We all know Charlize Theron is one of Hollywood’s most gifted actresses. And she’s no stranger to changing her appearance for a film role. She did it for Monster in 2003 (for which she won an Oscar), and she’s doing it again for Tully, her forthcoming picture.

In a recent interview, Theron stated that she gained 50 pounds for the part, and while she has since shed it, she said that it wasn’t an enjoyable or simple process.

On Tuesday, ET’s Kevin Frazer sat down with Theron at the movie’s junket at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, where they talked about how she acquired weight for the character of Marlo, maintained it, and eventually lost it after a year and a half.

The film, which will be released on May 4, follows Marlo, an exhausted mother of three who is given a night nanny named Tully.

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The actress claims it was harder than she expected to get back in shape after adding 50 pounds for her character.

“I just I wanted to feel what this woman felt, and I think [gaining weight] was a way for me to get closer to her and get into that mindset,” Charlie told Entertainment Tonight. “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.”

The 42-year-old discussed her difficult weight-loss struggle.

Charlize Theron on the set of Tully in 2016.
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“There’s nothing fun about that. It took about a year and a half. It was a long journey, very long journey,” she said.

Theron had around three and a half months to gain the weight.

“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 explained. “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].”

“I would literally wake up at two in the morning and I’d have a cup of cold macaroni and cheese just next to me,” she recalled. “I would wake up and I would just eat it… I would just, like, shove it in my throat. It’s hard to maintain that weight.”

This isn’t the first time Charlize has altered her appearance for a film role.

Hard work: In a recent interview with ET , Charlize revealed that it took nearly a year and half to lose the weight she gained for the film

She put on a substantial amount of weight for the drama Monster in 2003. In her twenties, though, she found it much simpler to lose weight.

‘I was worried. I was like, this is taking a really long time,’ she told ET. ‘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.’

Charlize claims she put on so much weight that her children mistook her for being pregnant.

“My little one was convinced that I had a baby in my belly,” she laughed. “I had a very similar moment with my older one. Like in the film, where she saw my body one day and was like, ‘Mom, what has happened to your body.’ It was a little too close to home. I shared it with [director] Jas[on Reitman] and I was like, ‘This is a little too real for me.’ And [my kids] still refer to this movie as the movie where mommy had a big belly.”

“There’s nothing fun about that. It took about a year and a half. It was a long journey, very long journey,” she explained. “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.”

Though she acknowledges it was “hell,” she eventually acquired (and shed) the weight for a “fearless, emotionally raw, and physically intense” performance, according to Variety.

We like Theron’s candor in discussing her challenging physical makeover. We have a hunch that a lot of women will be able to empathize — and will feel a lot better about their own body issues now that they know that everyone, including Hollywood stars, go through it.

The effort was definitely worth it in the end, since it demonstrated the difficulties of parenting to the audience.

“The struggle is real for everybody,” Theron stressed. “What’s beautiful about this film, it’s unifying. It makes you realize that nobody has it easier than you or they don’t experience any of those things. It’s messy.”