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Charlize Theron Recalls 'Unfair' Treatment On 'The Italian Job,' Shades Mark Wahlberg

Mark Wahlberg might need to pencil in some extra gym time in his famously unhinged daily schedule if he wants to keep up with Charlize Theron.

The “Old Guard” star has cemented herself as one of the foremost action stars around, but she long had to prove that she could run faster, kick harder and drive better than her male co-stars.

Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron promoting "The Italian Job."
Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron promoting "The Italian Job."

Take for instance, the 2003 remake of “The Italian Job,” for which Theron recently revealed she was scheduled to train for six weeks longer than her male co-stars, including Wahlberg, Jason Statham and Edward Norton.

“There was a real pressure to pull off those stunts with the actors. … There was a very unfair process that went with that,” Theron said in a Comic-Con at Home career retrospective Friday. “I was the only woman with a bunch of guys, and I remember vividly getting the schedule in our preproduction, and they had scheduled me for six weeks more car training than any of the guys. It was just so insulting.”

The discrepancy in their preproduction schedules “put a real fire under my ass,” Theron said, which made seeing her male co-stars struggle on-set that much more gratifying.

“I was, like, ‘All right, you guys want to play this game, let’s go,’” she recalled. “I made it a point to out-drive 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.”

The heist thriller’s most memorable action set-pieces feature the cast as they drive a fleet of Mini Coopers through various global locales. Theron recalled being particularly proud of maneuvering the vehicle for one stunt in “a reverse 360 or maybe 180 in a warehouse with props everywhere.”

“I did that stunt completely on my own,” she said. “It was a huge moment for feeling, like, ‘Yeah, we can do all this stuff, and women are so unfairly thought of or treated in genre.’”

The experience filming “The...

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