BIG BROTHER
IF YOU HAPPENED to have been out one evening in Toronto about a decade ago, you might have seen a forlorn figure, hands dug into his pockets, shoulders stiff to ward off the cold, trudging through the streets, wracked with doubt and heavy with regret. That could probably describe more than a few of the frigid pedestrians on the city’s streets that night, but this particular fellow was Luke Hemsworth, a faded Aussie soap star and former owner of a flooring business, among other things. He was wondering if he’d blown his shot at a Hollywood career and the chance to make his name in America.
Hemsworth had won the lead role on the pilot of a big-budget show. He’d found out on a Thursday, flown to Toronto to begin rehearsing with the cast on the Monday, only to be fired on the Tuesday. The reason given? He wasn’t “New York enough” for the part. As he walked the icy streets that night, Hemsworth feared he might have made a huge mistake in pursuing his American dream. Was he being silly striving for something that hinged so heavily on luck and taste, when he could be, perhaps should be, staying in his lane back in Australia? Maybe even getting back on the tools?
“I was in Toronto by myself,” recalls Hemsworth, who’s chatting to me today from a Vancouver hotel room that overlooks the water. “It was freezing. And they were like, ‘Well, there’s no easy way to say it. But they’re going to recast your part’. I was like, ‘Okay’. And I remember being bewildered. I was walking the streets that night going, Oh,
