She's Wearing A Bed Sheet But Makes It Look Like Dior

Vincent Peters wanted to do something “really cinematic” with Charlize Theron for GQ. Here he reveals how he went about it...

- Natalie Denton

Vincent Peters’ film-noiresque style has carved him a career working for luxury brand and elite fashion magazines on international assignments. But it’s the times when he’s forced to step out of his comfort zone, to be resourceful, that continue to propel him as an artist. This Charlize Theron shoot for the July 2008 GQ cover was one such instance.

THERE IS a sense of cinematic nostalgia in Vincent Peters’ photography: the women he’s famous for shooting are presented elegantly, in a celebration of their beauty, transformed into 1960's screen sirens. Emma Watson, Cindy Crawford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dakota Fanning, Scarlett Johansson, Cameron Diaz, Emilia Clark, Amanda Seyfried, Gisele Bündchen, Helena Christensen and Naomi Campbell have all been photographed by the German photographer, but it was Academy Award winner Charlize Theron who really made an impression. “I wanted to do something really cinematic,” Peters explains, recalling his shoot with the actress for the cover of GQ. “Often I’ll just happen to watch a movie a couple of days before a shoot. And on that occasion I’d just seen Gloria, so I had an idea that Charlize would be Gloria lost on a 1970's subway. So I rented and blocked off the whole subway station in Brooklyn, and we had all these lights, smoke machines, and extras.

“Then I flew over to New York. But the minute I got off the plane, I got a message saying: ‘Charlize doesn’t want to go to Brooklyn’. And I thought it was a joke, like a snobby Manhattan thing to say. ‘Come on, it’s one stop up the river, the whole production is in Brooklyn, please can you talk to her?’ I responded. They said: ‘Yes we did. She doesn’t want to go to Brooklyn, it’s not going to happen.’ I’d booked a subway stop; you can’t block a subway stop in Manhattan!