Charlize Theron had to train longer than her male co-stars on ''Italian Job'

Hollywood star Charlize Theron has revealed that she found it "insulting" when the makers of her 2003 heist movie "The Italian Job" made her train harder than her male co-stars.

Theron starred with Mark Wahlberg, Jason Statham, Edward Norton and Donald Sutherland in the remake of 1969 British movie.

Prior to starting filming for the project, the actor said she realised there was still "so much misconception around women and the genre".

"Even though in that film the action is really based on cars, we had to physically do a lot of that stuff. There was a real pressure to pull off those stunts with the actors...

"There was a very unfair process that went with that. I was the only woman with a bunch of guys and I remember vividly getting the schedule in our pre-production, and they had scheduled me for six weeks more hard training than any of the guys. It was just so insulting," Theron said during a Comic-Con at Home panel on Friday.

The 44-year-old actor said the whole situation "put a real fire" in her as she decided to take on the challenge head-on.

"I was like, ''All right, you guys want to play this game, let''s go. I made it a point to outdrive all of those guys. I vividly remember Mark Wahlberg, halfway through one of our training sessions, pulling over and throwing up because he was so nauseous from doing 360s," she added.

Theron further said that the experience motivated her to take more action roles, a genre she has now excelled in with her work on movies like "Aeon Flux", "Mad Max: Fury Road", "Atomic Blonde", "Fate of the Furious" and most recently "The Old Guard".

"When I started my action career, it was so important to sell the authenticity of, ''Yes, I can fight and I can take this guy down and I can survive this.'' There was such a level of wanting to prove that to audiences who for years said, ''No, a woman could never fight a guy that size''," the actor added.