Charlize Theron has opened up about the dangers of doing her stunts without a harness for her new action movie, Apex.
The 49-year-old actor discussed her upcoming Netflix thriller, which she stars in alongside Taron Egerton, during Netflix’s 2025 Upfront presentation on Wednesday. At the presentation, as reported by Entertainment Weekly, she detailed some of the risks she took when performing her character’s intense action scenes for the film.
“Our crew delivered a really impressive movie, and yours truly did some stunts and action — without a harness, sometimes,” she said. “Don’t tell Netflix.”
Theron quipped about how grateful she was to make it through some of those dangerous stunts she did only a few days ago.
“It’s actually a miracle that I’m here today. Apex only wrapped like a week ago, so I’m fresh off the mountain,” she said about her film, which is set in Australia. “I still have some Australian dirt under this pretty manicure, and my cute boot is hiding a fractured toe, and I can go on and on and on, but I won’t.”
Still, she maintained that despite the dirt and injuries, she enjoyed making the film.
“I can honestly say that shooting Apex was one of the most incredible experiences of my life,” she said.
“Back to me almost dying, I’m really proud to share a little of this mammoth movie that I got to work on,” Theron added about Apex. “And I have to say I was fortunate to work alongside the very talented Taron Egerton.”
According to Netflix, Apex follows a grieving woman, portrayed by Theron, who “seeks solace in the wilderness, only to find herself ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a serial killer.” The movie was filmed in New South Wales, Australia, home of the Blue Mountains. However, a movie release date has not been announced.
Theron is known for doing her own stunts in her films, including Mad Max: Fury Road, Atomic Blonde, and both of the The Old Guard movies on Netflix. In fact, Theron also said Wednesday she was surprised that the stunts she did for Apex “outdid” the ones she did for Old Guard 2, which will be available on the streaming giant as of July 2.
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In 2017, stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave detailed all the martial arts training that Theron did before filming Atomic Blonde.
“The entire stunt team was very pleasantly surprised at her overall physical ability,” he told People at the time. “She was extremely tough; she did 95 percent of all of her own fighting.”
Hargrave said that because Theron was so good at stunts, director David Leitch changed his filming plans, where he initially expected her to throw a punch or two before the scene cut.
“But she showed that she could do 10, 15, 20, 30 moves in succession without needing to cut or reset,” Hargrave said. “We were like, wow, this is special. This is unique. We need to take advantage of this.”
