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“I do have memories around that—a lot of memories, actually—it was super exciting,” Charlize Theron tells me over Zoom when I ask about filming Dior’s J’adore fragrance commercial in the mid-aughts, where she stomps through a hallway declaring “gold is cold, diamonds are dead, a limousine is a car, don’t pretend, feel what’s real.”
At the time, it was an unexpected take on the era’s high-production, high-fashion fragrance ads—in part because it was directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who artists like Madonna, Boy George, Prince, and Neneh Cherry had previously tapped to create cinematic music videos. “I just absolutely loved working with him,” says Theron of her first time collaborating with Mondino. “He was such a storyteller.”
On set in Paris, they’d eat their meals together “talking about how you tell the story of luxury,” she remembers. “At that moment everything was heavy luxury, and the fact that J’adore was also always associated with gold, I think he was really brave to kind of just go against it. He was like, ‘Well, what if we just like literally tell people ‘gold is cold?’ And a limousine is just a car, and you don't need any of this as you’re taking all these clothes off.’ So, I thought it was smart.”
This week, Dior perfume creative director Francis Kurkdjian’s new version of the fragrance, L’Or de J’Adore, released with reimagined “warm, solar, balmy, sexy,” notes that Theron says “are very much alive in this one—and very floral.” She’s also still into dressing the perfume down. “I don’t think of it as like, oh, this is really fancy, I gotta wear this just with a gown—you can wear your jeans and t-shirt or literally be in your sweats about to take your kids to the bus and you can indulge in this.” It all plays into a relaxed attitude she’s taking this summer about beauty, and life in general. She’s taking it easy, she’s traveling with her kids, and she’s growing out her hair. “I’m trying to get that mullet to kind of come down,” Theron laughs.
A lower-maintenance routine makes sense when there are more important things to focus on, anyway. “At my age now and my lifestyle and the fact that I’m pretty much an Uber driver for my kids, I can’t even imagine waking up in the morning and having to do anything other than wash and just let it dry while I’m going about my day,” she says, acknowledging that her buzzes and bowl cuts have often been tied to the roles she’s playing on and offscreen. “I think hair is really powerful,” she says. “It just speaks really loudly to what you're trying to get across as far as yourself, personally, or when you're playing a character.”
Right now, Theron is welcoming a break from playing anyone other than herself. “Obviously, my unions are on strike, so I’m kind of forcefully told not to work, and I’m gonna take advantage of that,” she says. “I feel like I want to live more in the moment and worry less about how I’m scheduling the future.”
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