Taron Edgerton made a surprise discovery about himself while filming Apex

Taron Edgerton didn’t realise how afraid of heights he was until he was filming Apex.

Taron Edgerton “discovered” he is afraid of heights – while scaling a mountain for a scene in Apex.

The 36-year-old actor stars with Charlize Theron in the new action thriller, which is set in the Australian wilderness, and while the actress was committed and enthusiastic about doing her own stunts, Taron found it a more daunting prospect.

Charlize told People magazine: “The climb that we have to do together was really, really hard, especially for Taron because he had a … I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a challenging climb for us.

“And we spent a lot of time on that wall, kind of stuck to it. That was so impressive to watch him problem solve how to get his body up this mountain. I was like, ‘I cannot believe this guy is doing this, pulling his whole body up this mountain right now.’ It was so impressive.”

Taron added: “I wasn’t really aware of it before, but when we started to shoot that climb, I discovered that apparently I am quite scared of heights.

“That was my surprise. I’ve got a phobia I didn’t know about.

“We are bonded in mutual agony, to allow myself a little bit of drama, but it was tough going.”

Charlize spent hours training with rock climber Beth Rodden to portray avid adventurer Sasha in Apex, and Taron was amazed at her ease on the cliffs when he was shown footage by director Baltasar Kormákur, with the clip making him realise he needed to get stuck in.

He said “I remember arriving on set to do a small piece with Charlize.

“And somebody, I think Balt, must have showed me something they’d done earlier that day, and you just ran and jumped off an actual cliff.

“I couldn’t believe that she’d actually done it.

“I’m not very good with heights, but it was f****** high, and it was such a statement of intent where I was like, ‘Oh, wow. I’m really going to have to show up here because we’re not messing around.’ And it was so, so impressive to watch.”

The Old Guard actress relished every minute of her sessions with Beth.

She said: “I absolutely loved it.

“I loved that I got to drop my kids off at school and go and spend four hours with [Beth] in a gym and not learn technique, but to really kind of spend time to understand the psychology around it. It’s a deeper thing than just climbing. It really is very psychological and involves a lot of problem solving and also a lot of trial and error.

“There’s no one way to climb something. There’s a million ways to climb it. And if it doesn’t succeed the first time, you got to start again from scratch. I really love that about climbing.”