Chris Hemsworth Shares His Family’s Alzheimer’s Disease Journey in New Documentary

Family caregiving is having a moment in the spotlight.

Just in time for National Family Caregivers Month, Marvel star Chris Hemsworth is releasing a new documentary, A Road Trip to Remember, chronicling an emotional motorcycle trip in Australia that he took with his dad, Craig, now 71, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The goal of the epic road trip was to revisit the places where the Hemsworth family had once lived in Melbourne and the remote outback, reconnect with friends and explore memories from decades past, in an effort to slow the patriarch’s cognitive decline.

“We know that revisiting past experiences by talking to someone about it , even using objects from the past or places from the past, is a great way to boost our cognition. This is what we call reminiscence therapy,” explainsDr. Suraj Samtani, a dementia specialist and clinical psychologist at the University of New South Wales’ Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, who advises  and supports Chris in his plans throughout the documentary.

“For Craig, in living with dementia and trying to cope with the changes that he’s facing,” says Samtani, “sharing his life stories through the power of reminiscence therapy is going to be really beneficial for his brain. If you want to work out your body, you do exercises like lifting weights to build your muscles. Well, for our brain, we can do the same thing by practicing retrieving memories from the past.”

While talking around the campfire, Craig shares concerns about the future with his son.

Craig Parry/National Geographic

Show highlights

• Chris and Craig begin the epic road trip with a return to their one-time family home in Melbourne — recreated to look exactly as it did in the 1990s — to evoke deep memories in Craig, which can help with cognitive function. When Chris’s mom, Leonie, joins them, the trio watches a silly VHS tape of a homemade movie Chris made as a teen. “[Chris] used to say, ‘I’m going to Hollywood.’ And we’d sort of chuckle and say, ‘Oh, yeah. What’s your backup?’ [He’d say, I] don’t need a backup — I’m going to Hollywood,” Craig jokes.
• Chris and mom Leonie discuss how he has two copies of the risk gene for Alzheimer’s, but says it's something he chooses not to worry about now. "I'd rather just continue on with life," he says. "It's not a problem at this point, and it may never be. I'm far more focused on my dad right now."
• Father and son motorcycle deep into the outback to Bulman, where Craig worked as a wild bull wrangler when Chris was a child. Chris sets up a reunion with Spencer, Craig’s pal from 35 years ago, and they are all greeted warmly by old friends. At one point, Chris is taken aback when Craig shows signs of confusion, a symptom of his illness. “To see your dad, who has been in control for so many years and been in charge, and now to see such vulnerability there, I want to take that from him,” Chris explains. “I want to help him and figure it out.”
• After being honored with a spiritual ceremony welcoming them back to the community, Chris and Craig embark on an overnight campout. Craig admits to his son that he fears that his illness will make him a burden to his family. An emotional Chris barely holds back the tears, telling his dad, “You’re not going to be a burden, mate. We’re all in it together. We’ll take care of you just as you took care of us.”

A Road Trip to Remember is just one in a new crop of films shedding light on the impact of family caregiving on loved ones and their caregivers. Actor Bradley Cooper released a documentary on PBS in June called Caregiving about the importance of caregivers and his role as part of the care team for his dad, Charles, who died from lung cancer in 2011. More recently, entrepreneur and model Emma Heming-Willis opened up in her best-selling memoir, The Unexpected Journey, about being a caregiver for her husband, movie star Bruce Willis, in the wake of his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.

“The increased visibility that recent celebrity books and documentaries have brought to the issue of caregiving takes an often hidden issue and brings it forward,” says Rita B. Choula, senior director of caregiving at the AARP Public Policy Institute.