Charlize Theron on Stunt Work, Loving Mindhunter, Sephora Trips & Her Welcome to Hollywood Moment

TL;DR

Charlize Theron discusses her Netflix film Apex, doing her own stunts, producing Mindhunter, and arriving in LA as a young South African farm girl.

Key Points

• 1.Theron does nearly all her own stunts in Apex. She climbed a real 60-ft rock face with only a safety rope — no mats, no wires — calling it the scariest thing she's ever filmed, scarier than the cliff dive.
• 2.The most terrifying stunt was the final climb, not the cliff dive. Exhausted near the end of production, she had to lower herself down the rock face and climb back up on action; on the third take she broke into genuine laughter, which director kept in the film.
• 3.Apex is Theron's favorite movie she's ever made in 30 years. She loved its simplicity — a woman, the wilderness, a serial killer — and said the end result matched everything she hoped for before filming began.
• 4.Taron Egerton plays the villain and invented a terrifying bird sound a week before shooting. Theron says his Peter Pan syndrome character concept gave the role a fresh twist, and his first bird call genuinely scared her on set.
• 5.Theron produced Mindhunter because of her research while playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. She became fascinated by FBI profiler John Douglas, the first behavioral science agent who pioneered criminal profiling despite years of FBI resistance.
• 6.Theron took her daughters ziplining in Hawaii as a bonding challenge. She didn't warn them in advance; it poured rain, her eldest refused a raincoat to stay cute, but everyone ended the eight-line descent laughing together.
• 7.Theron regularly escapes parenting chaos by driving around the block or going to Sephora. She described her teenage daughters as hormonal firecrackers who went from wanting cuddles to yelling at her for turning the lights on.
• 8.Theron's welcome-to-Hollywood moment was spotting the Hollywood sign from a taxi after flying in from South Africa. She had arrived knowing nothing about LA, stayed in a by-the-hour hotel called the Farmer's Daughter, and called her mom immediately to report seeing the sign.