Charlize Theron is one of four cover subjects for Elle Magazine’s issue dedicated to the women of The Odyssey. If Christopher Nolan’s adaptation sticks close to the actual book/story, then Charlize’s Calypso is one of the bigger roles. Of Odysseus’s decade-long journey (post-Trojan War) to get back home to Ithaca, a huge chunk of that time was spent being held “captive” by Calypso, who fell in love with him and kept him on her island for seven years. Charlize talks about all of that in her Elle profile, but she also uses her platform to talk about AIDS/HIV funding in Africa, and her own production company. Some highlights:

Whether Calypso is a villain or misunderstood: “I see her as all of those things and also none of those things. I was given a chance to do something that I haven’t had a ton of opportunity to do, because she’s a little bit of everything. That’s what’s so beautiful about her. And a lot of people on their own cast me in this movie, and they cast me very differently. It was a real opportunity that Chris gave me to do something that didn’t feel like typecasting.”

Calling out the sexism & double-standards in Greek myths: “I feel a lot of her heartbreak lies in that hypocrisy. Even though she’s a goddess, she is really longing for connection. And it was interesting to look at somebody with the powers that she has, but who still really couldn’t do that much with them. And not that I want to make a direct correlation to it, but there’s something to be said about women living their lives today in a powerful manner, and yet a lot of our rights are being taken away every single day.”

Filming in Morocco, with crazy wind & elements: “I got there and I realized: To be the windsurfing capital of the world, you need a lot of wind. That was brutal. But it was also incredible, because you felt like you were in the space where Calypso would have come from.” The result is a film that “feels big and original, dare I say, from a story that we feel like we all know.” The degree of difficulty when taking on the classics, she says, is the whole appeal. “They’re big stories to tell, and they’re intimidating. People will always attempt it because it is truly the Everest. You just want to try to climb it.”

Her production company, Secret Menu, has produced dozens of films: Given her love of the film community, Theron says producing was a natural progression. “I knew pretty early on that I didn’t want to just go and act and then go back to my trailer and wait for the next scene,” she says. “But I have felt, maybe more honestly, in the last year that there is an element that I can’t deny of wanting to have a certain amount of control over my work. For me, collaboration is one of the most important things about creating, but I like having a title, a job where I can step in and try to protect the thing that we originally set out to make. Sometimes that was hard for me earlier in my career.”

Advocating for all actors: “I feel like I’m in a place of incredible privilege. Not that I didn’t work hard to get here—God, I broke my back to get here—but I realize that my story and my fight is so different from a lot of women who are amazing actors who work constantly but are not in a position to maybe say, ‘Listen, I want equal pay.’ Those actors have not been taken care of.”

Her work with the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP): The charity’s work has been challenging under the second Trump administration, which has slashed, suspended, and reorganized U.S. foreign aid programs. A paper in the Journal of the International AIDS Society conservatively estimated that a mere 90-day pause in HIV/AIDS treatment and funding could cause the death of over 100,000 people in a year. “These cuts have devastated countries and devastated lives, and killed a lot of people already and a lot of children. I don’t think people want to actually look at that,” Theron says. “At CTAOP, we’re just figuring out how we can get our funding. And on my end, having the stage that I have, I do feel like it’s not a responsibility. It’s just part of my humanity.”

[From Elle]

I’m still incandescent with rage when I think about the slashed USAID funding, and how many men, women and children have already died because of Elon Musk’s despicable cadre of psychopaths. Charlize’s CTAOP is absolutely doing vital work, and she’s been doing vital work for years. As for Calypso… my memory of my Greek Mythology class is that Calypso was never seen or read as a villain. It’s clear from most texts and interpretations that she fell in love with Odysseus and simply wanted him to love her. She offered him immortality, she offered him the world! And he still wanted to go back to his wife. Boo…

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images. Cover courtesy of Elle Magazine.