Charlize Theron has become one of the most formidable action stars of the modern era. She’s blown audiences away in films like Atomic Blonde, The Fate of the Furious and, of course, in her award-winning turn as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. She’s currently appearing in new Netflix Original movie The Old Guard, in which she kicks ass throughout history as an immortal warrior.
During a Comic-Con@Home retrospective interview about her career, Theron revealed that she’s always been competitive when it comes to working with her co-stars. For example, in 2003 she starred in the forgettable remake of The Italian Job alongside Mark Wahlberg, Jason Statham and Edward Norton. The film involves many vehicle stunts and Theron vowed that she’d out-drive her colleagues, explaining:
“There was a real pressure to pull off those stunts with the actors. … But there was a very unfair process that went with that. I was the only woman with a bunch of guys. And I remember vividly getting the schedule in our preproduction, and they had scheduled me for six weeks more car training than any of the guys. It was just so insulting. But it was also a thing that put a real fire under my ass. Okay, if you guys want to play this game, let’s go. I made it a point to out-drive all of those guys. I vividly remember Mark Wahlberg halfway through one of our training sessions pulling over and throwing up because he was so nauseous of doing 360s.”
Theron went on to say that while the movie might not be great, she’s very proud of her stunt work in it. She points out that women in action films are commonly considered to be unable to pull off stunts, so being able to perfectly execute a complex reverse 360 turn proved the naysayers wrong. And while The Italian Job remake might not have been a great film, the driving training that Theron threw herself into certainly paid off when she was cast in Fury Road and in the Fast & Furious franchise.
In any case, you can check out The Old Guard on Netflix right now, but unfortunately we’ll have to wait until 2021 to see Charlize Theron kicking some vehicular butt when the delayed F9Â finally lands on April 2nd, 2021.
