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Filming a docuseries was an “excruciatingly painful” experience for Chris Hemsworth.
In “Limitless with Chris Hemsworth,” the “Thor” star explores the idea of extending health and intellect into one’s later years by undergoing a series of challenges including walking the edge of a 900-foot skyscraper and swimming across an Arctic fjord.
“They all had different challenges and different things that I found either excruciatingly painful or confronting in different ways, but at the end of it, it was an amazing experience,” Hemsworth, 39, told Page Six exclusively Tuesday at the series’ premiere in New York City.
“Probably the ice swim was grueling and the most painful, but then the episode on death and confronting mortality — that was called the ‘Acceptance’ episode — that was intense and profound for many reasons.”
Perhaps one of the reasons the actor found that episode “intense” is because he discovered that he has a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease.
Hemsworth has two copies of the gene APOE4, which means he is “eight to 10 times more likely” to battle the disease, which is notably characterized by mental deterioration.
But Hemsworth had plenty of lighter moments, too.
The Aussie hunk confessed that there was a Seinfeldian side effect to his freezing dip in the Arctic.
When Page Six cheekily asked whether “excessive shrinkage” occurred, he laughed and noted, “Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. It’s only natural.”
The show’s creator, Darren Aronofsky, was also at the premiere and raved about working with Hemsworth.
“He’s so great. He’s so open. He’s so generous. He’s so vulnerable in this show,” he enthused. “I didn’t really know what he would do. That’s what really blew me away, how welcoming he was to the invasion of the ‘Limitless’ crew into his life.
“There were challenges that really pushed him to the edge of his physical and mental limit, and he was fully on board and welcoming of it.”
