Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth on their "really fun" MCU reunion – and what made it different

As two of the original Avengers in the MCU, Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth have had no shortage of collaborations in their careers – but new film Crime 101 finds the pair sharing the screen in a rather different sort of movie.

Swapping superhero shenanigans for gritty crime antics, the thriller sees the pair joined in a starry ensemble by Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan and Monica Barbaro, with Hemsworth playing a methodical thief and Ruffalo the LA detective on his tail.

For most of the film, the two are apart from each other, but it all builds to an extremely tense confrontation in the final act. And for Hemsworth, the chance to work with Ruffalo in such a different space was "really fun" – even if they found themselves reverting to a previous dynamic on set.

"What was funny was, like, on [MCU film Thor:] Ragnarok, it was just improvisation. We were doing something very different to what our characters had done before [and] we were like, a couple of naughty kids just constantly talking and screwing around," he explained in an exclusive interview with Radio Times.

"And as much as Taika [Waititi] would encourage the improvisation, a lot of the time, he [was] like, 'Guys, shut up, stop it, just behave.' And we were doing that a bit on this and Bart [Layton, Crime 101 director] was a bit more gentle about it but he had to be like, 'Guys, that's not the characters!'"
Ruffalo evidently also enjoyed the chance to go head-to-head with Hemsworth in a different genre, and admitted to being a little taken aback when he first saw his co-star arrive on set.

"He was a totally different person," he said. "And I was just really impressed by that. He walked differently, sounded different. Even his eye colour was different.

"But it was just exciting to see him do that, because I've always thought he's a great actor, and I want to see him explore a lot of different kinds of things. So he was doing that, and I was like, 'Yeah, man.'"

You might wonder if the decision to cast two actors who knew each other so well was a deliberate move on the part of the film's director, Bart Layton. But the filmmaker – making his first feature since American Animals back in 2018 – explained that that actually hadn't factored into his thinking at all.

" I never thought about it and it's really something that people have asked about, afterwards," he revealed. "Like, 'Did you consciously want these actors who'd been in Marvel?' or whatever. And I was like, 'Well, of course not. When I think of Mark, I think of the extraordinary body of work that he's had... he's one of the great working screen actors.

"And then it was a bonus, because they love each other. But I think on this, they were quite surprised by how different it was, and they were both a little intimidated and the scenes between them are very tense.

"And I think that actually benefited from the fact that they were now not in that Marvel world. They were in a whole other thing. Chris was saying yesterday, he felt quite intimidated. And I think actually there was a positive effect of that."

Crime 101 is released in UK cinemas on Friday 13th February 2026.

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