Charlize Theron on Her Craziest Stunts and Her Love of Mindhunter & the Psyche of Serial Killers

TL;DR

Charlize Theron discusses performing her own extreme stunts in Netflix film Apex, her serial killer obsession, and producing Mindhunter with David Fincher.

Key Points

• 1.Theron performed nearly all her own stunts in Apex. The scariest was a real 60+ ft cliff hang in the New Zealand bush where no mats or wires could be used — only a thick safety rope — which she found more terrifying than the cliff dive.
• 2.The final climb scene captured a genuine reaction on the third take. Exhausted near the end of filming, Theron laughed involuntarily while pulling herself up an overhanging rock face, and director kept the take because it fit the character's emotional state.
• 3.Apex is Theron's self-declared favorite film in her 30-year career. She loved its simplicity — a woman hunted by a serial killer in the wild — and the psychological warfare between the two characters, comparing it structurally to Die Hard.
• 4.Taron Egerton's villain uses a bird-call Animal Noise he invented a week before shooting. Framed through a 'Peter Pan syndrome' lens, it genuinely frightened Theron on set; her startled reaction to it was kept in the film.
• 5.Theron produced Mindhunter after researching John Douglas, the FBI's first criminal profiler, while playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. She and David Fincher made two seasons focusing on the academic methodology of profiling rather than graphic depictions of killings.