For Chris Hemsworth, keeping in shape for the slew of action roles he plays is a truly Herculean feat. Spare a thought, then, for his stunt double, Bobby Holland Hanton, a man you’ve only ever seen the back of and yet who has to keep up with Hemsworth’s gruelling regime for physical perfection. Not that you’ll find Hanton complaining: after 12 films and nine years on the job as Hemsworth’s stunt double, you won’t find a greater fan of the man.
Hanton first met Hemsworth just before Christmas in 2011: he had just finished doubling for Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises and was doing some nondescript work on Snow White And The Huntsman, which Hemsworth starred in. “I met Chris on that shoot, just very briefly. 'Hello, how are you?’” he recalled. “Then the following year, 2012, I stunt doubled him on Thor 2: The Dark World and we hit it off straight from there.”
Since then, they’ve done 12 films over nearly nine years. “We got along like a house on fire straight away, had the same sense of humour, we're the same age,” explained Hanton. “He liked the way I moved, my attributes as a stunt performer, my physicality and my look: I’d been training to get anywhere near his size.”
Interestingly, the triptych of films Hanton did with Hemsworth right at the start provided a unique challenge: first there was the Thor sequel, which meant Hanton had to keep up with Hemsworth’s Asgardian physique. “It's a job in itself to get into Chris Hemsworth's shape," he said. Then they went straight to Ron Howard’s In The Heart Of The Sea, which involved Hemsworth’s character, Owen Chase, getting lost at sea. To look as emaciated as the situation required, Hemsworth lost a lot of muscle, which meant Hanton had to do the same thing. “Chris is looking out for me. He says, 'Bob, you don't have to do it.' But I said, 'No, I'm going to do it with you and it'll make it that bit easier for you to have someone to bounce off,'” recalled Hanton. “Whoever I'm stunt doubling for, it's up to us to match them as much as we possibly can.”
Straight after that, Hanton was called up for Avengers: Age Of Ultron. But, before he was back on as Thor’s double, he was sent to Korea to stand in for Chris Evans’ Captain America. “I did the big chase on the truck, so I had to start putting on weight a little bit earlier than Chris [Hemsworth],” he said. “To go from In The Heart Of The Sea to, four months later, Thor size? It is a commitment.”
Is it a relief, perhaps, that after the next Thor film, Love And Thunder, he might not have to replicate a god any more? Hanton argues that training is still intense, whether he’s standing in for a superhero or not. “But I do notice that extra bit of time to prepare and time to myself.” Besides, no matter what the role, simply matching Hemsworth presents its own challenges. “I'm 6ft1in. Chris is nearly 6ft4in, so I take it upon myself to put a two-and-a-half inch lift in my costume boots,” explained Hanton. “So I can definitely feel for the female stunt performers out there who have to go through that.”
Extraction is a marked departure from much of what Chris and Bobby have been working on recently. “Going from huge-budget superheroes flying round on wires to getting hit by a car, getting hit off a balcony onto an awning onto the road, jumping through truck windows, getting smashed with tables, going downstairs with a bag on my head… It's a very physical role.” It was also a very tight window to learn what needed to be done: they’d barely wrapped on Men In Black: International when they flew from Morocco to India “a week out from shooting”.
But, Bobby says, this is part of the reason Hemsworth gets hired for the roles he does: he’s a good enough athlete to be able to learn even complex choreography incredibly quickly. “Sam Hargrave, the director, has worked with Chris many times and knows he can pick it up because of who he is. That's part of the reason he gets these roles: he's a great actor and a great athlete, which makes a massive difference when producers are picking actors for roles," said Hanton. “There was some very intricate, difficult choreography and some really intricate movements that he made look easy.”
It might seem like a ludicrous time to be attempting to replicate the fitness regime of Chris Hemsworth in an action movie, but actually some of his Extraction workouts are perfectly designed for our gym-less present. In India, explained Hanton, sometimes they couldn’t get to the gym while filming, so Hanton, Hemsworth and his trainer, Luke Zocchi, came up with a new concept: “Twenty push-ups and 20 squats on the hour, every hour, for your working day. We did from 8am to 6pm, so that's 200 push-ups and 200 squats across the day.” It might sound a lot, but Hanton says you can adapt it for whatever is comfortable: it’s starting and maintaining that consistency that matters. “You could do the push-ups on your knees, doesn't matter. Twenty of each, on the hour, every hour.”
Where once stunt doubles might have taken on the lion’s share of an action star’s biggest work, increasingly we live in an age when actors are trained to endure the hardships of some of their most extreme character moments. It’s in part, argued trainer Jason Walsh, because feeling physically capable is crucial for actors developing their character “[Brie Larson needed] that mentality to be [Captain Marvel],” he argued. “It wouldn't be very believable if she was on set and she was like, 'OK, bring in the stunt double,' and then just stood by and watch.” In some ways, it might seem like the actor-as-athlete model of filmmaking might put the pinch on stunt doubles.
But, argued Hanton, there will always be things an actor simply can’t do for logistical reasons. “If we're on a shoot, we'll talk through a stunt sequence and [Chris]’ll say, 'Well, obviously I'm not going to do that bit. That's what you're going to do, Bob,’” explained Hanton. “Because there's no point risking him for something that you're never going to know it's him.” If Hemsworth gets injured from a punch or a fall, Hanton said, then that means production gets postponed and that can cost millions of dollars. “We take the hits and, if we get injured, we get injured. If it's a bad enough injury we get replaced. But you can't replace Chris Hemsworth.”
Extraction is on Netflix now.
Chris Hemsworth interviews Chris Hemsworth... about Chris Hemsworth
How Chris Hemsworth gets in shape
