Charlize Theron Was Not Fun to Be Around After Gaining Weight for ‘Tully’

Actor Charlize Theron has gained and lost weight off and on for feature film roles. In the movie Tully, Theron went up to one of her heaviest weights. And doing so would take a toll on her mood.

Charlize Theron put on fifty pounds for ‘Tully’

Theron might not have had to gain the amount of weight that she did for her 2018 feature Tully. The drama saw the Oscar-winner gain 50 pounds to play a suburban mother with an unplanned child on the way. Theron took it upon herself to put on as much weight as possible for her role. And although it helped her performance, it was at the expense of her mood.

“I gained close to 50 pounds for this film,” Theron once told ET. “I just I wanted to feel what this woman felt, and I think that was a way for me to get closer to her and get into that mindset. You know, it was a huge surprise to me. I got hit in the face pretty hard with depression. Yeah, for the first time in my life I was eating so much processed foods and I drank way too much sugar. I was not that fun to be around on this film.”

Theron gave further insight into the routine she used to gain weight, demonstrating that eating everything in sight was harder than it sounds.

“The first three weeks are always fun because you’re just like a kid in a candy store. So it was fun to go and have breakfast at In-N-Out and have two milkshakes,” she said. “And then after three weeks, it’s not fun anymore. Like, all of a sudden you’re just done eating that amount and then it becomes a job. I remember having to set my alarm in the middle of the night in order to just maintain [the weight].”

Charlize Theron felt it was hell losing all the weight she lost for ‘Tully’

Shedding weight seemed to be just as difficult as gaining it for Theron. It was a process that didn’t happen overnight, and required a lot of hard work to revert back to her original size.

“There’s nothing fun about that. It took about a year and a half. It was a long journey, very long journey,” she said. “And it’s hard because I had press junkets and movies around it and nobody knew that I had done it for this. And I think in the beginning everybody thought I was wearing, like, when the first photos came out, everyone [thought it] was, like, prosthetics. And then I went on press junkets and it was like nobody knew.”

Theron went through a similar process before when she did Monster. But her weight-loss was slightly more different this time around.

“I was worried. I was like, this is taking a really long time,” she said. “Because on Monster, I just didn’t snack for five days and I was fine. You know your body at 27 is a little different than your body at 43, and my doctor made sure to make me very aware of that. Like, you are 42, calm down, you’re not dying, all good.”

‘Tully’ was the reason Charlize Theron vowed to never gain weight for a role again

Tully might’ve been the last time audiences would see Theron put on so much weight. 

 “I will never, ever do a movie again and say, ‘Yeah, I’ll gain 40 pounds.’ I will never do it again because you can’t take it off,” she said in an interview with Allure.

And although she heeded the doctor’s advice, she didn’t like being told her weight issues were primarily due to her aging.

“Nobody wants to hear that,” she quipped.