Charlize Theron Q&A / The Old Guard
Charlize Theron thrives on playing bad-ass characters. Some of her best work has come in films where her ferocity is far more compelling than her femininity – Atomic Blonde (Theron’s answer to John Wick), The Fate of the Furious, and Mad Max: Fury Road. Even her very first Hollywood movie – 2 Days in the Valley – saw her play a murderous femme fatale.
Now she’s about to be seen in THE OLD GUARD, a sci-fi action thriller that begins streaming on Netflix on July 10th. Theron plays Andy, aka Andromache of Scythia, a covert operative who hails from ancient Greece and has spent two millennia assembling a secret team of fellow immortals from various historical eras as part of her mission to defend the poor and oppressed.
“This is an elite, small army of people with a great set of abilities,” Theron said in a recent interview. “They don’t die easily.”
Indeed, in the trailer for The Old Guard, Theron’s Andy delivers a line that is ripped from Liam Neeson’s Taken character. In an effort to recruit a young U.S. Marine, Nile (portrayed by KiKi Layne), to join her group of mercenaries, Andy boasts of her unit’s capabilities: “I lead a group of soldiers, fighters, like you, with an extremely rare skill set. Let’s just say we’re very hard to kill.”
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) and adapted from the eponymous Greg Rucka graphic novel, The Old Guard finds Theron and her elite troop fighting for their freedom after their existence has been uncovered by a CIA agent/analyst (Chiwetel Ejiofor). When a giant pharmaceutical company CEO (Harry Melling) latches onto this information, he tries to capture Theron and her fellow warriors with the intention of hiring them out to the highest bidder.
According to Theron, the film has a deeper message beyond standard mercenary group mayhem and will resonate with audiences in today’s chaotic, unsettled Trump/Coronavirus era: “From the first moment I read (Greg) Rucka’s graphic novel, I felt like there was great potential to make this thing feel really very relevant and have it ask some real questions about humanity. Is what we’re doing enough? Is what we’re doing actually changing anything? Are we making [things] better, or are we making the world worse?”
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