Chris Hemsworth has spoken about his health following his discovery that he is genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s.
In a new National Geographic documentary, which premiered earlier this week, Chris Hemsworth: A Road Trip to Remember, sees the Avengers actor embark on a road trip through Australia in an attempt to jog his father, Craig’s, memory amid his early-stage Alzheimer's disease.
While trying to help out his father, Hemsworth also revealed during the documentary that he worries about his own health.
Three years ago, the actor underwent genetic testing during the National Geographic docuseries, Limitless, where he found out that he carried two copies of the APOE4 gene. Carrying the gene isn’t a formal diagnosis, but does leave Hemsworth at risk of developing the disease.
“This has become a very prominent conversation in my world, because I also have two copies of the gene that puts me in a higher-risk category for Alzheimer's,” he said in the recent documentary. “But it's not a problem at this point, and it may never be. So I'm far more focused on my dad right now.”
He continued, explaining how his only plan was to focus on the present.
“I feel like it’s too far off, hopefully,” the actor said about when Alzheimer’s symptoms would begin to present themselves. “I'd rather just continue on with life.”
Hemsworth previously discussed his health when speaking to Vanity Fair last April, when he addressed the rumors that he could potentially retire from acting as a result of the potential to develop Alzheimer’s.
“It really kind of pissed me off because it felt like I had been vulnerable with something personal and shared this,” he told the outlet about the headlines, which were not true. “No matter how much I said: ‘This is not a death sentence,’ the story became that I have dementia and I’m reconsidering life and retiring and so on.”
Previously, Hemsworth spoke with Vanity Fair in 2022, where he talked more about what it was like to receive the news about his genetic predisposition to the condition.
“They took all my bloodwork and did a bunch of tests, and the plan was to on-camera tell me all the results and then talk about how you can improve this and that,” he said at the time.
“And Peter Attia, who is the longevity doctor in that episode, and overseeing a lot of the show, called [show creator] Darren [Aronofsky] and said: ‘I don’t want to tell him this on camera. We need to have an off-side conversation and see if he even wants this to be in the show.’
“It was pretty shocking because he called me up and he told me.”
Hemsworth explained that he had certainly not expected to receive such “intense” news as the show was originally intended to be a “fun” way of exploring “longevity.”
However, he said: “It was a really good catalyst to dive into everything I needed to be doing in either the prevention front or the management front.”
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