Chris Hemsworth is reportedly taking on fewer Hollywood roles after discovering he is genetically more likely to get Alzheimer’s.
The Hollywood star, who plays Thor in the Marvel movies, discovered he is predisposed to be diagnosed with the disease while filming for his Disney+ docuseries Limitless.
For an episode about death, Hemsworth underwent blood tests, which revealed he is “between eight and 10 times” more likely to develop Alzheimer’s. He is among a small percentage of people with two copies of the gene APOE4 – which some studies have shown can be linked to the disease.
A source has told Page Six that the news has made Hemsworth, 39, reassess his professional life.
“He doesn’t plan to take on many roles because of [learning about his high risk for] Alzheimer’s,” the source said.
At the end of last year, father-of-three Hemsworth spoke about his diagnosis with Vanity Fair.
He said he wasn’t planning to “retire”, but was taking a “a more curated approach to things” post diagnosis.
Speaking about mortality, Hemsworth told the magazine: “We all have this belief that we’ll figure it out. Then to all of a sudden be told some big indicators are actually pointing to this as the route which is going to happen, the reality of it sinks in. Your own mortality.”
Hemsworth – who shares daughter India, 10, and twin sons Sacha and Tristan, eight, with wife Elsa Pataky – said the diagnosis and forgetting his family was his “biggest fear”.
“The idea that I won’t be able to remember the life I’ve experienced, or my wife, my kids, is probably my biggest fear,” he said.
The actor said he was trying to combat the diagnosis by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
“For me, the positive of it was like: ‘Right, if I didn’t know this information, I wouldn’t have made the changes I made. I just wasn’t aware of any of it, so now I feel thankful that I have in my arsenal the sort of tools to best prepare myself and prevent things happening in that way.”
Hemsworth – who shot to fame starring in long-running soap opera Home and Away – lives in a multi-million pound mansion in Broken Head, Byron Bay, Australia.
