Theron
discusses her career and the transition into action heroine roles.
Theron:
I don't remember a specific moment, I don't think it was like I woke up on e
day and thought I want to do action movies. I think I've always wanted to
explore it but never had the opportunity too. I was raised with by a mother
that liked Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson movies. My Dad loved the Mad Max
films, I was raised on action films. It was peppered with SOPHIES CHOICE and
KRAMER VS. KRAMER, super inappropriate ages like 8, 9, 10 but it summed up
where my career went. I have always had an affinity for all the genres but 30
years ago there weren't a lot of opportunity for women to do movies like this.
After I won my Academy Award in 2004 and it was really hard to make AEON FLUX
because there were preconceived ideas. It is a character that I think today
would be celebrated more than in 2004. There was this moment in my career where
I realized very clearly that because the movies didn't really perform that I
wouldn't be given another opportunity. It was really harsh. It wasn't until MAD
MAX FURY ROAD and what happened with that film really changed the trajectory
for me and made me realize 'wait a second there are a lot of possibilities
here' and I made an active choice to look out for that material and development
it myself as a producer and that's where I find myself today.
I
don't think of myself as having a particular affinity for one genre but the
genre has changed for women. There is great evidence that we now know we can't
hide behind ignorance anymore. Fans love them and love the narrative and made
for the stunt world, it feels fresh and exploring the world of action with
women fighting and it excites me.
We
can't just look at action as physical. THE ITALIAN JOB was a great experience
and I realized there was so much misconception around women even though the
action is done by cars. The good thing that came out of the experience is the
push to do stunts with the actors. But there was a very unfair process that
went with it, I was the only woman with a bunch of guys. I remember vividly
that I had six weeks more car training than the guys and it was so insulting.
It also lit a fire under my ass and I made it a point to outdrive all the guys.
I was proud of the stunt work that we did. I did a reverse 180 in a warehouse
with props and people and I did that stunt on my own. That was a huge moment
thinking that women are so unfairly thought of and treated when it comes to the
genre.
I
really didn't know anything about continuous action until I worked on ATOMIC
BLONDE who set the tone that we wanted to do long action takes and it was the
first time that there was a real attempt to do a first. We had to shoot 7 to 10
minutes of action continuously. So as an actor you have to do everything right
and that's incredibly difficult to do. I'm not a martial arts fight and never
trained in the martial arts but it is plausible. That's what is so incredible
and I am so proud of what we accomplished on ATOMIC BLONDE and we pushed the
envelope. We pushed the concept that women in the industry and we celebrate women
fighting like woman and what body parts we can use and fight just as hard with
our elbows and our knees that was exciting to me. There is no one way and we
are pushing it. You look at a film like FURY ROAD and there is more edit in
that film and shooting his action is fast paced but it is done in a way that
doesn't feel like a cheat. When you don't cheat it people know and the
authenticity has really been celebrated in the last decade or so. It's also
made it hard for crappy action movies to survive because the bar has been set
so high.
Listen,
I don't think I will ever recover from the making of that film. It was a
tremendous feat what we pulled off all of us. It was hard and difficult in a
different way than ATOMIC BLONDE in the sense that the physicality was very
real and very rare that George wanted the stunt team to use wire work. Holding
your body up on a car and getting over to another vehicle consistently, it was
incredibly tedious but that was the challenge in that. I think when a filmmaker
can listen to the narrative and the story of MAD MAX is suppose to make you
feel exhausted and it was an exhausting shoot. He physically got to us that it
wasn't manufactures and that it came from a real place.
I
think in general I'm intrigued by the messiness of being a human, especially a
woman. I think for me, when we talk about representation I remember vividly
watching conflicted women in cinema. Women very rarely got to explore that.
There was a fear of putting women in circumstances where they don't shine. I do
believe that society has instilled us in this Madonna/whore complex, people are
sometimes not brave enough to explore. The richness of those stories are a
disservice to women in general. We are more complicated than that and our
strengths can come from our faults and mistakes and pettiness and madness,
that's what makes us interesting. I have a knee jerk reaction when someone
pitches a story that says 'she is a warrior and she is a hero', I think all of
my characters have had a sense that they are all survivors, they are all just
trying to survive. As a woman I can relate to that. I am not a hero, I don't
relate to heroes, I think people who inspire me are people who don't think they
are heroes. They put their heads down and do the work and I have an affinity
for that. It is a quality I really respond to.
With
Furiosa in MAD MAX Fury Road, she is one of the most important characters that
I've ever played. I knew how special it was and that's why I chased it. I think
it was to show a female character in a way that felt, the closest analogy and
closest moment in my own life that I can look back is Sigourney Weaver playing
Ripley. It changed and my world opened up. The amount of intelligence that she
brought to that role, she was completely in demand of it and it wasn't forced,
and it wasn't written, and it wasn't acted, it was lived. She lived in such an
authentic way. Furiosa, I could not look at her as a character, she felt so
real to me. Maybe because she was so hard, and we lived in that environment for
so long maybe that's why I felt that way about her. That is something I am
incredibly proud of and I feel really lucky that I was given that opportunity
and that I was willing to lay it all out there and give it my all.
It
was the first time that I developed something from such a small tiny kernel
with ATOMIC BLONDE. We were sent eight pages and I said yes to those eight
pages. I think that the reason I pushed as hard as I did for that film and the
sad truth is that a part of me as a female actor that this might be my last
opportunity. It's terribly that its in my psyche, I was relentless in the film
and I felt I carried a responsibility because I was in charge of everything. I
didn't want to get it wrong, I wanted to get it right. A part of me still sometimes
feel that if you get it wrong the one time that you just will not be given that
opportunity again. My entry into action came much later in my life, I made
ATOMIC BLONDE when I was 40 years old. So there was a lot of pressure and I put
a lot of pressure on everybody and on David Leech. I said to him "I'm
never going to stop and I'm going to expect you not to stop". When I look
back at the behind-the-scenes, we left it all on the dance floor. We really
did. You are as good as the people you work with.
I
feel really lucky that there are other women doing this at the same time,
people I consider friends like Patty Jenkins. She has raised the bar and I'm
constantly inspired by what other women are doing out there. We realize in this
position where you get to have the opportunity, there is a responsibility to
hand that baton over and keep the door open. In that sense it has been really
amazing, look, its still disproportioned to our male counterparts but we have
to keep putting pressure on the industry to do that. I want my two young girls
to grow up and think this is weird, or unusual or strange. I want this to be
normalizes.
In
THE OLD GUARD [Netflix], I think for me, the first thing that kind of grabbed
me was the potential of raising the physical action bar. The set pieces really
lent themselves to challenging action. I think that was one of the first things
that I noticed. I don't think I'd ever want to make a film based on how great I
could make the actions scenes. I think the struggle with humanity in this is
ever present. My taste is always just going to movies like PROMETHEUS, its hard
for me to invest and when you find a piece of material that lends itself to
both you realize how special that is. When I read this graphic novel, I found
that I could check both those boxes and push the envelope.
There
is a different style of fighting with these films and get to learn some new
skills. Most of the movies I have done and even though there is a skill level
and style of fighting, I still played women where they were allowed to get
scrappy. When you can get scrappy you can hide a lot of things. In this case I
couldn't because the wealth of information about martial arts is thousands of
years old. Learning any kind of martial arts is so gnarly. The first couple of
weeks when you walk into the gym you are really trying to access and see what
you can excel at and what you shouldn't waste time on. Realizing that we never
wanted to force a circle into a square. We had to figure out what we had to
shine from that. For me in the beginning when I started my action career it was
so important to see that I can fight, and I can take this guy down and I can
survive this. There was a level to prove I could survive that.
I
think that the essence that I put forth that there is no fear is completely
motivated by fear. In truth, everything actually scares me. I don't know how to
create not from a place of fear. I don't know if I ever could. I think the idea
of going into a project and not being scared would actually freak me out. It
would be really wrong. I think I'm very good at covering it up. I think a part
of it is how I was raised, and I was raised you get up, you do it and you don't
wallow but it doesn't mean I don't feel it. I feel it every day and ever
second. It’s the thing that keeps me up at night when we are shooting a film. I
play the movie over and over and over in my head. You have 30, 60, 100 days to
shoot it and that’s it. If you don't have it you don't have it.
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