‘I needed three surgeries’: Charlize Theron reveals the horrific injuries she suffered doing stunts on the set of her new Netflix film The Old Guard
Charlize Theron has revealed just how much she suffers for her art.
The 44-year-old told The Daily Telegraph on Saturday that she required surgery after doing her own stunts on the set of her new Netflix film The Old Guard.
The actress injured her hand, leaving it numb – but with five weeks of filming left, she had to carry on, and didn’t realise how badly she was hurt until filming was over.
Hard worker: Charlize Theron (pictured) has revealed just how much she suffers for her art. The 44-year-old told The Daily Telegraph on Saturday that she required surgery after doing her own stunts on the set of her new Netflix film The Old Guard
She revealed: ‘It was absolutely impossible for me to investigate how bad the injury was. So I fought through.’
She added: ‘I had do to an entire fight over five days with a thumb that was torn off the bone.’
Charlize also pinched a nerve in her elbow, and had to film scenes in which she rode a horse while unable to properly use her hand.
Tough: The actress injured her hand, leaving it numb – but with five weeks of filming left, she had to carry on, and didn’t realise how badly she was hurt. Pictured in The Old Guard
She said: ‘I had do to an entire fight over five days with a thumb that was torn off the bone’
She revealed: ‘It was absolutely impossible for me to investigate how bad the injury was. So I fought through’
‘I basically lost all control of my hand. [I was] shooting all this stuff riding a horse with a hand that had no function in it.
‘It wasn’t until I was done with the film that I realised I needed three surgeries,’ she told the paper.
A fan of doing her own stunts, the star also badly injured herself on the set of action film Aeon Flux in 2005.
![Ouch! Charlize also pinched a nerve in her elbow. 'I basically lost all control of my hand. [I was] shooting all this stuff riding a horse with a hand that had no function in it. It wasn't until I was done with the film that I realised I needed three surgeries,' she told the paper](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/07/18/15/30914568-8536583-image-a-98_1595081013594.jpg)
Ouch! Charlize also pinched a nerve in her elbow. ‘I basically lost all control of my hand. [I was] shooting all this stuff riding a horse with a hand that had no function in it. It wasn’t until I was done with the film that I realised I needed three surgeries,’ she told the paper
Warrior: In The Old Guard, Charlize plays an immortal soldier who is 6,000 years old, and uses a terrifying battle axe to cleave her enemies
She herniated a disk in her neck, close to her spine, after a fall, and the film’s production had to be shut down for a time.
Charlize said she ‘could have been paralysed’ and that the incident was ‘very serious’.
In The Old Guard, Charlize plays an immortal soldier who is 6,000 years old, and uses a terrifying battle axe to cleave her enemies.
Hurt: A fan of doing her own stunts, the star also badly injured herself on the set of action film Aeon Flux in 2005 (pictured). She herniated a disk in her neck, close to her spine, after a fall, and the film’s production had to be shut down
On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Charlize revealed that she carried the prop weapon everywhere – even in her car – to get used to using it.
Charlize grew so accustomed to having the prop around that she threw the axe in her car when she went to dinner one night, but when the valet pulled her car around, he stared at her in horror.
‘His face!’ Charlize recalled. ‘He didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t quite understand it. I was like, ‘Did I tip him? Is it because I did not tip enough?’ And then I got in the car and the big ax was just lying there, and I was like, ‘Ohhhhh.’
Lucky! Charlize said she ‘could have been paralysed’ and the incident was ‘very serious’