Charlize Theron Criticized For Being Too Ugly
According to a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Charlize Theron revealed that her 2003 film Monster almost didn’t take flight as the financiers, a team made up of predominantly “older, white men”, thought that Theron’s makeover, which forced the actress to gain 30 pounds and shave her eyebrows to portray serial killer Aileen Wuornos was a bridge too far and would drive audiences, who weren’t used to seeing the stunning actress look that way.
Before Ryan Murphy drew Netflix subscribers in with his hit series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Zac Efron took on the role of infamous serial killer Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Charlize Theron gave an Oscar-winning performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster. Anyone who knows about the woman behind the story and has seen the film knows that the Atomic Blonde star nailed the performance of Wuornos right down to her looks.
Knowing that she was doing right by her craft and the character, Charlize Theron teamed up with Monster’s director, Patty Jenkins, with the duo signing on as producers in an act of “rebellion” to make sure the film was made. After cameras had been rolling and samples were set into the financiers, Theron recalls waking up to a call at 3 a.m. with the voice on the other end of the phone saying that she was “so fat and so ugly,” adding that her character didn’t flash a smile at any point. Immediately taking things to Jenkins, Theron remembers the Wonder Woman franchise director telling her bluntly, “‘Don’t f**king listen to that.’”
Jenkins’ defiant statement would light a fire under Charlize Theron’s butt and give her more love for the Monster director than she thought possible. “That was the first time I heard a woman go, ‘F**k them,’ and it was a rebellion that I never knew before,” Theron says. The Mad Max: Fury Road star added that Jenkins’ ride-or-die attitude quickly snapped her out of a state of panic as she admits that when she got the financier’s call she thought, “‘Maybe he’s right.’”
Thankfully for Charlize Theron, Patty Jenkins, and those funding the film, nothing was changed about the way Theron tackled the complicated main character in Monster. Aileen Wuornos is just that – a complicated character – who worked as a sex worker in Florida and was convicted of the murder of six men between 1989 and 1990.
Claiming that she acted in self-defense, Wuornos was ultimately convicted of the murders and sentenced to death, landing her on death row before being executed by lethal injection in 2002 – the second woman in the history of the state to have had their death sentence carried out.
The film would be released just one year after Wuornos’s execution with Charlize Theron starring opposite Christina Ricci who played the serial killer’s girlfriend and sometime criminal partner, Selby Wall, a character who was based on Wuornos’s real-life girlfriend, Tyria Moore.
Along with taking home that year’s Academy Award for Best Actress, Charlize Theron’s performance in Monster is a thing of legend with the actress also nabbing a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In the end, Jenkins and Theron prevailed, making Monster an unforgettable piece of true crime cinema that still sticks the landing today.
