Charlize Theron has opened up about the role that helped save her career after starring in – her words – a ‘f**king flop’.

Theron may have a number of highly respected roles on her CV, including her Oscar-winning turn as serial killer Aileen Wournos in 2003’s Monster.

But by her own admission, there’s one huge dud among the award nominations and high Rotten Tomatoes scores, and that’s 2005 action film Aeon Flux, which grossed just $52.3 million against its estimated $62 million production budget, and was also panned by critics upon its release.

Theron in Aeon Flux. Credit: Paramount

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Theron said: “With that one, I don’t know if I had the answers for how to [fix it], but I definitely knew we were in trouble.

“I wasn’t a producer on it, and I didn’t really have the experience to say what I believe Tom Cruise has maybe said for the past 20 years, which is, ‘Shut this s**t down, get four more writers on it and let’s figure this out.’

“Instead, I’m going, ‘Oh God, I’ve just got to get through this day, I have bronchitis, but let’s keep shooting.’ Now I imagine all these male actors going, ‘Shut it down for six months!’

“And it’s like, f**k, no one told me that was an option.”

But while Theron didn’t feel she had much control over the film, she did manage to seize the reins of her own career – making the shrewd decision to join the cast of a widely-loved TV series, where she was able to flex her comedic muscle.

The same year that Aeon Flux was released, the actor also featured alongside Jason Bateman in Arrested Development, playing Michael Bluth’s eccentric girlfriend Rita.

Bateman and Theron in Arrested Development. Credit: Fox

It was a move that many viewers probably weren’t expecting, but certainly lapped up – with Decider describing the casting as the show’s ‘greatest accomplishment’.

“It was one of the scariest things, to walk onto a set of a show that’s so developed and so brilliant,” Theron recalled.

“But I think I needed that, to put myself out there in a different way, because people thought of me as someone who was f**king depressing, like my mother shot my father.”

When Theron was just 15, her father came home and drunk and threatened to shoot her and her mum. Her mother ended up killing him in what was eventually determined as an act of self-defence.

Theron continued: “And I just f**king loved that show, and this is going to sound so ‘poor me,’ but I do feel like sometimes, as women, we get one shot and I knew that Aeon Flux was going to be a f**king flop.

“I knew it from the beginning, that’s why I did Arrested Development.”