Roles Hemsworth lost

Chris Hemsworth's career could have looked completely different if he had landed the two big roles he had previously auditioned for.

It's often joked in Hollywood that every big role will eventually go to one of the "Chris Four" - Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Pine or Chris Hemsworth. All four have played superheroes and often competed for the same roles, but their paths to stardom were quite different.

Pratt, Evans and Pine spent years building careers in supporting roles before becoming big stars. Hemsworth, however, made his big break almost overnight when Marvel cast him as Thor in Kenneth Branagh's film.

The studio had already cast big names like Robert Downey Jr. and Edward Norton, so Hemsworth wasn't an obvious choice. He had minor roles in "Star Trek" and "A Perfect Getaway," but he wasn't yet a household name.

The release of “Thor” changed everything. Hemsworth had the looks and presence needed for the character, and the role quickly opened the door for him to other big Hollywood projects. However, it could have easily been different.

Before Marvel came for him, Hemsworth was very close to two big roles in 2009 - in the films "GI Joe: Rise of Cobra" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", where he was supposed to play Gambit.

"I was very close to getting the role in 'GI Joe.' I was very close to getting the role of Gambit in the Wolverine and X-Men movies. At that point, I was disappointed. I was running out of money, but if I had gotten either of those roles, I wouldn't have been able to play Thor," Hemsworth recalled.

It turned out that missing out on those roles was the best thing that could have happened to him. The film “GI Joe: Rise of Cobra” made money but was poorly received by critics, and Channing Tatum, who got the role that Hemsworth auditioned for, did not escape negative reactions. In the sequel “GI Joe: Retaliation,” his character was even killed off at the very beginning, while Dwayne Johnson took over the lead role.

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” didn’t wow the audience either. Taylor Kitsch was Gambit, but after the bad reactions to the film, his chances of returning to the role almost disappeared. Interestingly, it was Channing Tatum who later tried for years to realize a standalone Gambit film, and in the end he still played the character in “Deadpool & Wolverine”.

Hemsworth ended up in the most successful of the three films thanks to “Thor,” but he later returned to the franchises he had previously missed. Tatum’s Gambit is set to appear alongside Hemsworth’s Thor in “Avengers: Doomsday,” while Hemsworth has also been announced as the lead star of a future film that will tie together the “GI Joe” and “Transformers” franchises.