Liam Hemsworth was born on January 13, 1990, in Melbourne, Australia, and is the younger brother of actors
Chris Hemsworth and
Luke Hemsworth. He is the son of Leonie (van Os), a teacher of English, and Craig Hemsworth, a social-services counselor. He is of Dutch (from his immigrant maternal grandfather), Irish, English, Scottish, and German ancestry. His uncle, by marriage, was Rod Ansell, the bushman who inspired the film
Crocodile Dundee (1986).
The Hemsworth family lived primarily on Phillip Island, a small island located south of Melbourne. Following in the footsteps of his older brothers, who went into acting in their teens, Liam scored his first audition at age sixteen and appeared on the Australian TV series
Home and Away (1988) and
McLeod's Daughters (2001) before taking on a recurring character role on the soap opera
Neighbours (1985), in which his brother Luke had also appeared. Roles on TV shows
The Elephant Princess (2008) and
Satisfaction (2007) followed before Liam moved to the United States to pursue a big-screen career.
After suffering two setbacks - his character was written out of the script for
The Expendables (2010) days before filming and he lost the title role of
Thor (2011) to his brother Chris - Liam was cast opposite
Miley Cyrus in the
Nicholas Sparks drama
The Last Song (2010). The two, who played love interests in the film, soon started dating, and Liam appeared in Cyrus' music video "When I Look at You." Following that film's modest commercial success, and the attendant press coverage of his rising career and high-profile romance, he was almost immediately thrust into leading man status, and was cast as Gale Hawthorne in the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling novel
The Hunger Games (2012). Following the blockbuster success of that film, Liam nabbed a number of roles, including a supporting part in
The Expendables 2 (2012) and leading roles in the war drama
Love and Honor (2013), the crime drama
Empire State (2013), and the thriller
Paranoia (2013). He reprised the role of Gale Hawthorne in
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013),
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014), and
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015), played a hero fighter pilot in
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), a period Australian in
The Duel (2016), and a romantic comedy archetype opposite Rebel Wilson in
Isn't It Romantic (2019).
Hemsworth married American singer and actress
Miley Cyrus in December 2018, after a decade-long courtship.