Charlize Theron’s weight increase almost cost her one of her most memorable films. The Oscar winner has opened up about her journey to becoming a Hollywood producer, claiming that she was on the verge of losing one investor for the film “Monster” after gaining 30 pounds for the starring part.

Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman, showered the actor with prizes for her depiction of real-life serial murderer Aileen Wuornos in the 2003 film.

The actress stated, “During a recent producers’ roundtable discussion with The Hollywood Reporter, “As soon as I started gaining weight, I had one of the financiers call me up. Actually, his wife saw me, and she was like, ‘Did you see Charlize? Have you seen what she looks like?’ And I got that call, like, ‘What’s going on with that?'”

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The leading lady of “North Country” continued on, “This is back in the day when it took, like, three weeks for dailies to make it back here, and I got a call at 3 A.M. from the guy. He was like, ‘What are you doing? You never smiled. You look so angry, you look horrible.’ ”

“So you panic a little bit because you are putting yourself out there, and you are taking a risk, and when you do that, you are not a hundred percent sure. You are taking a chance.

“So there is a part of you that second-guesses, right? And you are like: ‘S**t, well, maybe I did go too far with this.’

“Then you realise you have to stand that ground.”

She feels her investors’ unfavorable response was motivated by sexism. “The character was very unusual,” Theron remarked of Wuornos, for which she earned the Academy Award for Best Actress.

“I think the financiers thought they were basically paying for a hot lesbian movie with me and Christina Ricci,” Theron continued.

During the hour-long conversation in October, the 44-year-old said that she had experienced an eleventh-hour problem that had her in a panic. “On the day that Patty and I were going to sign the contract for a straight-to-video with Blockbuster on ‘Monster’ because no distributor would pick it up – literally, the lawyer was coming to the editing room – we got a call from [distributor] Bob Berney,” she revealed.

Charlize said, “Those things happen where you stop trying, you almost give up and surrender. But then magic happens. It is a little bit like we work in a business where we are trying to constantly capture that lightning in a bottle, right? And if it was all about just manufacturing it, then everybody would probably be able to do it.”