There are pretty easy ways to tell when an actor is crying for real and when they have to force it since the gamut of human emotions does vary between individuals but there are signs that a person has lost control of their emotions and signs that they still have them in check but are simply trying too hard to sell the moment. Jon Fuge of MovieWeb has helped detail just how Chris Hemsworth has managed to do this for his latest movie, Extraction, and while it sounds pretty easy it’s very likely that the average person would find it a bit difficult to accomplish. Face it, crying on command is a skill that some people do possess, but it’s also a little more difficult than it sounds when it comes to being seen as genuine and not a total fake. On screen it’s a little too easy sometimes to see the fakes so that emotion that is needed for the moment has to be as close to real as it can be. Chris does manage to employ a trick that other people have thought of for various reasons and have managed to accomplish with great results, he thinks of a sad day in his life and he works around that, thereby gaining the base emotion that he needs and building it up to where he can utilize it as best he can for the project. Some people might question this method, but obviously it gets results since Extraction has been the biggest thing to Netflix lately and there’s already talk of making a sequel, with Chris Hemsworth returning.
Unlike his role as Thor, the god of thunder in the MCU, his time as Tyler Rake, a mercenary with nothing to lose, shows Chris as a guy that will take on just about any job so long as the price is right. Lauren Kranc of Esquire has more to say about the character in her own words. But the particular job that he takes on in this movie, saving the son of an Indian drug lord, is basically a trip into a meat grinder since the kid has a price on his head that makes him a walking target for anyone looking for a payday. As one might guess, Rake is the kind of mercenary that still does have a personal code of honor and a heart that doesn’t allow him to just turn over the kid when he’s offered the chance, and he doesn’t run away when he figures out that he’s not getting paid. A lot of mercenaries in the movies and even in real life are known for being hard men and women that don’t care about anything but their own skin and their own profit and will do what it takes to get paid or simply back out of a job that goes south in a big hurry. Like many guys in the movies Rake is the kind that has a tragic past and one that keeps him from just ditching the kid when he has the chance, showing his sensitive side as it were while also demonstrating that he can cry on demand. For Chris this was something that wasn’t too hard to do as he pulled from his memories some of his saddest times and used them in order to bring forth the very real emotion that he needed at that moment. It sounds like it would be simple, but some people simply try too hard and end up overdoing it or find that they’re unable to put themselves through that kind of emotional turmoil on purpose.
Thinking about a sad time in your life can bring about the needed emotion, so long as a person is open enough to it, or is skilled enough to grab hold of that emotion and let it flow naturally. One might assume that most actors are able to do this on demand but there are plenty of those in Hollywood that couldn’t cry if you plucked a nose hair or stomped on their foot as hard as possible to elicit a reaction. Plus, physical pain isn’t always able to bring tears to the eyes without plenty of damage depending on the person, but emotional trauma is something that can be relied on in a much bigger way. The idea however is definitely to learn how to utilize it and not overdo it since there are likely to be some moments a person can think of in their life that are simply too intense to let them access that emotion and keep firm control of it. Chris does a pretty good job however since he made the scene work and the movie has been one of the best things to hit Netflix recently, which is saying a lot since the streaming network has had a couple of big hits this year at least.
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