By Marisa Laudadio
2:12pm PDT, Aug 26, 2023
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Getting paid to gain weight? It sounds fun — until it's not.
Charlize Theron has done it twice for two movies, but she had two very different experiences and has vowed to never do it again.
"I will never, ever do a movie again and say, 'Yeah, I'll gain 40 pounds.' I will never do it again because you can't take it off," she told Allure in an interview published in August 2023.
"When I was 27, I did 'Monster,'" she said. Charlize — who turned 48 in 2023 — won an Oscar for her performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the 2003 film. She gained 30 pounds as part of her transformation into the character.
When she was done shooting, she "lost 30 pounds, like, overnight," she said, explaining that she "missed three meals" and immediately snapped back to her "normal weight."
Sixteen years later, she gained a significant amount of weight for another role…
Keep reading to see her in both films and find out what happened when she tried to slim down in her 40s…
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For the 2018 dramedy "Tully," in which Charlize Theron played a mom dealing with postpartum mental health issues, she gained 50 pounds.
"I did it at 43 for 'Tully' and I remember a year into trying to lose the weight, I called my doctor and I said, 'I think I'm dying because I cannot lose this weight,'" Charlize told Allure in a story published in August 2023.
"And he was like, 'You're over 40. Calm down. Your metabolism is not what it was,'" she recalled. "Nobody wants to hear that."
Gaining weight — and struggling to shed it — also had an unexpected side effect…
MORE: Stars who've lost a significant amount of weight: Before and after photos
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While preparing to shoot 2018's "Tully," Charlize Theron developed mental health issues. "I gained close to 50 pounds for this film," she told "Entertainment Tonight," explaining, "I wanted to feel what this woman felt, and I think that was a way for me to get closer to her and get into that mindset."
One of the side effects of packing on the pounds was "a huge surprise to me," Charlize revealed. "I got hit in the face pretty hard with depression. Yeah, for the first time in my life I was eating so much processed foods and I drank way too much sugar. I was not that fun to be around on this film," she shared.
While the "first three weeks are always fun," she explained of gaining weight, after that, it's "not fun anymore."
"Like, all of a sudden you're just done eating that amount and then it becomes a job," she said. "I remember having to set my alarm in the middle of the night in order to just maintain [the weight]. I would literally wake up at two in the morning and I'd have a cup of cold macaroni and cheese just next to me. I would wake up and I would just eat it… I would just, like, shove it in my throat. It's hard to maintain that weight."
Keep reading to find out what she said about facial aging…
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One of the unexpected challenges that's cropped up whenever Charlize Theron has gained weight is how to dress for Hollywood events.
"I've always found it so funny when I've gained weight for movies and then had to go onto a red carpet," she told Allure in August 2023.
She'd call her stylist, Leslie Fremar, "and say, 'I'm doing this movie about postpartum depression and I've gained like 40 pounds.' And she's like, 'Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! How am I gonna dress you?' It's not something that you can just figure out last minute," the actress explained, adding that Leslie's "put a lot of blazers over open backs for me."
But difficulty losing weight isn't the only challenge of getting older…
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"My face is changing, and I love that my face is changing and aging," Charlize Theron told Allure in August 2023. But she doesn't like that people think she's been messing with her looks.
"People think I had a facelift. They're like, 'What did she do to her face?'" she lamented. "I'm like, 'B****, I'm just aging! It doesn't mean I got bad plastic surgery. This is just what happens.'"
Things have changed in other ways too…
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"The thing that really bums me out is that I make action movies now and if I hurt myself, I take way longer to heal than I did in my 20s," Charlize Theron explained to Allure in August 2023.
"More than my face, I wish I had my 25-year-old body that I can just throw against the wall and not even hurt tomorrow."
Now she said, at 48, "if I don't work out for three days and I go back to the gym, I can't walk. I can't sit down on the toilet. It's all those very real moments."
