Charlize Theron says no to future extreme body transformations to help her get into character.
The 48-year-old Academy Award winner shared this in a recent interview with To tempt that she would no longer be willing to put on significant weight for a movie role.
She explained that it had simply become too difficult to lose the extra weight at her age, even though she was once able to lose tens of pounds in a short period of time in her twenties.
However, when she tried to slim down to her usual size after finishing Jason Reitman’s critically acclaimed 2018 drama Tully, she found it was no longer so easy to lose the 40 pounds she had put on for the role of a woman who recently gave birth.
In the same interview, Charlize also denied having a facelift and instead attributed her changing face to simple aging.
Turning it down: Charlize Theron, 48, told Allure in a recent interview that she was no longer willing to gain significant weight for a movie role; seen on May 12 in Rome
Slowed metabolism: “I’ll never do it again because you can’t take it off,” she explained, citing her 2018 film Tully (pictured) as a particularly difficult experience to move on from
“I’ll never make a movie again and say, ‘Yeah, I’ll put on 40 pounds,'” Charlize declared, referring to Tully.
“I’ll never do it again because you can’t take it off,” she explained.
“When I was 27 I did Monster,” she continued, referring to her 2003 film in which she won an Oscar for playing the serial killer Aileen Wuornos. “I lost 30 pounds in one night. I missed three meals and was back to my normal weight.”
But things weren’t so simple when she took a similar approach to play a woman who has just given birth to her third child in Tully, teaming up again with director Jason Reitman after their critically acclaimed 2011 film Young Adult.
It was much more than an “overnight” process for her to lose the weight she had initially gained.
“Then I did it for Tully at age 43, and I remember trying to lose weight for a year, calling my doctor and saying, ‘I think I’m going to die because I can’t lose this weight,'” recalls she herself.
And he said, “You’re over 40. Calm down. Your metabolism isn’t what it used to be,” she continued. “No one wants to hear that.”
She added that even in a culture more accepting of weight gain and differently shaped bodies, it was still “hard” to feel like she couldn’t shed the extra weight.
However, she was able to look back on her ordeal in Tully and laugh, saying it was “so funny” when she had to do red carpet events after she arrived for a role.
She especially praised her stylist Leslie Fremar for finding the ideal outfits for her temporarily fuller figure.
“I call her and say, ‘I’m doing this movie about postpartum depression and I’ve put on about 40 pounds.’ And she says, “Oh my God! Oh my God! How am I going to dress you?”
Theron explained, “It’s not something you can come up with at the last minute.”
“When I was 27, I did Monster,” she continued, referring to her 2003 film (pictured) in which she won an Oscar for the role of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. “I lost 30 pounds in one night. I missed three meals and was back to my normal weight’
Harder to lose: When she played the role of a mother of three in Tully in 2018, she still hadn’t lost the 40 pounds she’d gained a year after packing. Her doctor tried to calm her down, explaining that her metabolism had slowed down in her 40s; still from Monster
As chic as ever: She credited stylist Leslie Fremar for finding classy outfits to match her extra weight, including “lots of blazers with open backs”; seen in February in Paris
In the end, Fremar was able to find “a lot of open-back blazers” for the Bombshell actress.
Elsewhere in her Allure interview, Charlize complained about filming action movies. While she had no problem with the genre, she found it frustrating that when she hurt herself, it took “much longer to heal” than it did when she was in her twenties.
Age was also an issue as she revealed that people sometimes complain that they think her slim face is the result of a facelift.
“What did she do to her face?” she recalled fans saying. “I’m like, ‘B***, I’m just getting older! That doesn’t mean I’ve had bad plastic surgery. This is exactly what’s happening.’