Charlize Theron Felt Naivete and Stupidity Helped Her Star in Her First Film ‘2 Days in the Valley’
Actor Charlize Theron got her first major film role when she was just 19-years-old. But she credited her own naivete as a youth for nabbing her the breakthrough feature.
Charlize Theron once explained how she starred in ‘2 Days in the Valley’
Apart from her ability, Theron had a good amount of luck on her side when she was cast in 2 Days in the Valley. But fortune didn’t always smile down on the Oscar-winner. Before acting, Theron pursued a modeling career. In the end, however, she felt she was too tall to succeed in the industry.
“I was too tall, too big, too late for the supermodel look of the 80s. Kate Moss and all the tiny, grungy girls had just become fashionable, and I didn’t fit the bill,.” she once told HuffPost.
Sometime later, Theron would embark on an acting career almost on a whim. Reflecting back on the time period, the actor asserted she was mostly trying to find herself. This led to her being given a chance to star in 2 Days in the Valley thanks to the film’s director John Herzfeld.
“I had been in L.A. for about 10 months. I really didn’t know where my life was going to go. I was so intrigued by this aspect of storytelling, even though I wasn’t crystal clear about what it was. I think my naivety and stupidity kind of helped me in a weird way. And John was crazy enough to give me the job,” she said according to WWD.
Herzfeld also chimed in claiming that he felt Theron was a movie star as soon as he laid eyes on her.
“You get emotional about this stuff,” Theron reflected. “Twenty years later, you’re looking at your life and you have to be grateful. You sometimes look at things like, ‘I don’t even know how that happened.’ My journey is so bizarre, but I’m so grateful to John and the actors that I got to work with on that job to teach me about light and marks. That was really where I discovered all of that.”
Charlize Theron ended up punching her ‘2 Days in the Valley’ co-star Teri Hatcher
Theron feared that she might’ve made a bad impression in her first major film role. In the movie, Theron had to engage in a choreographed fight scene with Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher. But Theron asserted that she might’ve gotten a bit too into the scene during the scripted confrontation, and accidentally hit Hatcher pretty bad. So much so Theron might’ve left her co-star bruised.
“And because it was Teri Hatcher, who was a star, and I was this bleached-blonde-Amazonian, catsuit-wearing nobody who was punching her in the face, I was like a wild animal. Back then I didn’t know how to hone in my energy and I was knocking over lights. I had no concept of a set. I connected right with Teri Hatcher’s face. I felt terrible about it. I had no money and sent her some cheap beer the next day. Sorry, Teri,” she said in an interview with W magazine.
Theron couldn’t help reflect on her fight with Hatcher while talking about her later feature Atomic Blonde. The 2017 movie saw Theron playing an action hero, requiring her to indulge in many intense fight scenes. Theron revealed that she had to do a lot of preparation for the film, especially since she wasn’t used to actually fighting.
“It’s like dance, and I grew up taking ballet. I love discipline. I function really well within the parameters of discipline and knowing what to do,” she once said about doing action scenes. “But other than Teri Hatcher, I had only connected my fist with a girl’s face once in my entire life, so I had to do a lot of training for [Atomic Blonde].”
