The career-defining role Charlize Theron wanted to quit: “I tried to talk her out of it”
In the early part of her career, Charlize Theron often spoke about how difficult it was to get Hollywood to see her as anything more than a sex symbol. Naturally, this seems crazy because she has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt for decades that being a great actress and being beautiful are not mutually exclusive. However, it took one particular career-defining role for the South African star to open people’s eyes to the true depth of her talents – but it may never have happened if she’d successfully talked the director out of casting her.
When Theron first broke out, it was for playing a sexy character in 2 Days in the Valley, an ensemble piece set in Los Angeles. She appeared on the poster in a tight white bodysuit, and pretty soon, her agent was inundated with offers for similar parts that focused on her client’s looks and sexuality. Theron didn’t want to be defined by how she looked, though, so her agent said no to all these roles and waited a year for a part to come along that would actually allow her to showcase her acting chops.
Over the next several years, while Theron did rise through the Hollywood ranks with parts in movies like The Devil’s Advocate, The Cider House Rules, Men of Honour, and The Italian Job, she still felt something was missing. “I kept finding myself in a place where directors would back me, but studios didn’t,” she said. “I found myself making really bad movies, too.”
Everything would change for Theron when she read a script written by a woman with no Hollywood credits to her name. In fact, all Patty Jenkins had made were a few student films. However, what she did have was a great script that told the harrowing story of the first female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, a sex worker who murdered seven of her male clients. Wuornos’ story was one of abuse, addiction, mental health issues, and abuse at the hands of men, and every moment of this hard life showed on her face.
Naturally, when word got out that Jenkins wanted the classically gorgeous Theron, it became all anyone wanted to talk about. It would require a physical transformation, including weight gain and fake teeth, and even Theron wasn’t sure she was right for the role. “She really turned me upside down,” Theron admitted. “I was like, ‘Whoa, this woman’s crazy’. But there was nothing I could do because, trust me, I tried to talk her out of it.”
For her part, Jenkins never doubted Theron’s suitability – and it rankled her that other people did. “I was terrified leading up to the film about finding someone who could do it,” the director confessed in 2003. “Before I ever wrote the script, I was consumed with the thought that if the wrong person plays this, it’s going to go down the drain.”
“So, I had been wracking my brain…and I woke up in the middle of the night, and The Devil’s Advocate was on,” Jenkins continued. “There was this close-up of her face, and I just sat up and thought, ‘Oh, yeah! Charlize could do it!'” When she pitched it to Theron, she believed the actor “was mistrustful that it was going to be some sexy, hot, exploitive lesbian thing,” and her lack of enthusiasm for the project was palpable. Jenkins confessed, “She was like, ‘Why do you want me?'”
Over time, Jenkins convinced Theron that she was the right woman for the job and that Monster would be her ticket to an acting career based on her craft, not her looks. Theron soon stopped trying to talk herself out of the role of a lifetime and ended up winning the ‘Best Actress’ Academy Award for what Roger Ebert dubbed “one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.”
