Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky have the kind of swoon-worthy romance that many
of us can only dream about, but their marriage is full of strange things too.
Let’s take a closer look at those quirks.
The two love art, especially the permanent-ink kind. According to Vogue Australia,
the mother-of-three has dozens of tattoos, while Hemsworth told People,
"They're a pain to cover up when you shoot a movie. It's, like, an hour of makeup."
Celebrity tattoo artist Dillon Forte spoke to
Nicki Swift about Hemsworth's body art and surmised that:
“[Hemsworth's tattoos] are about deep family and personal relationships,
tied in with sentimental value."
According to Hello!, Hemsworth and Pataky both wear five symbols of the
Runic alphabet correlating with the English letters C, E, I, T, and S,
which are also the first letters of Chris, Elsa, and their kids India, Tristan, and Sasha.
Chris Hemsworth has the world at his feet as Thor,
the God of Thunder. After the first flick came out in 2011,
he quickly rose to fame and became one of the most recognizable faces in the Avengers multiverse.
But wife Elsa had something to say about displaying the famous Thor hammer in their house.
In 2019, Pataky spoke to Australian radio show Fitzy & Wippa host Michael 'Wippa'
Wipfli. She recalled that Hemsworth had wanted to display his Thor hammers on a table at home,
but she didn’t want them part of their interior decorations, saying that
“We have five of them for every movie he's done. Like, seriously, no.”
Hemsworth confirmed his wife's stern instructions with Jimmy Kimmel in 2020::
"I put it on the mantelpiece, my wife puts it back into the cupboard. I'll put it somewhere
else, you know, the kitchen, you know, on display — it goes back in the cupboard."
Also on "Fitzy & Wippa," Elsa shared a story of how her husband gets nervous when people are
watching him park, even though he has played famed Formula One driver James Hunt in Rush.
After his car got, quote, “bogged” in a parking spot, she tried to help, but Chris told her,
“Just leave it there! Don't touch it!' […] We need a crane."
She backed off, but apparently the car did not need a crane and got out fine,
as Chris finally told Elsa a few days later.
Elsa Pataky is an acclaimed model, actor, and polyglot — and also quite
capable of rescuing herself. As she related in an Instagram story,
in July 2020 she got trapped in her car on a flooded road. In the video clip, she said,
"I got stuck, yes. Awesome. Oh god, oh god, what am I doing?"
Chris, their three children, and family friend Luke Zocchi
were also in the car. Everyone managed to leave the vehicle with only Pataky left at the wheel.
Though slightly unnerved as the water level rose, she eventually escaped by squeezing
through her car window.
As celebrities raising three children in sunny Australia on their own terms,
Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky seemingly have the world at their feet. However,
Chris revealed it wasn't always this way.
They faced challenges when renovating their house
overlooking Australia’s Seven Mile Beach in scenic Byron Bay.
"I live in a place called Byron Bay, which is another stunning place.
Very sort of hippie surf-town culture."
The process took three years, and when they were nearly finished, Hemsworth told News Australia:
"I think the vast majority of divorces happen during the process of building a house,
so I'm thankful we've survived that. It's been interesting deciding on tap ware,
couches and things that I never thought I'd even be bothered about."
Luckily, the pair made it through the renovations and have even moved to Sydney in the meantime.
Chris Hemsworth apparently knows his wife well. Besides her apparent distaste for his interior
design skills that give prominent placement to the Thor hammer,
the actor thinks that Elsa has other pet peeves. As he told News Australia,
"What annoys her about me? […] Probably if I surf a little long or stay out a
little late from time to time. But that's usually because of traffic!"
When asked what annoyed him about Pataky, Hemsworth hilariously revealed that he
knows how a marriage works. With careful words, he painted a picture of his wife,
"Well, if she's reading this, nothing annoys me about her! […] I gotta make
sure there is a place for me in the bed when I get back home."
Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky have been married for over a decade,
making huge sacrifices to create an idyllic life for their children. Those sacrifices have included
moving to Australia in 2014, as well as Pataky putting her career on hold while raising the kids.
But Elsa hasn’t changed her last name. In an interview with The Kyle and Jackie O Show,
the Thor star talked about the real reason his wife hasn't changed her last name,
even though she had originally wanted to. "It was when we were coming back from America
and living in Europe and deciding where... It was a complication of passports and so on."
Pataky previously told the Herald Sun that last names in Spain were
a complicated issue. She uses her grandmother's surname "Pataky" as
an actress, but she was born Elsa Lafuente Medianu. She explained,
"That's my Spanish name. We actually have two surnames as one,
which is weird — your mum's and your dad's."
And that's apparently why she thought her passport might be a nightmare to navigate,
if she added another last name into the mix.
Elsa and Chris are clearly in love. They have a beautiful family and have
so much going for them, but that doesn't mean that
everything is always smooth sailing. Like most married couples, they argue at times,
but Pataky has come up with an ingenious way to win an argument — she fights in Spanish.
Hemsworth appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and revealed that when his wife shouts
at him in her native language, he knows there's trouble brewing. As the Avengers star noted,
"When I hear the Spanish directed at me, it's usually [during] unfortunate,
controversial, aggressive situations."
He also gave the talk-show host a rundown of what
plays out in his mind when his wife argues in Spanish:
"So I'm just thinking, 'What is she saying right now?' and 'What's my comeback to this?'"
Apparently, Hemsworth believes that Pataky drops all pretenses when she's had enough of
a situation, letting her native tongue spill out as she gives him a piece of her mind.
It seems as if Pataky may be on to something. What better way to fight with someone
if they don't understand what you're saying but can understand your tone?
For some people, they just know when they've found the one. And it seems as if Chris Hemsworth
and Elsa Pataky's story may be one of those super-sweet romances where everything fell
into place. The couple had met and wed in 2010, setting records for speed of attraction and
commitment. Even though he and Pataky had already been married for about five years, Hemsworth was
still gushing about their whirlwind romance and spur-of-the-moment wedding when he appeared on
Good Morning Britain in 2016. Talking about the spontaneous nature of their connection, he said,
"It did happen quick, and it just felt right, it made sense. […] There was no
great plan to any of it to be honest. We were on holiday and we said, 'Why don't
we get married too?' […] There probably should have been some planning, but it all worked out."
As he explained during the interview, they had the perfect opportunity and decided to go with it:
"Honestly, we had both our families on holiday at the same time, just randomly,
and we said this is a good opportunity with everyone together so we just did it."
Talk about vacation goals.
Although she may not look it, Elsa Pataky is seven years older than Chris Hemsworth.
Even though their age gap is much smaller than some other celebrity couples,
the wife of the Avengers star wasn’t sure what a commitment to someone much younger would look
like. She was plagued by the idea that they may not have wanted the same things out of life.
When they got married in 2010, Pataky was 34 years old and Hemsworth was a youthful 27.
Hello! reports that Pataky had reservations about Hemsworth
because they were at different stages of their lives. As she revealed to the outlet:
"Chris is younger than me and I imagined he wouldn't want to start a family any time soon,
so I didn't initially think it would work out. But it turned out that he thought the same way I did."
It also seems that she had lucked out because they actually wanted the same thing. Ironically,
the passage of time may have been the best thing for their relationship. She mused,
"Over time we have evolved together and [learned] from each other. I'm so proud
to see what he has achieved and how we have grown together. Luck has nothing
to do with it because we've worked hard, but we are very grateful for the life we lead."
The Hemsworth-Pataky children have parents other kids can only dream about.
That’s because both of their parents are action heroes in blockbuster flicks.
Pataky is well-known for her role as Elena Neves in The Fast and the Furious franchise.
She played alongside Vin Diesel's Dom Toretto between 2011 and 2017 before her character was
killed off. As of early 2021, Pataky is filming the action movie "Interceptor," where she has
the lead role of a US Army lieutenant, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Chris Hemsworth, meanwhile, has been a superhero extraordinaire since 2011
when he first joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thor.
Together with the hammer Mjolnir, he's been saving the universe, one thunderbolt at a time.
However, the couple's kids didn't always know their parents were stars.
According to News Australia's Kid Spot, Pataky said in 2018,
"They don't know who is Thor and who is papa […] and [that] he doesn't
go [around] with the hammer all the time and things like that."
She also divulged that, at that time,
the children had a limited idea about what it meant to be an actor:
"They don't understand what the TV [is] yet, and you [can] do that for work. […] My
oldest one is getting it, but sometimes [the children ask him,] 'What are you going to be,
papa or Thor?' and [he says], 'Like both.'"
Chris Hemsworth may be married
to Spanish bombshell Elsa Pataky, but that doesn't mean that they always
understand each other. Pataky appeared on Today in 2017 and lamented the fact that six years
had already passed since their wedding, and her husband still hadn't learned her native tongue:
“He promised me, he said, 'I'll be speaking Spanish in two months.' There we go,
we have been together for six years."
She also revealed that she speaks Spanish to their kids and explained why she did so:
"That's important, that's what my mum did to me,
talked in Romanian. I start to speak in English, I'm like,
‘I don't express myself great.’ I got used to making an effort to speak to them in Spanish.”
In 2018, in an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Hemsworth told his side of
the story. When Pataky is correcting their kids in Spanish, Hemsworth launches into actor mode:
"I sort of pretend to [understand].
My wife will be telling them off [...] and I'll be standing there like, 'That's right!'"
But in that same appearance, he also admitted that he usually pulls Pataky aside to ask what
she actually said to the kids. It's okay Chris – we all know love is the universal language,
and your kids understand that. Luckily, you and Elsa have love in spades.
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