Chris Hemsworth says he almost lost the “Thor” role to his little brother Liam

There are some people in the world who only know Chris Hemsworth as Thor. Tell them he’s Miley Cyrus’ soon to be brother-in-law or let them know he shined as a doofy secretary in the Ghostbusters remake, and you draw blank stares. Chris Hemsworth IS the role, so when we learned that his little brother Liam was getting more callbacks for Thor, we were dumbfounded.

As Chris tells the story, he and his brother BOTH auditioned for the part, with Chris immediately getting cut and Liam going on to become one of the top five contenders for the iconic role.

Chris tells the whole ordeal to W Magazine in his own words.

"I remember reading the breakdown for Thor. Must be 6'3" and 200 pounds. I thought, 'Oh cool, this is the one thing that fits me,'" the actor tells W. "Most of the time I'd have to lie about my height, I'd only get cast as football players. So I thought, 'Great, this is up my alley.' I came and did my audition with Kenneth Branagh, thought I nailed it, and then never heard anything back."

Then he learned that Liam had sent in a taped audition from Australia and Chris says, “he got a callback and another callback and then was down to the last four or five people for it.”

Chris continued with his life, he went to Vancouver to shoot The Cabin in the Woods which iswhen the Cabin director was reading the trades and saw who the top five guys for Thor were and asked Chris, “Why aren’t you in the mix here, what happened?” To which Chris told him, “I dunno, blew my audition I guess?”

And that’s when his story takes off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBlLlQ3A0-Q?start=103&feature=oembed

"None of those [top five] guys got it, my manager called them up and said, 'You know, [Liam’s] got an older brother, can we bring him back in?' So I did an audition in Vancouver in the hotel room with my mom reading Anthony Hopkins' part and she must have nailed it because it got me back in the room. That second audition was a lot different than my first one because I came in with a bit of motivation and frustration that my little brother had gotten further than me. Sibling rivalry sort of kicked up in me and it moved pretty quickly from there."

And the rest, they say, is history.