December 23, 2025, 12:25 pm | Read time: 5 minutes
Who doesn’t know the feeling? A presentation, an important conversation, or an exam is coming up, and it starts. The stomach churns, the heart beats faster, you start to sweat, and your thoughts race. You’d rather just run away. Even top performers like Hollywood stars aren’t spared from this feeling. Thor actor Chris Hemsworth recently described his fears, which used to nearly paralyze him. Learn what helped him manage his emotions better and turn them into something productive at FITBOOK.
Chris Hemsworth is what you might call a jack-of-all-trades. Not only is he talented and successful as an actor, but he’s also a role model for many as an athlete. Perhaps his ability to open up and show vulnerability can also be described as a kind of talent. Given that this is still difficult for many men, the Hollywood star earns a lot of admiration from his fans. In the “Jay Shetty Podcast,” he recently took an hour and a half to talk about mental health, his role as a father, and his family’s Alzheimer’s fate. A major topic: Chris Hemsworth’s long struggle with fears and panic feelings, which he broadly summarized as “performance anxiety.”
“Performance Anxiety”
“Shallow breathing, rapid heartbeat, sweaty hands, you can’t think and feel like your mind is blank,” Chris Hemsworth described the physical symptoms that accompany his anxiety in the podcast. “It’s the worst thing in the world when you’re constantly trying to avoid it.”
Especially at the beginning of his career, these feelings often overwhelmed him during filming. He felt he wasn’t good enough (known as “imposter syndrome”), feared he couldn’t convincingly play a role, and worried about disappointing colleagues, directors, and producers. Besides the physical symptoms that burdened him, his thoughts practically paralyzed him. At the same time, he realized: It was precisely the worries, the nervousness, and the adrenaline rush that were responsible for his best performances. In moments when he didn’t care and felt calm, things didn’t go as well.
No Success Without Fear?
Without fear and tension, his success probably wouldn’t be possible. Hemsworth explained in the interview: “To get better, in your career or in sports, you sometimes have to push the side of you that gets you there, but doesn’t necessarily lead to greater quality of life—especially on a mental level.”
A truth he apparently struggled with for a long time. “I often wished I didn’t perceive all the details so intensely and could stop this flood of information to be more present in the moment,” the 42-year-old said. “But it was exactly this feeling that made the performance on the film set great. The feeling shouldn’t be the problem; you should make friends with it. Because it’s also a kind of gift, enabling you to think and react faster and engage with situations—if you can channel it correctly.”
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Mother and Research Led Him to Rethink
It was a long journey for Chris Hemsworth to recognize his fears and feelings as a “kind of gift,” as he calls it. An important impulse came from his mother, with whom he spoke about his problems years ago when she was still working as a schoolteacher. “I told her I was so nervous before work on set, because of the producer and all that. And she said: It’s the same in every environment. In my case, the school principal is what the producer is to you. The other cast members for you are the colleagues for me. It’s just the human experience.’ She told me she went through similar feelings. Everyone experiences pressure, and once you understand that you’re not different from others, it helps.”
Another eye-opener was a scientific finding he read about. Researchers had shown in a study on “performance anxiety” that the negative feeling of fear manifests in the body similarly to positive excitement or anticipation (he was probably referring to a Harvard study from 2013, Ed.).1 This knowledge helped him reinterpret his physical sensations. What used to be fear for him is now more anticipation and excitement. “But I still have to discipline myself. The feeling can flip in the other direction out of nowhere, and I have to find my way back to enthusiasm.”
Don’t Avoid, Use It
In a work context, he now consciously uses the nervous feelings to counteract his fear of failure and instead deliver the desired performance. “I have to hype and push myself beforehand to get into the adrenaline state and use the feeling. But on my terms, without it overwhelming me,” he described his strategy right before shooting a scene.
It’s about not letting the feeling of fear or tension control you, but rather controlling the feeling and making it a tool: “You have to learn to understand the feeling, realize it has advantages, and change your attitude towards it.”