Australian actor Chris Hemsworth admits his career could be “killing” him, after revealing he started acting only to help his parents.

The 40-year-old actor has opened up on how he pursued a career on the big screen after seeing his mother and father struggle with money when he was younger, and he wanted to help them get “out of debt”.

“If I’m totally honest, I did acting to get my parents out of debt,” Hemsworth said in the new Disney+ docuseries Limitless.

“It could be killing me. When I first started acting, my parents had very little money.

“Talking to my dad about when he’s going to be able to pay the bank off and him saying, ‘Never, we’ll die having to pay it off’, that really bothered me from a young age.”

Hemsworth said he still suffered from stress and anxiety when he found himself taking on “too many projects” due to that same mentality.

“What gives me huge anxiety and evokes stress is when I’m trying to take care of too many things, too many projects,” he said.

“I still have these thoughts of like, it’s all going to go away if I don’t say yes to these things.

“I can still feel stress eating away at me, and I don’t want it to rule my life.”

In 2022, the Thor star revealed he had discovered through testing on his Limitless docuseries that his chances of developing the degenerative condition Alzheimer’s disease are eight to 10 times higher than average because he has two copies of the APOE4 gene.

He has since taken radical steps to look after his brain – after his grandfather Martin died of the disease, and his dad Craig, 68, began showing early signs.

Hemsworth recently admitted he has always been prone to overthinking, which has led to feelings of anxiety. From a young age, his mother Leonie used to help keep him distracted.

“She would say I was letting something consume me,” he told the Sunday Times Culture magazine.

“The danger for me is if I’m bored or become stagnant. Then I’ll find problems that aren’t there.

“I wouldn’t [call it depression]. I have anxiety that I have to quickly figure out how to appease – like everybody, I face these emotions screaming for attention, so it’s about keeping them balanced to stop me falling into problematic emotional states. Mum was always very good, when I was growing up, at reminding me of that.”