Chris Hemsworth on Beating Brother Liam for Thor and Tabloid Rumors

Last time Chris Hemsworth talked to Movieline, it was the week before his second audition for Kenneth Branagh's Thor, and one of his main rivals for the part was his younger brother Liam. Chris went on to clinch the role, though Liam recovered nicely (you may know him from The Last Song or his high-profile romance with costar Miley Cyrus). Last night, I had the opportunity to ask Chris how that all played out within the Hemsworth family.

Chris adopted the tone of a bullying sibling: "'Listen, I'm the older brother -- you shut up and turn it down!' No, I'd auditioned and then it didn't go any further, and then next I heard, he was being flown over from Australia to test with Ken and a couple of guys. Like, what? I was as excited as I was secretly angry."

He laughed. "No, we're very close. When he was auditioning, I said, 'Look, I've got the feel about this in the audition,' and when I was auditioning, the same thing. We both gave each other feedback and did all we could."

Once he got to set, Hemsworth was impressed by costar Anthony Hopkins ("It was one of the most enjoyable experiences for me, and for him as well -- he kept saying, 'How fun is this?' He brings the enthusiasm of someone on their first day on set"), but less enamored with tabloid rumors that the two of them didn't get along. Hopkins told Movieline in April, "The rumors are scurrilous and total rubbish," but I asked Hemsworth how it felt when that news originally broke.

"Yeah, look, we had a good laugh about it," he said. "Actually, everybody else knew about it before I did, and they were like, 'Oh, Chris, we've got something to tell you...' Anthony rang me up and just talked about the ridiculousness of it. [The article] said a lot of funny things, like the amount of bluescreen we were doing, which we weren't -- we'd built this incredible set. It talked about Anthony hating working in Santa Fe; he wasn't in Santa Fe. It talked about him hating Ken and not agreeing, and Anthony said to me a number of times that Ken was one of the best directors he ever worked with. For me, that was like, 'Wow.' I was blown away by Ken, but I don't have the track record or history that [Hopkins] has.

"You've gotta laugh at it, you know? Of course, there's moments where I go home and it's dark and I'm alone and I think, 'God, the most talented, nicest guy on the planet [supposedly] hates me?' But no, you've gotta roll with that stuff."