Elsa Pataky Was Ready to “Just Be a Mum” When She Married Chris Hemsworth

Extremely hot and aspirational couple Chris Hemsworth and Elsa Pataky have been extremely hot and aspirational since early 2010, when they began dating after meeting through talent agent William Ward. They married by the end of the year, before Thor made the actor a household name (and he became the best Hollywood Chris), but well after Pataky, seven years his senior, had made a name for herself as a star in her native Spain. Their daughter was born two years later, and their twin sons, in 2014.

In a new interview with Stellar, the Daily Telegraph’s magazine supplement, Pataky reveals what she perceives to be the key to her successful marriage. (It’s behind a paywall, but the Daily Mail has conveniently excerpted it.) And as she tells it, it seems relatively straightforward: They just met at the right time. “When I met Chris, he was just starting out,” she says. By contrast, “I had started young and I had worked a lot,” she went on. “I was happy to take a break and just be a mum.” (Perhaps not everyone’s aspiration, but to each their own.) Their age difference also proved to be a boon, she says: “We met in a great place for both of us,” she adds. “I was totally confident within myself.”

“We grew together,” she had previously told Vogue Australia, in an interview for a profile earlier this year. Nevertheless, Pataky told the magazine she’s not sure “how we survived as a couple” given how quickly their relationship developed: “It puts a lot of pressure on a marriage, but we came out good because there is a lot of love between us and we are very strong personalities but love each other so much. We make it work,” she said. It probably helped that, despite the pace with which they began dating, got married, and started a family, it all started at the right time for both of them, as Pataky describes in the Stellar interview, personally and professionally.

And, of course, they’re not immune to the odd domestic squabble: Hemsworth told Ellen Degeneres earlier this year that, on the rare occasions when they do get into a fight, Pataky will frequently start shouting in Spanish—which Hemsworth, unlike his three children, does not speak.