Charlize Theron And Tom Hardy Hated Each Other On ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Set

Charlize Theron and her co-star, Tom Hardy, did not get along on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road. Theron talked about her contentious relationship with her British co-star to WSJ magazine, saying they “struggled” to work with one another on the set of the Oscar-winning film.

Charlize, who played Imperator Furiosa in the big screen blockbuster, even acknowledged that she has heard that Hardy isn’t always difficult to work with, but she reasoned that maybe their bad on-set relationship actually helped their movie.

“From what I hear, he’s not like that on every movie — I hear he’s had good experiences. Maybe the movie is what it is because we struggled so much with each other and those characters had to struggle so much with each other. If we were chum-chum, maybe the movie would have been 10 times worse.”

In the same interview, director George Miller acknowledged that Theron and Hardy did not always see eye to eye when working together.

“I’m not saying that they were seething right through, but the trajectory of the characters can’t help but seep into the work.” Miller said of Charlize and her co-star. “When they first meet each other, they’re trying to kill each other. As the two characters come together out of necessity and rather reluctantly, they have to find a degree of trust … To some extent that was the trajectory of their relationship as well.”

According to Entertainment Tonight, Charlize Theron reportedly won’t star in the Mad Max sequel, and perhaps that’s for the best. And this isn’t the first time Charlize has had a rough time with one of her co-stars on a film set. When Charlize co-starred with Kristen Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman, she was reportedly “fuming” over the news that Stewart was having an affair with the film’s married director, Rupert Sanders. Charlize Theron is good friends with Sanders’ now ex-wife, Liberty Ross, and a source told Radar Online that her co-workers’ affair put her in a “difficult position.”

Of course, Charlize Theron is far from the first star that hasn’t gotten along with a movie co-star. Actress Debra Winger has been vocal about her difficulty working with Richard Gere in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. While they had a fairytale ending in the flick, there were reports of endless on-set arguments between the two stars. According to an article posted by Philly.com, Winger even said filming An Officer and a Gentleman was one of the worst experiences of her life.

“It was one of the worst experiences of my life. Filming the hotel-room scenes was really uncomfortable. I didn’t feel especially close to Richard Gere and every time the director wanted us to kiss, I felt like bursting into tears.”

Actors Tom Sizemore and Val Kilmer reportedly didn’t hit it off on the set of the 2000 film Red Planet, either. According to the New York Daily News, Sizemore wrote in his memoir that things got ugly after Kilmer boasted about how much more money he was making than his co-star. After Kilmer bragged “I’m making 10 million in this; you’re only making two,” Sizemore threw a 50-pound weight at him, but missed. Producers later intervened and asked the stars not to overdo it in their fight scene in the movie.

And more than 50 years ago, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis made headlines for their off-screen rivalry. The iconic actresses played sisters in the classic 1962 movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, but in real life they despised one another. According to Flavorwire, Davis once said her favorite scene in the horror flick was when he pushed her rival down the stairs.

“The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.“

As for Charlize Theron, she previously dished to Esquire about the rocky Mad Max shoot, saying she and Hardy sometimes “went at it” while filming the movie.

“We f*ckin’ went at it, yeah. And on other days, he and George [Miller, the director] went at it. It was the isolation, and the fact that we were stuck in a rig for the entire shoot. We shot a war movie on a moving truck—there’s very little green screen. It was like a family road trip that just never went anywhere. We never got anywhere. We just drove. We drove into nothingness, and that was maddening sometimes.”

Still, Hardy did offer a peace offering at the end of it all. Sort of. As a wrap gift, Charlize Theron revealed that Hardy gave her a self-portrait he painted, with a red handprint on the back and an inscription.

“You are an absolute nightmare, BUT you are also f*cking awesome. I’ll kind of miss you. Love, Tommy.”

Who needs Hallmark when you can have that?

Take a look at the clip below to see Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy talking about Mad Max: Fury Road.

[Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images]