Despite injuries and fear of heights, actress Charlize Theron fell in love with climbing on Apex

NEW YORK – Charlize Theron describes her character in the survivalist thriller Apex as “scrappy”.

But that could just as easily describe the South African-American actress herself, who does not shy away from challenges or fights – whether it is learning to rock climb or calling out American-French actor Timothee Chalamet for disparaging ballet, an art form close to her heart.

Now streaming on Netflix, Apex casts Theron as Sasha, a grieving woman who embarks on a solo trip through the Australian wilderness, only to find herself racing to stay alive as she flees a deranged killer (Taron Egerton).

To pull off the realistic climbing scenes and perform nearly all her own stunts, the 50-year-old star spent a month under the tutelage of pioneering American climber Beth Rodden.

And at the film’s premiere in New York in late April, Theron – no stranger to demanding action roles, from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) to Atomic Blonde (2017) – says she was surprised by how much she enjoyed that learning curve.

“I really didn’t know what to expect. I’d never climbed before and I just fell in love with it,” says the mother of two, who also gamely scaled a rock wall in New York City’s Times Square to promote the film, which topped Netflix’s global movie chart for the last week of April.

And she did all this while battling a fear of heights.

“I’m not really excited to be super high, so I felt pretty proud of myself that we shot a lot of this movie very high, like 60 feet up in the sky.” Sixty feet is about 18m.

“That was pretty intense, but towards the end, it was like nothing,” says Theron, who famously gained 14kg and shaved her eyebrows to play a serial killer for the biographical drama Monster (2003). She nabbed a Best Actress Oscar for that role.

During the gruelling Apex shoot in New South Wales, Australia – where key scenes were filmed in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney – the actress picked up a litany of injuries.

She fractured a toe, tore several rib muscles and sustained severe elbow damage that later required two operations. But she pushed through the pain and finished the film.

It helped that Theron is also fairly outdoorsy in real life, having grown up on a remote farm near Johannesburg, South Africa.

She admits the same cannot be said for her adopted children, aged 11 and 14.

“I like nature. My girls are teenagers, so they like (global beauty retail chain) Sephora right now – it’s hard to get them out.”

Theron’s ballet background helped as well. She began dancing at age four and got a scholarship to a ballet school in New York.

Knee injuries would end her ballet dreams in her late teens, but “dance taught me real grit”, she says.

“As a dancer, the discipline you have to have and the excruciating pain – it’s something that really benefited me in action films. I don’t tap out very easily.”

This might explain why she took exception to the controversial remarks made by Dune (2021 to present) star Chalamet at a town hall discussion in March 2026, where he said that “no one cares” about arts such as opera and ballet these days.

In a New York Times interview published in April, Theron likened dancers to “superheroes” because of what they put their bodies through.

“Sorry, Timothee Chalamet. Oh, boy, I hope I run into him one day,” she said.

“That was a very reckless comment on two art forms that we need to lift up constantly because they do have a hard time.”

She added: “In 10 years, AI is going to be able to do Timothee’s job, but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live.”

At the Apex premiere, Theron walks back the latter comment, although she continues to defend the performing arts.

“Honestly, I talked out of my a** – I don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 years. Nobody does. I think we’re all just taking it day by day. And I got to make this movie and it’s not AI – it’s me. So, things are good.”