I know that there are many people who will argue that Elsa Pataky is a big celebrity in Spain, and perhaps in Europe, but for years now, I’ve believed that Elsa basically only gets work because her husband pulls strings with his powerful and well-connected friends. Like, I’m sure Elsa gets *some* gigs on her own, but I absolutely believe that Chris Hemsworth has called up various studio executives and directors and suggested that they give Elsa a job.
Elsa and Chris currently live in Byron Bay, Australia, having moved there from LA a couple of years ago. The move was an effort, mainly on Chris’s part, to limit the exposure and overexposure of his family. I felt a bit bad for Elsa – so far away from home, so far away from meetings in LA and Europe, isolated because she liked to pap stroll, basically. So, somehow, Elsa got a job on the Netflix show Tidelands, which shoots in Australia (not far from Elsa and Chris’s home). Elsa chatted with the Sunday Morning Herald about living in Australia, the new show, and how she won’t go back to LA:
Who she is in real life: In Tidelands, she is somewhat ethereal, and there is a beach – but she is more of a murderous, evil, vengeance-seeking half-siren with very few angelic tendancies. The real Elsa, she says, is probably somewhere in between. “Nobody knows how I really am. The first time they gave me a role in my life, it was a show in Spain, I don’t know why but I was the evil character … I was going out and people would look at me and hate me. When you play a role like that, you find a lot of your own things that [you didn’t know were there] and secrets inside you come out. I feel like I can probably have both sides – angel and evil. If I can play a role like that I can probably be a bit evil.”
Raising her kids in Byron Bay: “It is my dream, I always wanted to be in a place like [Byron Bay]. Growing up I was very happy in nature, with animals, and I dreamed of living in a place where my kids can run around with no shoes on, surrounded by all kinds of animals – dangerous and not dangerous.”
She plans to stay in Australia: “I’ll never live in LA again,” she says with the voice of someone who has been through the kind of wringer only a city like Los Angeles can create. “We will travel back there for work when we need to, but I can’t see myself living in a city again.”
Getting the gig on Tidelands: “It was meant to be in a way. I haven’t been working for a while because I have been taking care of my family and really focused on that. I wanted to start working again but we travel around following Chris and his projects… I was just so sick of travelling. This project was just two hours from my house … and I loved the role, I really liked the script and I really wanted to do it.”
Maybe I’m being unfair to Elsa and I’m not giving her enough agency as a woman – maybe it’s as she says, and she was all for the move to Australia, and she was tired of LA and all of that. But as I’ve said before, a thirst like Elsa’s doesn’t get quenched overnight. And why should it? Elsa is a hustler. She did more to promote Chris’s films than he did. She used to have a million little side gigs and that made her happy. Maybe she’s changed. Or maybe she’s just doing all of this for her marriage.
Here’s the trailer for Tidelands. It just looks like a dumb soap opera with some vague sci-fi elements?
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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