When it comes to action movies, we are all living in Charlize Theron‘s world. Having made one big impression after the next in films like “Æon Flux,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and most recently, Netflix’s “The Old Guard,” you’d think Theron would be able to get some respect from the higher-ups in Hollywood, but you’d be wrong. Theron revealed that producers of “The Italian Job” remake asked her to do a lot more training than her male co-stars.
Speaking during her Comic-Con@Home panel Friday, Theron talked about her more action-heavy roles and the “insulting” experience that drove her to prove women can do action roles just as well as the fellas. “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.
“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 car training than any of the guys. And it was just so insulting.”
Of course, you don’t put Charlize Theron in the corner, so if the suits gave her double standards and made her train harder than the male actors, she would go on to kick their asses on screen. “I was like ‘alright, you guys want to play this game? Let’s go’. And I made it a point to out-drive all of those guys,” Theron continued. “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.”
Theron then add that things are improving a bit. “The good news now is that we’ve kind of changed the genre for women,” she added. “I think there’s great evidence where we now know you can’t hide behind ignorance anymore. Audiences love these films.”
You can watch the rest of the panel below.