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Like other non-British people, Charlize Theron sometimes says things when surrounded by British people she might not normally say otherwise. For the rest of us, it's often something like "Cheerio!" or "Bloody hell!" used in entirely the wrong context; for Charlize Theron, however, the stakes are slightly higher.
In an interview with British GQ, out today, the magazine asked the actress how she broke out of being typecast early on in her career, to which she replied:
Jobs with real gravitas go to people that are physically right for them and that's the end of the story. How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, f***ing, gown-wearing eight-foot model? When meaty roles come through, I've been in the room and pretty people get turned away first.
Predictably, this did not land very well with the rest of the media, resulting in headlines like "Charlize Theron Needs to Check Her Pretty Person Privilege." Later on in the interview, however, she makes a far less controversial statement about the double standard of aging in Hollywood, saying:
We live in a society where women wilt and men age like fine wine. And, for a long time, women accepted it. We were waiting for society to change, but now we're taking leadership. It would be a lie to say there is less worry for women as they get older than there is for men ... It feels there's this unrealistic standard of what a woman is supposed to look like when she's over 40.
Perhaps for her sake, we can choose to take one of these statements seriously, and leave the other in the pages of GQ.
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