The South African actress confessed to the objectification and misogyny she suffered from directors and producers during her early days in the film industry.
Undoubtedly, Charlize Theron is one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. And although throughout her career she has shown her great talent and versatility (her character in Monster is an example of this), her slender figure and her pretty face have made her objectified on more than one occasion, seeking to exploit her.
It was the actress herself who spoke about this situation in a recent interview with Harpers Bazaar, where she made reference to her bad experience with a director whom she did not want to name: “In a specific film, a director, man, made me try on models and change my clothes all the time. It was very obvious to me that it was because of my s** and how desirable they wanted me in the film, ”said the outspoken South African.
However, the interpreter revealed that this was not the only time she felt that objectification. "Not having any kind of control over what I'm going to wear has bothered me a lot over the years," she warned, realizing that it was men who chose her wardrobe to generate the desired impact.
“For a guy to make you try on clothes almost in front of him…things like that were demeaning. They looked down on me," Theron acknowledged. And although in Monster -a film that earned her an Oscar and in which she starred in 2003 alongside Christina Ricci- her image was far from that of a girl, the blonde said that both she and Ricci wanted to be faithful to Patty's vision Jenkins, the director, but that the producers "wanted to turn it into a lesbian s** movie."
Due to all these experiences lived on the set, Charlize Theron is one of the first actresses who raised the flag of feminism and fought to bring down the aesthetic canons that reigned for decades within the Hollywood industry. Something that today as a producer tries to deepen in each project. "I have an inner conflict for which I want to create the environments that I would have liked to see when I started 30 years ago," confessed the creator of Denver & Delilah, her own production company.
Theron has not only managed to confront the and misogyny that she experienced in the first years of her career, playing strong and powerful women, but she has also fought against salary inequality and different working conditions between women and men. . In an interview for Buster, the Atomic star talked about how the industry punishes a woman who is at the forefront of a box office flop and how that doesn't happen when a man stars in a similar scenario. I know that if this film does not do well, it will take me a long time to make another similar film, ”she said in 2017, referring to Atomic, an action movie that women in Hollywood do not usually star in.
"It's very unfair to women, because if we have a movie that doesn't do well, we suddenly find ourselves going back to box one," she added bluntly. Charlize also compared what happens when her male peers are in a similar situation: “The same thing doesn't necessarily happen to men, it happens all the time. The man, the actor, is not held responsible for a failure, but the film is blamed. But when he hangs out with us, it's the actress who's to blame, not the movie."
The truth is that for some time now, Charlize Theron launched herself into the conquest of action movies with very good results. Her roles in Mad Max, Fast and Furious and Atomic bear this out. The most curious? This fight against fictional villains has managed to cross the screen, as this South African became a hero for all women in the industry.
