Charlize Theron says she was sexually harassed by a 'famous director'

'Bombshell' star says incident took place when she was auditioning for a role in the Nineties

Charlize Theron has spoken of how she faced sexual harassment at the beginning of her acting career and her frustrations at her own reaction to it.

Speaking to NPR to promote her new film Bombshell, a drama about disgraced Fox News head Roger Ailes, who was accused of sexual harassment, Theron – who plays news anchor Megyn Kelly – detailed her own experiences.

The actor, who said the incident took place in 1994 and involved a “very famous director”, revealed that she found it frustrating that she “didn’t do all of those things that we so want to believe we’ll do in those situations”.

She apparently visited the director’s house on a Saturday night for an audition, to find him wearing “silk pyjamas”.

“[He] offered me a drink and rubbed my knee,” she said. “I was just starting out; I didn’t know the ins and outs, and said to myself as I was driving there at 9pm … ‘Maybe that’s how they do it in the movie industry?”

She added: “You don’t [know what to do] … if you haven’t experienced it, it’s a very difficult thing to wrap your head around. I wasn’t even fully convinced this was sexual harassment until later in my career.

“I put a lot of blame on myself ... that I didn’t say all the right things, and that I didn’t tell him to take a hike, and that I didn’t do all of those things that we so want to believe we’ll do in those situations.”

Theron said she apologised to the director and excused herself: “I remember saying, ‘I’m sorry that I have to leave,’ because I was trying to remove myself from the room.”

Eight years later, she said, the same director offered her an acting job, and she used the invitation to confront him. She brought up the incident, but he refused to talk about it.

“[He] just moved on from the conversation, he just didn’t want to address it. At that moment, it was clear to me that it wasn’t his first time and that he had been doing this before and that other women had called him out. His way of handling it was just to talk over it and about the project.

“Unfortunately, it was not the moment I so wanted. There was no reward in it … I’ve heard this repeatedly in hearing other women’s stories, and that is the unfortunate thing about sexual harassment. You never get that moment where you feel like the tables are reversed and now he’s finally getting it.”

Bombshell is released on 24 January 2020.