Charlize Theron hopes gender-neutral categories are coming to awards shows ‘soon’
Charlize Theron accepts the Hollywood Career Achievement Award at the 23rd Annual Hollywood Film Awards. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for HFA)
Oscar-winning actor Charlize Theron has welcomed the prospect of gender-neutral categories at awards shows and hopes they are coming “soon”.
Her comments come as the visibility of people who don’t identify as male or female increases, sparking suggestions that awards ceremonies scrap binary gendered categories altogether.
The Brit Awards reportedly considered getting rid of their “Best Male Artist” and “Best Female Artist” categories this year following singer Sam Smith coming out as non-binary and asking for their pronouns to be respected.
Theron voiced her support for the abolition of male and female categories.
Asked when they could be introduced, she said: “Let’s hope soon.”
Charlize Theron made the comments at the 23rd annual Hollywood Film Awards in Beverley Hills. The 44-year-old was honoured with the Hollywood career achievement award.
Her eldest daughter was assigned male at birth, with Theron clarifying in an interview this year that she has “two beautiful daughters”.
“I thought she was a boy too,” Theron said when asked about her daughter’s gender identity in April 2019. “Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said: ‘I am not a boy!’”
Theron confirmed that she is raising her daughter as a girl.
Theron is also a long-time LGBT+ activist. In 2009, she said she would not marry her then-boyfriend Stuart Townsend until equal marriage was a reality across the US.
In 2017, she played a bisexual spy in Atomic Blonde. That same year, she revealed in an interview with Andy Cohen that she has had same-sex sexual experiences.
“Ooh! When I was young, yes. When you’re young you’re just kind of exploring it all. But it was pretty clear that I really like dudes,” she said.
Asked about playing a bisexual character, she said: “Why not? It’s just so strange when we talk so much about it. It should be normalised by now.
“It’s something I feel is not represented enough in cinema… I feel that when you make movies, if you’re going to hold that mirror up and reflect society, then you should reflect society.”
