Theron is one ‘Mad’ trailblazer
She stands for women who ‘walk through pain and suffering and shake it off ’
Women “can walk through pain ... and shake it off,” she says.
Like Imperator Furiosa, the sinewy, leathery fighter she plays in Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron is something of a lone warrior.
She arrives for a morning interview at the Baccarat Hotel precisely on time, no publicist or assistant or retinue around, accompanied by boyfriend Sean Penn, son Jackson, 3, and mom Gerda, who’s there to help out with her grandson.
“I just ran down. I’m here. Is this OK?” Theron asks as her crew wanders into an adjacent restaurant for breakfast.
When jokingly told that she rolls big, Theron laughs, then pauses. “I thought you were being sarcastic. Do you think I have a huge entourage? ... My mom is here. I like being around her. I’m very, very lucky.”
In pretty much every facet of her life. Theron is fronting Mad Max (in theaters today) 36 years after the first movie, released in 1979, turned Mel Gibson into a superstar. This time, it’s Theron’s Furiosa, with her slow, quiet burn, who erupts as the film’s force, shaved head and all.
“I don’t think people even recognized me for the longest time,” she says. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
What is a very major deal, however, is the fact that Furiosa carries the torch for a slew of women who aren’t represented in films. While pundits bemoan the dearth of meaty roles for women and the lack of female directors, director George Miller has unleashed a heroine who, mostly on her own wherewithal, sets out to save what’s left of the human race.
“I think of women as very resil-
ient,” says Theron, 39. “We can walk through pain and suffering and shake it off, instead of putting it in the avoidance box.”
The movie, which has a 99% critics’ approval rating on survey site RottenTomatoes.com, is about a post-apocalyptic world ruled by a freakish tyrant who enslaves the scrappy, parched survivors left. Furiosa kidnaps his five fertile wives to take them to a promised land; Tom Hardy’s sav- age Max Rockatansky clashes, then bands with her.
“Her drive was something that I really (understood) — wanting to feel everything and not doing anything about it is a great fear of hers and something I can relate to,” says Theron, who was 3 when the first Mad Max came out.
“The movie is so hopeful. It says a lot about the human condition. No matter how ( bad) it is, if you’re alive, you’ll find a sliver of light. That’s what we hold on to.”
Onscreen, she nails that combination of assurance, despair and decisiveness, and then some, Hardy says.
“I see her fully articulating a character under duress and transmuting it in a way that’s absolutely brilliant,” he says. “(Furiosa) is one of the best lead action characters I’ve ever seen.”