Smashing the glass ceiling
> Charlize Theron hopes her role in Atomic Blonde will herald a new age of female-led blockbusters
CHARLIZE THERON has blasted Hollywood as being ‘caveman-like’ for so rarely allowing women to command big-budget films.
The Oscar-winning actress, next seen in action thriller Atomic Blonde, cites the recent success of Wonder Woman and past hits Alien and Terminator as proof that the formula works in films.
But Theron, 41, said the momentum has never been carried to fruition to allow women to break through in such roles.
“We’ve had moments like this, where women really showcase themselves and kind of break glass ceilings. And then, we don’t sustain it,” she told US magazine Variety.
“Or there’s one movie that doesn’t do well, and all of a sudden, no one wants to make a female-driven film.
“I am ashamed that I’m part of an industry that has never allowed a woman to work with a budget higher than what the budget has been on Wonder Woman.
“I am hoping that this is the movie that’s going to change it and keep it for us.”
Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman became the highest-grossing film recently directed by a woman, making more than US$746 million (RM3.2 billion). Theron, who won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2004’s Monster, also said that training for the Atomic Blonde role had cracked two of her teeth, where she had to remove one tooth and replaced the other in a surgery. Atomic Blonde seems very much in the tradition of 2014’s John Wick – a game-changing spin on the genre that turned its fight scenes into a kind of neonsoaked, high aesthetic – which is no surprise, since it’s helmed by one of John Wick’s co-directors, David Leitch. It makes sense, then, to cast Theron in the lead role here; considering her Furiosa portrayal proved the absolute scene-stealer of another genre gamechanger, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Adapted from the graphic novel The Coldest City, Atomic Blonde sees her play Agent Lorraine Broughton, a member of MI6 dispatched to Berlin in 1989, on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, tasked to retrieve a priceless dossier containing the list of double agents from within the destabilised city.
“I saw potential in this character,” Theron said. “I wanted to explore a woman in this world and have her kind of play with the same set of rules that men get to play in.”
On her mission in a city simmering with revolution and double-crossing hives of traitors, Broughton finds herself partnering with embedded station chief David Percival (James McAvoy).
Spy movies have generally been dominated by male leads, such as the James Bond, Mission Impossible and Bourne franchise.
Theron, who gets to show off her physical fighting prowess in the role, said “the skill of this was definitely a challenge. I wanted people to believe that she was that good”.
Co-star Sofia Boutella, who plays spy Delphine Lasalle, said she was “a bit nervous at first” when filming an intimate scene with Theron in the film.
But Boutella added: “She made me feel very comfortable and she made me laugh. She just guided me through it in a very easy way. She was lovely and fun to work with.” – Agencies