Liam Hemsworth defends his engagement to singer Miley Cyrus

“I do like doing things that give me an adrenaline rush,” says the 26-year-old actor, acknowledging the key personality trait he shares with his character in Independence Day: Resurgence, a fighter pilot who helps save the earth from a second alien invasion.

That tendency to engage in risk-taking behaviour explains why Hemsworth spent the early part of 2016 lying flat on his back.

“It’s been a slow and frustrating start to the year,” he says.

Two weeks before Christmas, Hemsworth herniated a disk while surfing in California.

“It was a bigger day and I was getting slammed on the sand.”
 

 

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A photo posted by Miley Cyrus (@mileycyrus) on Jun 19, 2016 at 9:33am PDT

“People will figure it out, they already have … They’re not dumb,” Hemsworth told GQ magazine.

Given Cyrus’s own predilection for pushing the envelope, then, she and Hemsworth would appear to be exceptionally well-matched.

But it was director Roland Emmerich who encouraged Hemsworth to explore his more mischievous side for the camera in his latest screen outing.

“I saw sometimes in his other performances that he could be a little bit more of the bad boy,’’ says the filmmaker.

“And he did it brilliantly.”

Not that the role of Jake Morrison, whose parents were killed in the first alien attack 20 years earlier, was too much of a stretch for Hemsworth, according the Emmerich.

“When you see him with his friends, he has that (twinkle in his eye).”

After the release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 last year, Hemsworth was looking for characters that took themselves a bit less seriously.

“The character in Independence Day was a good change to try a few different things here and there and find some humour in it all,” he says.

Like his older brother Chris, who has followed his successful cameo in Vacation with a role opposite Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig in the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot, Hemsworth is keen to try his hand at comedy.

“I want to do something lighter. That’s kind of where my head is at right now. I want to find something in that vein,” he says.

Since the Ghostbusters gig has already been taken, what classic comedy would Hemsworth have a crack at if he could?

 

“I don’t know … The Goonies perhaps? Although they would probably get the original cast together if they did that. There was talk about it a few years ago.”

In the meantime, Hemsworth has been augmenting his action hero credentials with a string of independent projects such as Jocelyn Moorhouse’s gothic comedy The Dressmaker, in which he starred opposite Kate Winslet and Judy Davis, and The Duel, with Hunger Games co-star Woody Harrelson and Alice Braga.

Directed by Australia’s Kieran Darcy-Smith, Hemsworth’s first Western is worlds apart from a studio-financed sci-fi blockbuster such as Independence Day: Resurgence.

“We got shut down for four days at one point because the production lost half its money. It was a tough film to get made. I am proud of it,” he says.

Independence Day: Resurgence opens Thursday June 23.