Charlize Theron believes that there is still a misconception around women, especially on pulling off stunts in action movies.
Charlize Theron starred in numerous action movies, including Mad Max: Fury Road, Æon Flux, and The Old Guard. However, she feels that women are treated differently when it comes to doing this genre.
Charlize Theron on misconception around women in action movies
Charlize Theron opened up about her experience while filming The Italian Jobs during the virtual Comic-Con@Home “Evolution of a Badass” panel on Friday.
According to her, she endured a sexist environment while filming the 2003 action movie.
“I realized there was still so much misconception around women and the genre. Even though in that film, the action is really based on cars, we had to physically do a lot of that stuff,” Theron said as quoted by Us Weekly.
“There was a real pressure to pull off those stunts with the actors. … There was a very unfair process that went with that. I was the only woman with a bunch of guys and I remember vividly getting the schedule in our pre-production, and they had scheduled me for six weeks more hard training than any of the guys. It was just so insulting.”
Theron competed with the other male actors
Charlize Theron was so game to pull off the action scenes. The incident “put a real fire under my ass” to show everyone what she could do.
“I was like, ‘All right, you guys want to play this game, let’s go,'” she recalled.
Theron also shared an incident when one of her male co-stars pulled over and threw up while they were training. She wanted to show everyone that there was stuff she could do better than her male co-stars.
“I made it a point to outdrive all of those guys. I vividly remember Mark Wahlberg, halfway through one of our training sessions, pulling over and throwing up because he was so nauseous from doing 360s.”
How did Charlize prepare for her action roles?
Charlize Theron has already made a name for herself in making action movies. She also admitted that she prepared herself when she landed similar parts and could pull out the scenes she did in her movies in real life.
“When I started my action career, it was so important to sell the authenticity of, ‘Yes, I can fight and I can take this guy down and I can survive this,'” Theron explained.
“There was such a level of wanting to prove that to audiences who for years said, ‘No, a woman could never fight a guy that size.'”
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