Charlize Theron: It’s Hard Being a “Gorgeous” Actress

Beauty isn’t everything.

It’s a fact Charlize Theron knows all too well. The actress has become known in the film industry for rejecting parts that that trade on her beauty. It’s served her well, as she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2004 after she put on 30 lbs. and wore prosthetics to portray serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. She earned her second Oscar nomination in 2006 for her role as a gritty iron miner in North Country. And when she signed on to star in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron decided that a buzz cut would look better with her character’s prosthetic arm.

Though she’s been the face of Dior for years, Theron says her beauty has often worked against her. “Jobs with real gravitas go to people that are physically right for them and that’s the end of the story,” she says in British GQ‘s May issue. “How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, f–king, gown-wearing eight-foot model? When meaty roles come through, I’ve been in the room and pretty people get turned away first.”

Sometimes, though, the right role comes along at the right time.

The actress net returns as Ravenna, the vain Evil Queen, in Universal Pictures’ The Huntsman: Winter’s War, a prequel to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman. According to Theron, her character’s plight mirrors what many of her Hollywood peers feel in real life. “We live in a society where women wilt and men age like fine wine. And, for a long time, women accepted it,” she tells the magazine. “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.”

British GQ‘s May issue is on sale Thursday in both print and as a digital edition.

(E! and Universal Pictures are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)

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