Kenneth Branagh Looks Back On THOR And Casting Chris Hemsworth

"I certainly used to read that comic when I was a kid so I knew that was always true about my feeling for it, but I think that for me - a working-class lad from Belfast - just to even be an actor was already such an amazing kind of leap of faith."

"He's an absolutely amazing-looking fella. He had all of those good looks but he's an amazing, proper, proper actor and we wanted to feel that Thor was somebody people would follow into the jaws of death."

"And so although a lot of the part was about swinging your hammer effectively and he has both an enormously impressive hammer and a great gift with it ('that's DVD extras', he joked as an aside) but he was able to take on board using the language; a fantastic kid and a straight up and down movie guy, a real worker who wanted to do all of it, not just look it but feel it as well."

"Even I had to sometimes sit down and have a quick rubdown with the Radio Times," he said, explaining to fellow talk show guest Zach Braff that he meant the actor was "very stimulating."