Charlize Theron plans on steering away from acting roles that require her to undertake an extreme body transformation.
The 48-year-old actress touched on the subject in a new interview with Allure. Theron shed light on the double standard that aging females face in Hollywood, a battle Charlize wants to “fight against.”
“I’ve always had issues with the fact that men kind of age like fine wines and women like cut flowers,” she shared. “I despise that concept and I want to fight against it, but I also think women want to age in a way that feels right to them. I think we need to be a little bit more empathetic to how we all go through our journey. My journey of having to see my face on a billboard is quite funny now.”
Theron continued by revealing she has retired from taking acting roles that call for her to put on weight. Twenty years ago, Charlize won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in 2003’s Monster, which saw her lose “30 pounds overnight.”
“I will never, ever do a movie again and say, ‘Yeah, I’ll gain 40 pounds.’ I will never do it again because you can’t take it off,” she explained. “When I was 27, I did Monster. I lost 30 pounds, like, overnight. I missed three meals and I was back to my normal weight.”
Most recently, Theron put on 50 pounds for the 2018 dramedy Tully. Considering she was 43 at the time of filming, as apposed to 28 when she shot Monster, Charlize is aware that it’s harder to shed the weight as a woman in her 40s.
“I did it at 43 for Tully, and I remember a year into trying to lose the weight, I called my doctor and I said, ‘I think I’m dying because I cannot lose this weight.’ And he was like, ‘You’re over 40. Calm down. Your metabolism is not what it was.’ Nobody wants to hear that,” Theron said.
Back in 2018, Theron told Entertainment Tonight that her weight gain for Tully resulted in a bout of depression.
“I gained close to 50 pounds for this film,” Theron told ET at the time. “I wanted to feel what this woman felt, and I think that was a way for me to get closer to her and get into that mindset. You know, it was a huge surprise to me. I got hit in the face pretty hard with depression. Yeah, for the first time in my life I was eating so much processed foods and I drank way too much sugar. I was not that fun to be around on this film.”
