It’s understood that “Dancing With the Stars” serves as a last-gasp haven for former A-listers looking to trade on nostalgic goodwill and C-listers desperate to eke out the remaining seconds of their 15 minutes of fame. The show, with its spangles and orange spray tans, is not known as a launching pad for rising stars.
So the YouTube video of Chris Hemsworth — Thor himself — shimmying across a “DWTS” soundstage to the campy calypso tune “Jump in the Line” seems like a trip to bizarro world.
Back in 2006, when he appeared on the Australian version of the celeb competition show, Chris was not a Norse god but a mere soap star known only in his native country. His two brothers — Liam and Luke — were also soap actors there. The name “Hemsworth” might as well have been “Anonymous” in America.
What a difference a few years and a hemisphere make.
Now, Chris, 30, has become a major force at the Hollywood box office. His 2011 turn as “Thor” brought in $449 million worldwide, and last year’s “The Avengers” garnered a whopping $1.5 billion. This Friday, “Thor: The Dark World” will likely continue his ascent.
Little brother Liam, 23, has his own mega-franchise, “The Hunger Games,” the first movie of which grossed $691 million globally in 2012. The sequel, “Catching Fire,” opens Nov. 22. But Liam is seen even more frequently in the tabloids, thanks to his tumultuous on-and-off relationship with
Miley Cyrus.
Oldest brother Luke, 31, is unknown in the States but a recognizable face in Australia. After years of soap stardom there, he’s making his way to the big screen, with four upcoming movies.
So how did one gene pool produce three talented, ridiculously handsome dudes, who women swoon over and men respect?
The brothers were born to Leonie, an English teacher, and Craig, a social services counselor, in Melbourne. Part of their childhoods were spent in Bulman, a small town in the Outback, Chris has said, among “buffalo and crocodiles.” At that time, the parents worked on a ranch, and the boys had no television.
“We used to build weapons and go up into the mountains and have adventures,” Chris told the Los Angeles Times. “It gave me a real love of adventure and fantasy stories, too.”
Chris recalled to Details magazine how he and Luke would pile heavy sweaters on Liam and give him a running start before chasing after him with air rifles.
“I’d bend over to feed the guinea pigs, and I’d get a pellet in the ass out of nowhere,” Liam has said.
The family ultimately settled on Phillip Island, known for its great waves. Leonie and Craig still live there, and all three guys still surf.
Luke was the first to get into acting, in 2001, on the soap “Neighbours.” After becoming temporarily disillusioned with acting, he started a flooring business, for which Chris and Liam worked at times. Chris joined the soap “Home and Away,” in which he starred through 2007, when he left for America. That year, Liam also got a role on “Neighbours.”
When Chris appeared on the Aussie “Dancing With the Stars,” the whole family came out to cheer him on each week. He ended up finishing in fifth place, behind a bunch of athletes and a chess champion.
“He was a little bit flat-footed, I would say,” his pro dance partner on the show, Abbey Ross, tells The Post. “The hardest was salsa — he didn’t want to move his hips. He didn’t get that. [And] it was a bit hard to get him to wear the flamboyant outfits.”
Three short years later, Chris had landed a role in the 2009 “Star Trek” reboot. After that, he filmed Joss Whedon’s horror romp “The Cabin in the Woods,” and Whedon, who went on to direct “The Avengers,” helped him land the role of “Thor.”
Funnily enough, Liam was originally on “Thor” director Kenneth Branagh’s short list for the part. He followed Chris to Hollywood after Sylvester Stallone took interest in a taped script reading he did in Australia. That lead didn’t pan out, but the LA move led to his breakout role in the sappy 2010 romance “The Last Song,” which co-starred his eventual fiancée, Cyrus.
“I think we’re both deeper than normal people — what they think and how they feel,” Cyrus told Teen Vogue of meeting him. “[Liam’s] very grateful for what he has, but he doesn’t let it go to his head. I’m like that, too.”
Once the tabloids realized the two were an item, Liam was thrust into the Hollywood spotlight. Cue four years of roller-coaster romance.
“When the Miley VMA hoopla was going on, our first thought was: ‘What on earth do Liam’s parents think of this?’ ” says Mark Brandon, deputy editor of New Idea magazine in Australia. “They’re a down-to-earth family from a small community. [The brothers are] very close to their parents and each other.”
Rumors swirled that Luke and Chris staged an intervention with Liam during the last week of August, pushing for a breakup. Then, in September, Liam and Cyrus announced they’d finally called it quits for good. The very next day, he was photographed kissing Mexican actress and singer Eiza González. The two were reported to have met at a Vegas nightclub.
Patrick St. Esprit, who plays Thread in “Catching Fire,” says Liam doesn’t partake in the horsing around so often mentioned in stories about “The Hunger Games” sets.
“I really saw that more with Woody [Harrelson] and Jennifer [Lawrence] and Josh [Hutcherson],” he says. “He seems like a quiet guy — but a very pleasant guy.”
If Liam is the reluctant heartthrob, Chris is the A-list jokester.
“He’s got a great Aussie sense of humor and an unpretentious, relaxed way about him,” Ron Howard, who directed him in the recent “Rush,” tells The Post.
“[His co-star] Daniel Brühl would fall into the accent [of his character] and say something a little insulting about Chris, and Chris would fall into [his character’s voice] and shoot out a little put-down at Daniel, and then everybody would laugh,”
Howard recalls.
“He can sometimes act like a teenage boy, but in a good way,” adds Jaimie Alexander, who plays a warrior in the “Thor” movies.
Thanks to his turn as Thor, Chris has become known for his super-ripped body.
“For the first movie, he told us he was having to wake up at 3 in the morning and down a protein shake and go back to bed and then wake up again to go to work at 6 a.m.,” says Alexander. “He just had to take in so many calories.”
That physical dedication comes across in Liam’s work, too.
In “Catching Fire,” St. Esprit gives Liam a brutal whipping. The whips were cloth, but, after a day and a half of filming, they took their toll.
“He was an incredible sport and a real champ,” says St. Esprit. “I would [tell] Liam, ‘You know, just let me know . . .’ and he’d go, ‘No, it’s OK, mate. You do what you gotta do.’ ”
John V. Soto, who directed Luke in the upcoming thriller “The Reckoning,” says Chris inspired his older brother, who was a bit soft from a previous role, to take up extreme fitness last year. Luke adopted Chris’ workout schedule, with an hour of weights each morning and an hour of cardio later in the day, every day.
But Luke has spent even more time working on his family than his physique. He married his wife, Samantha, in 2007, and the couple have three daughters: Holly, Ella and Harper. Rather than chasing the Hollywood dream abroad, he’s settled in Sydney.
“Luke is very family-oriented,” says Soto. “[On the Perth set] he missed his family. He talked about them.” Like a model older brother, Luke found ways to bond with the crew. “He would use his own money to buy coffees for everyone. He did it just about every day. All of a sudden, a van would roll up and Luke [had] organized free coffees!”
Chris has also settled down, marrying Spanish actress Elsa Pataky (of the “Fast & Furious” franchise) in 2010. Last year, the two welcomed their daughter, India.
Alan Taylor, Chris’ director for the “Thor” sequel, explains the couple’s dynamic. “We were shooting in Hong Kong. She came in the room, and suddenly he lit up and was so happy and so relaxed. Those guys are in love, I think,” he chuckles.
In September, Chris bought Paul Hogan’s $5 million Malibu home. “Chris seems to have created this quiet family life far away from the Hollywood ‘scene,’ ” says editor Brandon. “He’s more likely to be seen strolling in a park with his wife and daughter than stumbling out of some nightclub.”
Liam also calls LA home, and both brothers frequently visit their parents in Australia. Despite their differences, all three Hemsworth siblings have their sights set on the same thing: roles they find personally fulfilling.
Luke, in addition to next year’s “The Reckoning,” is currently filming “Kill Me Three Times” with Simon Pegg.
After the November “Hunger Games” sequel, Liam has two more in the series, in which his character plays a much bigger role.
And next year, Chris will reteam with Ron Howard for “Heart of the Sea,” a stranded-at-sea movie he brought to the director.
But no matter how big they get, they’ll still be the same rough-and-tumble brothers.
“All of us understand the frailty and inconsistency of the work, so we help each other with auditions, and always have, and whatever scripts we’re working on,” Chris recently said.
But, he added, ‘’We’re competitive as siblings are, in everything from sport — backyard cricket and football — to who’s in control of the remote watching TV. You understand what it’s like to have to that love/hate sort of thing, where you’d do anything for them, but the simplest thing can annoy you.”