Charlize Theron is channeling her inner Courtney Love (or so it appears) on the cover of W magazine’s August issue. The actress is gearing up for her summer blockbuster, Atomic Blonde, an action thriller about an undercover M16 agent who’s sent to Berlin in the ’80s before the Wall falls. “I didn’t just want to play a girly spy who depends on her flirty ways,” she told Lynn Hirschberg on her new role. Edward Enninful was on styling duty while Alasdair McLellan lensed the shoot, together capturing the ’80s punk/glam vibe of ’80s Berlin. Read a few tidbits from the interview, below.
On her character’s parallels to James Bond…
“Lorraine is a little bit like Bond. He drinks a lot of martinis, doesn’t he? Shaken or not stirred, or whatever the fuck they are. Yeah, Lorraine and James are equally messed up.”
On her famous catsuit scene…
“2 Days in the Valley. Rotten Tomatoes gave it number 17 on the list of 20 Greatest Fight Scenes Ever. The fight was between me and Teri Hatcher. I hit her really bad.”
On fighting Teri Hatcher for the film…
“…I think she was 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.”
On the fight scenes in Atomic Blonde…
“…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. For instance, you have to throw yourself into ballet 100 percent, and that was really good for me as a young girl. 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 this film.”
On punching a girl in real life…
“I was working in Milan as a model, and this girl got very aggressive with me at a bar. She pushed me and started talking smack, and that was it. My body just took over, and I thought, I didn’t just do that, did I?”
On playing the villain…
“Look, I’ve always been fascinated by abhorrent behavior. I have a real interest in why people do horrible things. I read a lot of books and am fascinated by whether deviant behavior is caused by nature or nurture. There’s a part of me that wants to understand that darkness, but I can’t really understand it. So, it is cathartic to play a character who is evil. It’s a free pass for your soul: Nothing bad is going to happen, and you can explore what it would be like to be in that skin.”
