Charlize Theron said the incident happened during her very first audition, when she was just 18 or 19
Charlize Theron was forced to make a quick getaway from her very first acting audition after a producer crossed professional boundaries.
The Oscar-winning actress recalled the early ’90s incident on The Howard Stern Show and said she was only 18 or 19 and new to the acting world when it happened.
Theron, 43, said a modeling agent told her to head to the producer’s house in Los Angeles on a Saturday at 9 p.m. — and when she arrived, the producer welcomed her barefoot while wearing pajamas.
“I should’ve [turned around and left]. I didn’t. But he had a very healthy ego, he felt very good about himself,” she said, adding that he was playing Muzak. “Then we sat down and started talking. He sat very close to me, that was strange. The drinking bothered me, I was like, ‘This doesn’t feel right.’ ”
The Long Shot star said she repeatedly tried to read him script pages during their meeting but had her attempts brushed off, as the producer said he just wanted to “talk.”
“And then at one point he put his hand on my knee and that’s when I just went, ‘Oof,’ ” she recalled. “And it’s crazy, and girls talk about this, where you just go blank. Like, you don’t know what to do.”
Despite feeling frozen, Theron said she immediately got up and left the producer’s house.
“I was so angry with myself that I didn’t say something. I was like, ‘I’m not that kind of girl, why did I not tell him to go f- himself,’ ” she said. “Like, it made me so angry.”
Theron said the incident came full circle eight years later, when the same man offered her a job, allowing the star to see him face-to-face again for the first time since their initial meeting.
“I went purely just to have my moment where he said, ‘Nice to meet you,’ and I said, ‘No, we’ve met before.’ And he had no recollection of it,” she said. “I went down the list. I said, ‘It was 9 p.m. on a Saturday at your house, you were wearing pajamas.’ I went down the list. I had my moment. He said, ‘Wow, I do not remember that.’ ”
The actress did not reveal the producer’s identity, but did say he “was a very big deal and is still a big deal,” prompting cries of “Oooh” from Stern and her Long Shot co-star Seth Rogen, who also participated in the interview.
Theron has long been a vocal supporter of the #MeToo movement, and in October 2017, penned a lengthy note praising survivors shortly after Harvey Weinstein was first accused of s-xual assault and harassment.
“The women who have spoken about their abuse are brave and heroic and although I didn’t have a personal experience like this with Harvey Weinstein, I unfortunately cannot say I’m surprised,” she wrote. “This culture has always existed, not just in Hollywood but across the world. And many men in positions of power have gotten away with it for far too long. We cannot blame the victims here.”
In October 2018, Theron told the Today show she’s been impressed with how things have progressed in the year since #MeToo took off.
“Something has happened in the last year that is undeniable and continuous,” she said. “Things are actually changing for women in our industry.”
