James Hunt’s son expressed displeasure with Chris Hemsworth’s portrayal of the late Formula 1 World Champion in the 2013 film Rush.
The movie portrays the conflict between Daniel Brühl’s character Niki Lauda and Hemsworth’s character Hunt.
It centers on the 1976 season, the year Lauda sustained injuries that would change his life. While Brühl spent a lot of time with Lauda in real life to better understand his character, Hemsworth was unable to do so because Hunt died of a heart attack in 1993.
In contrast to Lauda’s all-consuming enthusiasm, Hunt was presented in the film as a man who behaves selfishly and irresponsibly in his sexual relationships with women and saw F1 as a social event. Although Hemsorth was unable to communicate with the subject he was portraying, he was criticized for not reaching out to his family.
“Chris Hemsworth’s performance, now I don’t know if I should be upset with Chris or Ron Howard, because he basically played dad like a t**t, and I don’t know if that’s due to his poor acting or if he was directed to play that way,” Hunt’s son Freddie told the Pitstop podcast.
“Daniel Bruhl, who played Niki Lauda, did an absolute masterpiece. He actually asked Niki if he could spend some time with him so he could learn his mannerisms and really get to know him.
“What did Hemsworth do in contrast? F**k all… He didn’t contact the family once.
“And when I asked Ron Howard: ‘why did you change so many things?’, the director, he said ‘Ahh the truth was too awesome man. No one would believe it.’ I nearly slapped him.
“The movie was great, you know people like it. But it could have been, if they just stuck to the truth it would have been so much better.”
Rush received warm reactions after its release and even won a BAFTA for Best Editing. Additionally, Brühl received several Best Actor nominations and took home the Virtuoso Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
