Charlize Theron Is Serious About Starring in ‘Die Hard’ with a Lesbian Spin: ‘It’s a Great Idea’
Theron is one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood. If anyone can make this project happen, it’s her.
Charlize Theron is dead serious when it comes to starring in a lesbian-charged reimagining of “Die Hard.” At the end of 2020, the Oscar-winning actress stirred up buzz on social media by giving her seal of approval to a tweet that read: “Lesbian Christmas rom-coms are all well and good, but what I really want is a ‘Die Hard’ where Charlize Theron goes on a rampage to save her wife.” Theron reacted by writing, “Where do I sign?” Now in an interview for Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue, Theron doubled down on wanting to sign on for the project. All she needs now is a studio willing to make it.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a great idea,” Theron said when asked if she would star in a lesbian spin on “Die Hard.” “That’s why I replied on Twitter. Because I just thought that was kind of brilliant. I was like, ‘This person needs to start pitching. That’s a great idea.’ And the fact that it would be two women, I was like, ‘Yeah, sign me on.'”
A “Die Hard” reimagining would fit right at home in Theron’s action-packed filmography, which also includes “The Old Guard,” “Atomic Blonde,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The former two titles have sequels in various stages of development. Thanks to these roles, Theron has become one of the top female action stars in Hollywood. The actress first embraced action stunt work during the making of “The Italian Job,” although she was forced to prove herself opposite a male-dominated acting ensemble.
“I realized there was still so much misconception around women and the genre,” Theron revealed at Comic-Con last year. “Even though in that film the action is really based on on cars, we had to physically do a lot of that stuff,” she said. “There was a real pressure to pull off those stunts with the actors … there was a very unfair process that went with that. I was the only woman with a bunch of guys and I remember vividly getting the schedule in our pre-production, and they had scheduled me for six weeks more hard training than any of the guys. It was just so insulting.”
Theron said the difference in the way she was treated compared to her male costars “put a real fire under my ass.”
“I was like, ‘All right, you guys want to play this game, let’s go,’” she said. “I made it a point to outdrive all of those guys. I vividly remember Mark Wahlberg, halfway through one of our training sessions, pulling over and throwing up because he was so nauseous from doing 360s.”
These days, Theron no longer needs to prove she has action bonafides. With films like last year’s Netflix sensation “The Old Guard,” studios are now building action movies around Theron. Perhaps a lesbian take on “Die Hard” will be next.
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Charlize Theron Wants to Star in a Lesbian ‘Die Hard’ Remake
Charlize Theron is ready to reboot Die Hard with a lesbian twist.
It all started back in December after a fan went viral for proposing a remake of the classic Christmas action film with Theron as a heroine “on a rampage to save her wife.” Shortly thereafter, the star expressed her enthusiasm for the idea by replying, “Where do I sign?” And now, she’s doubling down on her interest in the potential project via a new interview with Vanity Fair.
Related | Charlize Theron Talks Raising Her Child as a Girl
“I mean, it’s a great idea,” Theron said. “That’s why I replied on Twitter, because I just thought it was kind of brilliant.”
Not only that, but Theron then went on to praise the fan who suggested the reboot, before reiterating her desire to take on the role if the film ever comes to fruition.
“I was like, ‘This person needs to start pitching. That’s a great idea,'” she said, before adding, “And the fact it would be two women, I was like, ‘Yeah, sign me on.'”
Let’s hope the studio are listening. In the meantime though, you can see the tweet that started it all, below.
Where do I sign https://t.co/nO47Bj28CN — Charlize Theron (@CharlizeAfrica) December 8, 2020
Charlize Theron on Anger, Anxiety, and the Solace of RuPaul
Vanity Fair: How are you different now than a year ago?
Charlize Theron: Whoa, that’s a big old question. I think I am way more anxious than last year.
Understandably.
This year has definitely amped up my angst, my anger. I think it just, like, heightened all of those human feelings.
And to complement that, two questions back to back: What has made you the angriest and what gives you hope from this past year?
It’s hard to try to quantify what, amongst the horrible events that we’ve had in this last year, are the worst. They are all pretty fucking shitty. Dealing with a virus and the amount of human loss that we’ve had—that’s pretty fucking shitty. The pain and the suffering that I have seen my friends of color go through during this period…I mean, I’m hoping it’s an awakening. I’m really hoping that it’s our rock bottom. And what happened yesterday [during the insurrection at the Capitol]. It’s just all pretty fucking sad. The only thing that makes me feel like I can think of the glass as half full, instead of half empty, is that I’m hoping that out of a lot of this really deep, deep, deep pain and suffering, we will come to realize that we can’t keep going this way. That’s all I could think about yesterday. I was like, this to me looks like rock bottom. What more can happen? We have to be able to be the alcoholic that just fucking surrenders now, and just goes, “Whoa, this isn’t working.”
Is there anything you feel particularly galvanized by?
I’m always just super galvanized by young people. I really am. When I started my program [to address HIV among children] in South Africa, CTAOP, it came from this real inspiration that I get from young people. Watching big change happen in any capacity—for me the correlation has been young people. I’m just really impressed by how resilient they are and how willing they are to just keep fighting. And I don’t think they get enough credit for it.
When you’re thinking about starting or joining a film project, how important are your politics or activism in that decision-making process?
It’s not always the same. I’ve tried to create a career that’s based on real interests, and those interests are trying to find complicated people to portray—people who challenge my thinking—and to go and live vicariously through them for a couple of months. So it might not always be political, but the human complexities of the characters that I’ve been intrigued by have always challenged me on my own beliefs.
I think it’s just a natural thing for artists to lean into storytelling that maybe reflects their beliefs. It’s the easier thing to do. But I definitely have been more challenged in wanting to try to understand. I think, to me, that’s what empathy is. I just want to understand why somebody might do something that I don’t agree with. And I think a lot of the characters that I’ve played lived and breathed in that space. I’m intrigued by aberrance or not-so-great behavior when it comes to people—the complicated stuff, the things that we might not be so proud to think of [having done]. Through characters, I think there’s something for me that’s very cathartic in trying to understand why people do horrible things.
Did your feelings about fame change at all in this last year, being tucked away at home for the most part?
Listen, I’ve got a five-year-old and a soon-to-be nine-year-old that I’ve been homeschooling. I will say that, in general for me, I have never been comfortable with fame. That’s probably the one thing that I really don’t like about my job. When I became interested in movies and acting, I was living on a farm community in South Africa, where there were no materials, there was no reading about celebrities. I loved Tom Hanks movies and Goldie Hawn movies. But, I didn’t know who they were or what their names were.