By It turns out that Chris Hemsworth's apparent stroll into the upper echelons of Hollywood royalty and its associated perks wasn't anywhere near as effortless as it appeared.
Hemsworth told the Australian magazine Who that he was on the brink of chucking in acting altogether before landing the role of the immortal Asgardian in 2011's Thor.
"It was hard, I had a huge amount of anxiety when I was auditioning," Hemsworth said, adding that it became "worse and worse the more [he] heard 'no' from casting agents".
Fortunately Thor arrived at exactly the right time, but that anxiety has lingered. Hemsworth told Variety that the pressure of having to improv with Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon in Paul Feig's Ghostbusters reboot nearly led him to jump ship hours before he was due on set. "The night before I was shooting, I almost pulled out," he said.
He also ruminated on his early career travails in a YouTube interview this week: "I was full of anxiety about 'am I ever going to work again'. I enjoyed it at times but I had a whole lot of fear."
That tension hasn't gone away either. As he went on to tell Who: "I have a fair share of anxiety about anything I take on, especially something that has history and legacy like Men in Black with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith."
A reminder that even the most ludicrously successful among us have hang-ups about their career.
Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox
