The South African actress confessed 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 demonstrated her great talent and versatility (her character in Monster is an example of this), her slender figure and her pretty face have led her to be objectified on more than one occasion, seeking to exploit her s-xuality. to the max.
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 she did not want to name: "In a specific movie, 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-xuality and how desirable they wanted me in the film, ”said the South African without mincing words.
However, the interpreter revealed that this was not the only time that 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 belittled me," Theron acknowledged. And although in Monster -a film that won her an Oscar and in which she starred in 2003 with Christina Ricci- her image was far from that of a s-xy 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 make it a lesbian s-x 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 overthrow 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 that 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 s-xism and misogyny that she experienced in the early years of her career, playing strong and powerful women, but she has also fought against wage inequality and different working conditions between women and men. . In an interview for Buster, the Atomic star spoke about how the industry punishes a woman who is at the helm 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 feature 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, all of a sudden we find ourselves going back to square one," she added bluntly. Charlize also compared what happens when her male peers are in a similar situation: “It's not necessarily the same for men, it happens all the time. The man, the actor, is not blamed for a failure, but the film is blamed. But when he walks by with us, it is the actress who is to blame, not the movie.
The truth is that for some time Charlize Theron launched into the conquest of action movies with very good results. Her roles in Mad Max, Fast and Furious and Atomic show this. The most curious? This fight against fictional villains has made it across the screen as this South African became a hero to all women in the industry.
