work is thinner but real. Rush casts him as the racing driver James Hunt and gets a genuine performance out of the charm, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga hands him a prosthetic nose and a warlord's vanity, which brought an AACTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Between those he has built a straightforward action-star business with Extraction and its sequel, and become one of the highest-paid actors in the world along the way. He is at his best when a film is willing to find him slightly ridiculous.