Charlize Theron Biography
Charlize Theron is an American, South African actress, and producer. She is best known for winning several awards including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, an American Cinematheque Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actress. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016, and she is one of the world’s highest-paid actresses.
She attended Putfontein Primary School (Laerskool Putfontein), a period during which she has said she was not “fitting in”. At thirteen years old, she was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg. Although she is fluent in English, her first language is Afrikaans.
In the 1990s is when she came to international prominence by playing the leading lady in the Hollywood films The Devil’s Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). In 2003, she acquired critical acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first South African to win an Oscar in an acting category. She obtained another Academy Award nomination for playing a sexually abused woman seeking justice in the drama North Country (2005).
She has since played in several top-grossing action films, including Hancock (2008), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Prometheus (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The Fate of the Furious (2017), and Atomic Blonde (2017). She also acquired praise for playing troubled women in Jason Reitman’s comedy-drama Young Adult (2011) and Tully (2018), receiving Golden Globe Award nominations for both films.
Since the early 2000s, she has ventured into film production with her company Denver and Delilah Productions. She has produced numerous films, in many of which she had a starring role, including The Burning Plain (2008), Dark Places (2015), and Long Shot (2019). She became an American citizen in 2007 while retaining her South African citizenship.
Charlize TheronCharlize Theron Age | How Old Is Charlize Theron | Charlize Theron Early Life
She was born on 7 August 1975 in Benoni, South Africa. Her birth sign is Leo and as of 2019, she is 44 years old. She is from an Afrikaner family, and her ancestry includes Dutch as well as French and German; her French forebears were early Huguenot settlers in South Africa. “Theron” is an Occitan surname (originally spelled Théron) pronounced in Afrikaans as [trɔn]
Charlize Theron Nationality
She has dual American and South African citizenship.
Charlize Theron Family
She was born in Benoni, in the then-Transvaal Province (now Gauteng Province) of South Africa, the only child of Gerda (née Maritz) and Charles Theron (born 27 November. She was raised up on her parents’ farm in Benoni, near Johannesburg. On 21 June 1991, Theron’s father, an alcoholic, threatened both teenaged Charlize and her mother while drunk, physically attacking her mother and shooting a gun at both of them. Her mother retrieved her own handgun, shot back and killed him. The case was legally adjudged to have been self-defense, and her mother faced no charges.
Charlize Theron Husband| Charlize Theron Boyfriend | Charlize Theron Dating
She was in a three-year relationship with singer Stephan Jenkins until October 2001. Some of Third Eye Blind’s third album, Out of the Vein, explores the emotions Jenkins experienced as a result of their breakup. She began a relationship with Irish actor Stuart Townsend after meeting him on the set of the 2002 film Trapped. The couple lived together in Los Angeles and Ireland. She split from Townsend in January 2010. In December 2013, she began dating American actor Sean Penn. The couple announced their engagement in December 2014. She ended their relationship in June 2015.
Charlize Theron Kids| Charlize Theron Son | Charlize Theron Daughter
Theron has two daughters, both adopted. She adopted Jackson in March 2012 and August in July 2015. She lives in Los Angeles. In April 2019, she revealed that Jackson, who was assigned male at birth, identifies as a girl. She stated, “They were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and whom they want to be, is not for me to decide.”
Charlize Theron Health Concern
As a child, she had suffered from jaundice that causes dental problems. She mentioned in an interview with The Sun that “I had no teeth until I was 11. I had these fangs because I had jaundice when I was a kid and I was put on so many antibiotics that my teeth rotted. They had to cut them out. So I never had baby teeth”.
While filming Æon Flux in Berlin, Germany, she suffered a herniated disc in her neck caused by a fall while filming a series of back handsprings. It demanded her to wear a neck brace for a month. In July 2009, she was diagnosed with a serious stomach virus, thought to be contracted while overseas. While filming The Road, she injured her vocal cords during the labor screaming scenes.
Charlize Theron Height
She stands at a height of 5′ 10″ tall.
Charlize Theron Career
Beginnings (1991-1996)
Despite seeing herself as a dancer, at age 16 she won a one-year modeling contract at a local competition in Salerno and moved with her mother to Milan, Italy. After she spent a year modeling throughout Europe, she and her mother moved to the US, both New York City and Miami. She attended the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, where she trained as a ballet dancer until a knee injury closed this career path.
As she recalled in 2008: I went to New York for three days to model, and then I spent a winter in New York in a friend’s windowless basement apartment. I was broke, I was taking a class at the Joffrey Ballet and my knees gave out. I noticed I couldn’t dance anymore, and I went into a major depression. My mom came over from South Africa and said, ‘Either you figure out what to do next or you come home because you can sulk in South Africa’.
In 1994, she flew to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket her mother bought for her intending to work in the film industry. Between the initial months there, she went to a Hollywood Boulevard bank to cash a cheque her mother had sent to help with the rent. When the teller refused to cash it, she engaged in a shouting match with him. Upon viewing this talent agent John Crosby, waiting behind her, handed her his business card and subsequently introduced her to casting agents and also an acting school. Later she fired him as her manager after he kept sending her scripts for films similar to Showgirls and Species.
After several months in the city, she made her film debut with a non-speaking role in the horror film Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995). Theron’s first speaking role was that of a hitwoman in 2 Days in the Valley (1996). Though it was a small role, a lingerie-clad she was prominently featured on the movie poster, and the film offers for hot-chick parts quickly followed. But she turned them down. “A lot of people were saying, ‘You should just hit while the iron’s hot'”, she remarked. “Although playing the same part over and over doesn’t leave you with any longevity. And I knew it was going to be harder for me, because of what I look like, to branch out to different kinds of roles”.
Rise to fame (1997-2002)
Massive roles in widely released Hollywood films followed, and her career expanded by the end of the 1990s. In the horror drama The Devil’s Advocate (1997), which is credited to be her break-out film, Theron starred alongside Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino as the haunted wife of an unusually successful lawyer. She subsequently starred in the adventure film Mighty Joe Young (1998) as the friend and protector of a giant mountain gorilla and in the drama The Cider House Rules (1999), as a woman who seeks an abortion in World War II-era Maine.
Though Mighty Joe Young flopped at the box office, The Devil’s Advocate and The Cider House Rules were commercially successful. Theron was on the cover of the January 1999 issue of Vanity Fair as the “White Hot Venus” and she also appeared on the cover of the May 1999 problem of Playboy magazine, in photos taken several years earlier when she was an unknown model; Theron unsuccessfully sued the magazine for publishing them without her consent.
By the early 2000s, Theron continued to steadily take on roles in films such as Reindeer Games (2000), The Yards (2000), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Men of Honor (2000), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Sweet November (2001), and Trapped (2002), all of which, despite achieving only limited commercial success, helped to establish her as an actress; she was briefly considered a new “It girl”.
In this period in her profession, Theron commented: “I continued winding up in a spot where chiefs would back me however studios didn’t. (I started) a relationship with chiefs, the ones I extremely, really appreciated. I ended up making downright awful films, as well. Reindeer Games was not a decent motion picture, yet I did it since I cherished [director] John Frankenheimer.”
Worldwide recognition (2003-2008)
She starred as a safe and vault “technician” in the 2003 heist film The Italian Job, an American remake of the 1969 British film of the same name directed by F. Gary Gray and opposite Edward Norton, Mark Wahlberg, Jason Statham, Seth Green, and Donald Sutherland. The film was a box office success, grossing US$ 176 million worldwide.
In Monster (2003), she depicted sequential executioner Aileen Wuornos a previous whore who was executed in Florida in 2002 for slaughtering six men (she was not gone after for a seventh homicide) in the late 1980s and mid 1990s; film pundit Roger Ebert felt that she gave “perhaps the best execution throughout the entire existence of the film”. For her depiction, she was granted the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, just as the Screen Actors Guild Award and the Golden Globe Award.
She is the primary South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. The Oscar win pushed her to The Hollywood Reporter’s 2006 rundown of the most generously compensated entertainer in Hollywood, winning up toUS$10 million for a film; she positioned seventh. AskMen likewise named her the main most alluring lady of 2003.
For her role as Swedish actress and singer Britt Ekland in the 2004 HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, she garnered Golden Globe Award and Primetime Emmy Award nominations. In 2005, she portrayed Rita, the mentally challenged love interest of Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), on the third season of Fox’s television series Arrested Development, and starred in the financially unsuccessful science fiction thriller Aeon Flux; for her voice-over work in the Aeon Flux video game, she received a Spike Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Human Female.
In the dramatization North Country (2005), she depicted a single parent and an iron excavator encountering lewd behavior. David Rooney of Variety stated: “The film speaks to a certain following stage for lead Charlize Theron. In spite of the fact that the difficulties of following profession rethinking Oscar job have frustrated entertainers, she segues from Monster to an exhibition from numerous points of view increasingly practiced [….] The quality of both the presentation and character grapple the film immovably in the convention of different dramatizations about average workers ladies driving the battle about modern work environment issues, for example, Norma Rae or Silkwood.”
For her performance, she received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actress. Ms. magazine also honored her for this performance with a feature article in its Fall 2005 issue. On 30 September 2005, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2007, she played a police detective in the critically acclaimed crime film In the Valley of Elah and produced and starred as a reckless slatternly mother in the little-seen drama film Sleepwalking, alongside AnnaSophia Robb and Nick Stahl. The Christian Science Monitor praised the latter film commenting that “Despite its deficiencies and the inadequate screen time allotted to Theron (who’s quite good), Sleepwalking has a core of feeling”.
In 2008, she starred as a woman who faced traumatic childhood in the drama The Burning Plain, directed by Guillermo Arriaga and opposite Kim Basinger and Jennifer Lawrence and also acted the ex-wife of an alcoholic superhero alongside Will Smith in the superhero film Hancock. The Burning Plain found a limited release in theaters but Hancock made US$624.3 million worldwide. That same year, Theron was named the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Woman of the Year and was asked to be a UN Messenger of Peace by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Hiatus and return to acting (2009-2011)
Her film discharges in 2009 were the dystopian show The Road wherein she quickly showed up in flashbacks and the energized film Astro Boy, giving her voice to a character. In December 2009, she co-exhibited the draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Cape Town South Africa joined by a few different VIPs of South African nationality or family line.
During rehearsals she drew an Ireland ball instead of France as a joke at the expense of FIFA, referring to Thierry Henry’s handball controversy in the play-off match between France and Ireland. The stunt alarmed FIFA enough for it to fear she might do it again in front of a live global audience.
Following a two-year rest from the big screen, she came back to the spotlight in 2011 with the dark satire Young Adult. Coordinated by Jason Reitman, the film earned basic recognition specifically for her exhibition as a discouraged separated, alcoholic 37-year-old professional writer. Richard Roeper granted the film An evaluation, expressing “Charlize Theron conveys one of the most amazing exhibitions of the year”. She was designated for a Golden Globe Award and a few different honors.
In 2011, depicting her procedure to depict a character on screen, she stated: When I’m making sense of a character, for me it’s simple since once I express yes to something, I become super-fixated on it – and I have an over the top nature by and large. How I need to play it begins right then and there. It’s a forlorn, inward encounter. I consider [the character] constantly – I watch things, I see things and record things [in my head], everything equipped to what I will do. I’m fixated on the human condition. You read the content and become fixated on [a character’s] nature, her propensities. At the point when the camera moves, it’s a great opportunity to carry out my responsibility, to do the legitimate truth. You can’t do that piece of the [character-creation] work when you’re [in the center of] making the film. At any rate, I can’t.
Roles in big studio films (2012-present)
In 2012, she assumed the job of a lowlife in two-major planned movies. She played Evil Queen Ravenna, Snow White’s insidious stepmother, in Snow White and the Huntsman, inverse Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth, and showed up as a group part with a concealed motivation in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle saw Snow White and the Huntsman as “[a] moderate, exhausting film that has no appeal and is featured uniquely by a bunch of embellishments and Charlize Theron’s really detestable sovereign”, while The Hollywood Reporter author Todd McCarthy portraying her job in Prometheus, declared: “Theron is in ice goddess mode here, with the accentuation on ice […] yet ideal for the job no different”. The two movies were significant film industry hits, earning around US$400 million universally each.
In 2013, Vulture/NYMag named her the 68th Most Valuable Star in Hollywood saying: “We’re simply cheerful that Theron can remain on the rundown in a year when she didn’t turn out with anything […] any entertainer who has that sort of expertise, excellence, and fierceness should have a lasting spot in Hollywood”. In 2014, she assumed the job of the spouse of a notorious sheepherder in the western parody movie A Million Ways to Die in the West, coordinated by Seth MacFarlane, which was met with fair audits and moderate film industry returns.
In 2015, she played the sole survivor of the massacre of her family in the film adaptation of the Gillian Flynn novel Dark Places directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner in which she had a producer credit and starred as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road(2015) opposite Tom Hardy. Mad Max received widespread acclaim with praise going towards Theron for the dominant nature taken by her character. The film made US$378.4 million worldwide.
She reprised her role as Queen Ravenna in the 2016 film The Huntsman: Winter’s War, a sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman which was a critical and commercial failure. In 2016, she also starred as a physician and activist working in West Africa in the little-seen romantic drama The Last Face with Sean Penn, provided her voice for the 3D stop-motion fantasy film Kubo and the Two Strings and produced the independent drama Brain on Fire. The same year, Time named her in the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
In 2017, she featured in The Fate of the Furious, as the principal enemy of the whole establishment and played a covert operative on the eve of the breakdown of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in Atomic Blonde an adjustment of the realistic novel The Coldest City coordinated by David Leitch. With an overall gross of US$1.2 billion, The Fate of The Furious turned into her most broadly observed film, and Atomic Blonde was portrayed by Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times as “a Slick vehicle for the attractive, boss charms of Charlize Theron who is currently authoritatively an A-rundown activity star on the quality of this film and Mad Max: Fury Road”.
In the black comedy Tully (2018) she played an overwhelmed mother of three directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. The film was acclaimed by critics who concluded it “delves into the modern parenthood experience with an admirably deft blend of humor and raw honesty, brought to life by an outstanding performance by Charlize Theron”. She also starred the president of a pharmaceutical in the little-seen crime film Gringo and produced the biographical war drama film A Private War both released in 2018.
In 2019, she played as a U.S. Secretary of State who reconnects with a columnist she used to look after children, the lighthearted comedy film Long Shot. That year, Forbes positioned her as the ninth most generously compensated on-screen character on the planet with a yearly salary of $23 million.
Charlize Theron Other ventures
Activism
The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP) was made in 2007 by Theron, who the following year was named a UN Messenger of Peace, with an end goal to help African youth in the battle against HIV/AIDS. CTAOP’s strategic to help guard African youth against HIV/AIDS. The project is committed to supporting community-engaged organizations that address the key drivers of the disease.
In spite of the fact that the geographic extent of CTAOP is Sub-Saharan Africa, the essential fixation has generally been Charlize’s nation of origin of South Africa. CTAOP’s methodology depends on the conviction that the network put together associations with respect to the ground comprehend the social and basic connections of their networks superior to anybody. By supporting these associations through award-giving, organizing, and highlighting their work, CTAOP empowers networks to assemble and engage themselves to anticipate HIV. By November 2017, CTAOP had raised more than $6.3 million to help African associations taking a shot at the ground.
In 2008, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In his citation, Ban Ki-Moon said of Theron “You have reliably devoted yourself to improving the lives of ladies and youngsters in South Africa, and to averting and halting brutality against ladies and young ladies”. She recorded a public administration announcement in 2014 as a major aspect of their Stop Rape Now program.
In December 2009, CTAOP and TOMS Shoes partnered to make a restricted version unisex shoe. The shoe was produced using veggie-lover materials and enlivened by the African baobab tree, the outline of which was weaved on blue and orange canvas. Ten-thousand sets were given to down and out youngsters, and a bit of the return went to CTAOP. She is associated with ladies’ privileges associations and has walked in professional decision rallies. She likewise is a supporter of basic entitlements and a functioning individual from PETA. She showed up in a PETA advertisement for its enemy of hiding crusade.
She is a supporter of same-sex marriage and went on a walk and rally to help that in Fresno California, on 30 May 2009. She openly expressed that she would not get hitched until same-sex marriage got lawful in the United States, saying: “I would prefer not to get hitched on the grounds that correct now the foundation of marriage feels uneven, and I need to live in a nation where we as a whole have equivalent rights. I figure it would be actually the equivalent on the off chance that we were hitched, yet for me to experience that sort of service since I have such huge numbers of companions who are gays and lesbians who might so gravely need to get hitched, that I wouldn’t have the option to lay down with myself”.
She further expounded on her position in a June 2011 meeting on Piers Morgan Tonight. She expressed: “I do have an issue with the way that our administration hasn’t ventured up enough to make this government, to make [gay marriage] legitimate. I think everyone has that right”.
In March 2014, CTAOP was among the foundations that profited by the annual Fame and Philanthropy fundraising occasion the evening of the 86th Academy Awards. Theron was a regarded visitor alongside Halle Berry and keynote speaker James Cameron.
In 2015, she signed an open letter which the ONE Campaign had been collecting signatures for; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the AU in South Africa respectively, which will start to set the priorities in development funding before the main UN summit in September 2015 that will establish new development goals for the generation.
Endorsements
In 2014, having signed a deal with John Galliano, she replaced the Estonian model Tiiu Kuik as the spokeswoman in the “J’adore” advertisements by Christian Dior. From October 2005 to December 2006, she earned US$3 million for the use of her image in a worldwide print media advertising campaign for Raymond Weil watches. In February 2006, Theron and her corporate entity were sued by Weil for breach of contract. The lawsuit was settled on 4 November 2008.
Charlize Theron Net Worth
Charlize Theron is an amazing academy award-winning actress who is much appreciated for her acting skills. Theron is best known for her roles in the movies ‘Monster’, ‘The Devil’s Advocate’ and ‘The Cider House Rules’. As of 2019, Charlize Theron’s net worth is $130 Million dollars.
Charlize Theron New Movie
- Fast & Furious 9 2020
- Long Shot 2019
- Murder Mystery 2019
- Untitled Charles Randolph project 2019
- The Addams Family 2019
Charlize Theron Movies
2020-2017 Movies
2020 Fast & Furious 9
2019 Long Shot
2019 Murder Mystery
2019 The Addams Family
2019 Untitled Charles Randolph project
2018 Tully
2018 Gringo
2018 A Private War
2017 Atomic Blonde
2017 The Fate of the Furious
2016-2011 Movies
2016 The Huntsman: Winter’s War
2016 The Last Face
2016 Kubo and the Two Strings Monkey
2016 Brain on Fire
2015 Dark Places
2015 Mad Max: Fury Road
2014 A Million Ways to Die in the West
2012 Snow White and the Huntsman
2012 Prometheus
2011 Young Adult
2009-2003 Movies
2009 The Road Wife
2009 Astro Boy
2008 Hancock
2008 The Burning Plain
2007 In the Valley of Elah
2007 Battle in Seattle
2007 Sleepwalking
2005 North Country
2005 Æon Flux
2004 Head in the Clouds
2003 The Italian Job
2003 Monster
2002-2000 Movies
2002 Trapped
2002 Waking Up in Reno
2001 Sweet November
2001 15 Minutes
2001 The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
2000 Reindeer Games
2000 The Yards
2000 Men of Honor
2000 The Legend of Bagger Vance
Charlize Theron Monster
She starred in Monster, a 2003 biographical crime drama film. The film follows serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a former prostitute who was executed in Florida in 2002 for killing six men (she was not tried for a seventh murder) in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Charlize Theron Twitter
Charlize Theron Instagram
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Charlize Theron Interview
Published: November 2005
Source: www.oprah.com
Oprah: You were born in 1975. When I look at you, I think, This is what 30 looks like now. What does 30 feel like for you?
Charlize: It definitely feels like a different chapter. In my 20s, I felt I had to be doing something every moment. For years I’d had vivid dreams that I would die at 27.
Oprah: Where did the dreams come from?
Charlize: I have no idea. But at 28, I just relaxed. A weight lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t feel as if the clock were ticking like I had to run and do all these things. When you experience the death of others when you’re young—and I did—you’re aware of that clock.
Oprah: Are you talking about your father’s death?
Charlize: Yes. Not just my dad, but uncles, friends. Funerals were a normal thing.
Oprah: Just the other day, somebody said to me, “Are you going to ask Charlize about her father?” And I said, “When something like that happens, you move on after ten or 20 years.”
Charlize: Exactly.
Oprah: You obviously didn’t let that define your life.
Charlize: God, no.
Oprah: A lot of people would have.
Charlize: It’s not that something like that doesn’t scare you. But scars can heal. The way my father died was traumatic. I would wish for nothing more in my life than for it not to have happened the way it did. But I can’t change that. In my late 20s, I hated talking about it because telling the story made me seem like the victim. Then I realized that if that’s not how I carry the experience, then talking about it doesn’t matter.
Oprah: That’s right. I think the world is divided into doers and waiters. Obviously, you’re a doer. You moved to Hollywood with just $400. What made you do that?
Charlize: You know what? It was just plain, simple, young, stupid naiveté.
Oprah: I would have thought, “Where am I going to work? Where am I going to live? How will I eat?” Did you know anyone in Los Angeles?
Charlize: Nobody. Not a soul. But I was living in such a gypsy life. So if this didn’t work, it would be just another adventure for me in a new place. I’d been modeling all over Europe—Milan, Paris, London. Before I left South Africa, my whole theory was this: If everything falls apart, then at least I got to see the world.
Oprah: How did you like modeling?Charlize: Not my thing. I like to talk.
Oprah: I grew up idolizing beautiful girls. I’d think, “What would it be like to look like that?” Now that I’m older, I realize that would be the most boring thing in the world.
Charlize: There’s definitely something artistic about modeling. It just wasn’t artistically satisfying for me because I like to say what’s on my mind. And in that business…
Oprah: Nobody cares what you have to say. Bottom line is, “Take the picture and keep your mouth shut. Turn to the left. You’re beautiful, dahling!”
Charlize: Even in acting, you show up to play a character, but if the director will allow it, there’s creativity you’re part of. That doesn’t exist in modeling. You might have a passion for clothes, but you stand there while they put what they want on you, like it or not. Here’s the other thing: I missed discipline. I was a ballerina, and ballet is something you have to work hard at. I couldn’t figure out what I had to work hard to be good at modeling—other than losing five pounds.
Oprah: At moments, does dancing feel like flying?
Charlize: For me, dancing is similar to acting. I wasn’t the greatest dancer in terms of technique. But when I went onstage as a dying swan, I became that swan. It was the storytelling aspect that I loved. But I had to stop dancing because my knees were so bad.
Oprah: After you packed up to go to California, you were so naive that when you got a ticket that read “Los Angeles”…
Charlize: I said, “Wrong place! I want to go to Hollywood!” Oh, I’m a smart one.
Oprah: Funny! When you got here, did you have a vision?
Charlize: I did have a dream—but I knew I had to survive as well. I began waitressing so I could pay rent. I also found a modeling agency. I was very marketable in Germany, where there are these big catalog jobs that pay three grand a day. They were crappy jobs that no model wanted to do because the clothes and photographs were so ugly. But I didn’t care. I told the agency, “Look, I’m not trying to be a supermodel, and I don’t want to be in magazines. I need three grand a day for the next six months.” Then I got my role in…
Oprah: Children of the Corn III?
Charlize: Yes. I was one of the 500 kids running through a field. I actually had my own murder scene in it. I got dragged into the earth, kicking and screaming.
Oprah: Woo!
Charlize: Exactly. And they didn’t even use my voice. I was dubbed.
Oprah: So you were 18 going on 19 when you arrived in Hollywood. Who the hell did you think you were?
Charlize: Stupid! If I had to do that whole journey again today, I don’t know if I’d have the guts even to live in the places I lived. When I got off the plane, I asked the cab driver to take me to the cheapest hotel in Hollywood. He took me to the Farmer’s Daughter, which is not the Farmer’s Daughter of today [with quaint furnishings and celebrity galas]—no Maxim magazine parties. Back then the hotel could be rented by the hour. But I’d lived in worse model apartments. I took a bottle of bleach and some rags, and I cleaned up my room and stayed there for a couple of weeks. From my window, I could see the Hollywood sign.
Oprah: In the movies, when a woman’s going off to fulfill a dream, she’s always carrying one suitcase, maybe two. I’m thinking, Is that her whole life?
Charlize: My whole life was in one suitcase. It was a fabric suitcase that I had to fix with hairpins because it had torn. But I just knew there was a world I wanted to see.
Oprah: How could you be so fearless?
Charlize: My only alternative was to go home. At the time, there really wasn’t a future for me in South Africa. I didn’t finish high school or go to college.
Oprah: Was your family considered middle class?
Charlize: Yes. The problem is that we lived really nicely when we shouldn’t have. My father was spending money where there was no money to spend. When he died, we were left with major debts.
Oprah: How much was the Farmer’s Daughter?
Charlize: About $28 a day.
Oprah: Let me tell you, you’re not going to get a good thread count in your sheets there. Did you take acting classes?
Charlize: I went to a couple that I just couldn’t deal with because though I didn’t know anything about acting, I instinctively knew it shouldn’t be manipulated the way it is in most of the classes. Then one day in a bank, I got my chance. I was trying to cash my last check from a modeling job in New York, but because it was an out-of-state check, the bank wouldn’t accept it—and I really needed the money. So I began pleading with this teller to help me.
Oprah: From what I’ve read, you were throwing a tantrum.
Charlize: I know that’s what people say, but I’m like, “It’s survival, people.” If I didn’t cash that check, I wouldn’t have had a place to sleep that night. I said to the teller, “You don’t understand—please!” I was begging and pleading, and a gentleman came over and tried to help. I had to fill out a ton of paperwork and open an account, and I cashed the check.
Oprah: There’s nothing like knowing you’re going to get kicked out of a $28-a-night hotel.Charlize: There’s nothing more powerful than a vulnerable woman. I knew my power. What I didn’t know is that I was auditioning for a guy who would end up being my manager. On the way out, the man who’d helped gave me his card. [He was John Crosby, who represented John Hurt and Rene Russo.] He said, “If you’re interested, I’ll represent you.”
Oprah: Why do you think that happened?
Charlize: I’d be unbelievably wrong to say there isn’t such a thing as the right place, right time—luck. If I hadn’t met John, I don’t know what I would have done next. I had no idea how to get a manager. If I hadn’t been in the bank that day, I honestly don’t think I’d be here right now. There are so many talented actors who don’t ever get the chance.
Oprah: Why did you?
Charlize: I don’t know, but I go down on my knees in extreme gratitude. I don’t take it for granted. I know all these actors who are probably more talented than I am. I’ve taken the chance and done my best with it.
Oprah: I don’t believe in luck.
Charlize: I think I was lucky. Can you imagine if I had just walked into some agency with the really, really heavy South African accent? My accent wasn’t French-sexy or Spanish-sexy. It was some crazy accent nobody had ever heard, and I had never acted in my entire life. “Can you represent me?” Please! I was definitely lucky.
Oprah: Don’t you think your looks had something to do with it?
Charlize: I’m sure. He’s a guy, right? But at the end of the day, I was also aware that looks can only get you so much.
Oprah: Let’s talk about your beauty for a moment. When I first walked in, I thought, “You are as beautiful as beauty gets.”
Charlize: Please.
Oprah: You just are.
Charlize: That was never emphasized in the house I was raised in. I don’t think my mom ever said, “Isn’t she a pretty girl?” She’d say, “You should hear her sing. You should read this poem she wrote.” The praise was always about what I’d done, not how I looked.
Oprah: You were fortunate.
Charlize: What most people don’t realize is that no matter how others see you, you have to wake up to yourself every morning. And I really love myself. I’m comfortable in my skin. But there are some mornings when I look in the mirror and go, “Not so good.” Then other times when I get my hair and makeup done, I stand in the mirror and go, “I like it. It’s hot.” And I think all women do that.
Oprah: I agree. But what’s worth honoring—and I do mean the word honor—is that by society’s definition, not just your own feelings about yourself, you are a beautiful woman. It’s a reality.
Charlize: It’s not something I’m comfortable with.
Oprah: Well, I think you need to get comfortable with it. A multibillionaire once said to me, “Wealthy men and pretty women never hear the truth.” What do you think?
Charlize: I’m going to raise my hand and say, “Not true.” As long as I have my mother next to me, I will always hear the truth. In South Africa, you develop a thick skin early on. That’s true in every country where there’s a great hardship. When life is really difficult, there’s less time for sensitivity. You’ve got to survive. You’ve got to stand up and go on with your life. That’s the South African way.
Oprah: Something just clicked for me. Because your identity was formed in a place where life wasn’t American-style comfortable, you have a healthy attitude about your own beauty.
Charlize: Yes.
Oprah: If you’d been raised in this country, you would have had your mother and everybody in every store talking about what a pretty little girl you were.
Charlize: I witness that here in America. I also see friends raising their kids without discipline. The kids rule. In South Africa, it’s a much harder life because survival is so at the core of everything. It’s farm life. That’s partly why at the beginning of my career, I was so uncomfortable being cast as a sex bomb. Well, at first, I was comfortable in that—I was very comfortable in my own sexuality. And I thought, These people exist, so I’m going to play them. But when I started talking about how comfortable I was with that, people thought I was a freak. And I was like, “Wow.” I wasn’t raised to think any of that stuff was bad. But at the same time, I knew that wasn’t the only thing I wanted to do. People said, “You can’t play the girl who gets left by her boyfriend.”
Oprah: You fit into the pretty girl box.
Charlize: It’s not a fun box to be in.
Oprah: What’s a more interesting box for you?
Charlize: Life. Everything around the box.
Oprah: Is there still a lot of emphasis on the way you look?
Charlize: Monster killed that. I’ve made sure that puppy’s gone to bed.
Oprah: How did you get the role in Monster?
Charlize: For the first time ever, something came to me that was different from how people saw me. Patty Jenkins wrote the script with me in mind.
Oprah: That’s what’s so incredible.Charlize: I never questioned it, because transformation is just what I do. I like to get into the makeup, the hair. When I saw Patty two weeks ago, we were laughing because the whole thing happened so organically. We built teeth and played around with contact lenses.
Oprah: So were you instrumental in deciding how the character would look?
Charlize: Yes. Toni G, who did the makeup, played a huge part, too. She has this incredible eye. You can’t just take a mask of somebody and put it on someone else. You have to manipulate the features of the actor. She really transformed my face. We’d play around in my kitchen…
Oprah: This kitchen, where I just sat and had the nice potatoes?
Charlize: Yes. We were filing down false teeth. Patty and I were actually like, “Do you think it’s enough?” By the time we began the makeup and hair tests, we’d gotten so used to my [new] face. I stayed in it most of the time while I was on set. I would wear Aileen’s clothes all the time, have my hair the way she would, so the crew really got to know me as Aileen.
Oprah: Didn’t you have to get hours of makeup every morning?
Charlize: No. The whole thing took just under an hour.
Oprah: That’s right—because you’d put on all that weight.
Charlize: The only prosthetics we used were on my eyelids, to make them heavier. Everything else was handpainted and airbrushed. Then I’d pop in the teeth and put in the lenses. I didn’t do anything with my hair. I would get it in the morning, then comb it back and let it dry that way.
Oprah: I’m sitting here looking at your luminous skin. How did they change that?
Charlize: They put an alcohol-based liquid on my face and dried it with a blow-dryer. It made my skin look leathery and sun-damaged. But I never felt ugly.
Oprah: I didn’t think Aileen was ugly. I just thought she was different from you. Did you make a conscious effort to gain 30 pounds?
Charlize: No. I just thought, “I’ll see how much I can gain.”
Oprah: What a delight. Dear God in heaven!
Charlize: It was over Christmas, so it was perfect. I finished everybody’s desserts.
Oprah: What did you splurge on?Charlize: I’m not a big sweets person, but I love savory cheeses and creams and bread and pasta. I crave them so badly.
Oprah: That’s fantastic, girl.
Charlize: After a while, it’s not that fun.
Oprah: Where were you when the Oscar nominations were read?
Charlize: In this house, asleep. I didn’t turn on the telly.
Oprah: You really didn’t? Okay, you were at least thinking about it?
Charlize: No. I’d completely forgotten about it the day before.
Oprah: Even though everybody was buzzing about you?
Charlize: Yes. The phone rang at 5 A.M., and my boyfriend, Stuart, turned to me and said, “Who is calling at 5 in the morning?” It was my publicist. Then I was like, “Oh my God, this is insane!” Then I ran away.
Oprah: Did you?
Charlize: I did. It was a lot—the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, National Board of Review, one right after the other.
Oprah: Suddenly, you’re the It Girl.
Charlize: I wanted to escape. So I packed a backpack and went to Brazil, to this little fishermen’s village. When I came back to L.A. three days before the Academy Awards, I was rested and excited. Everybody had been saying, “You have to do this press and that.” I said, “I’ve done the film. I don’t want to force it down anybody’s throat. Let it speak for itself. If it happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, it’ll still be fine.” After a while, it’s like, “People are dying in Africa. We can talk about something else.” But during that season, there’s a lot of pressure. Then people start saying things like, “You know you’ve got it in the bag.” I don’t want to live my life thinking that I’ve got anything in the bag.
Oprah: And then there’s the gown pressure.
Charlize: Definitely!
Oprah: I have to tell you, I gasped when I saw you come out across the stage.
Charlie: You’re kidding.
Oprah: The dress, your presence—it was a moment of supreme destiny for you.
Charlize: Oh my God, Oprah. Thank you!
Oprah: I didn’t know much about you, but I knew the moment was huge. There aren’t many things that make me gasp.
Charlize: I think a lot of that was because I was really having a great time.
Oprah: You were so full there.Charlize: The last thing I wanted was that glazed-over look. I’d said, “The most important thing is that I want my mom there, and Stuart, and my longtime manager, who took me on when I was 19.” Then I said, “You know what? Bottom line is that we’re all dressed up. I’m going to have a great night.” I had a blast.
Oprah: Well, I have to say, you radiated. As you walked across the stage, I said, “That is a movie star.”
Charlize: I was very happy. A dear friend from Gucci made the dress. It was really easy—I had one fitting. I wore tiny little slipper shoes, just really comfortable.
Oprah: So you weren’t wearing five-and-a-half-inch Manolos? I’ve seen people do that and then lose themselves. Part of them is still in the seat when they walk across the stage.
Charlize: On the day of the Oscars, around noon, I had a big fish fry-up—fried eggs, fried bacon, just ten of us. Opened a bottle of Champagne. Pigged out.
Oprah: You could pig out before putting on that dress?
Charlize: They don’t feed you. I didn’t want to sit there starved.
Oprah: That is so good.
Charlize: We were all in my bedroom sprawled on the bed. We played music and had fun. Then we got in the car, went to the awards, and had a great time.
Oprah: That’s the best way to do it. On a more serious note, tell me why you started an anti-rape campaign in South Africa.
Charlize: When someone gave me the facts, they devastated me. I knew rape was a big problem in South Africa, but I had no idea how bad it was. One out of every three women there will be raped in her lifetime. Every 26 seconds, a woman is raped.
Oprah: I think the percentage may be even higher.
Charlize: I do, too. It’s incredibly sad. I know how people think in South Africa. AIDS, rape, divorce, violence against women—nobody ever talks about it. You just sweep it under the rug. I want to do something to change that mentality. It has to change. What kills me is that people with HIV in South Africa can’t live their lives honestly because they become outcasts. They get kicked out of their communities and have nowhere to go. Same with rape. I feel that if there was a conversation happening in South Africa where rape became a topic at dinner, then women wouldn’t have to hide or feel that they caused it.
Oprah: I agree. You’re so mature. At 30, do you feel like you’ve found yourself? I know why they call that series The Young and the Restless, because all through my 20s, I was anxious to get into life.
Charlize: I always felt there was something I was missing out on. That’s gone now. Now that I’m 30, I can’t wait for 40!
Oprah: It only gets better, let me tell you.Charlize: I feel like my mom’s life started at 50. When I look at photos of her in the late 1980s, early ’90s, she is an old woman. Now she has completely come into herself.
Oprah: Is your boyfriend, Stuart, the One?
Charlize: I think so, but I don’t want to put so much emphasis on it. There are no guarantees. I don’t know how he’s going to feel in ten years about me. Here’s what I do know: Every single day I have with him, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Every night when I go to bed and I get to fall asleep next to him, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I feel I have a family in him. The things I always wanted to share with just my girlfriends, I can’t wait to tell him, too. He tells me the truth. I’m lucky.
Oprah: You keep saying you’re lucky, and I can’t take it. You’re not lucky. You are blessed and graced. Luck is just preparation meeting opportunity. For instance, at the moment you met your manager in the bank if you hadn’t been psychologically or emotionally prepared…
Charlize: Things might have gone completely differently.
Oprah: Even the word blessed doesn’t capture the bigness of it. When you are in alignment with the divine current of your life, that’s when that thing people call luck happens. What do you know for sure?
Charlize: That I will die. That’s the only thing that’s certain.
Oprah: What makes you laugh hysterically?
Charlize: My dogs. Stuart.
Oprah: What is your greatest aspiration?
Charlize: To continue to do work that matters to me. Human beings are still so undiscovered, and I want to add to our discovery in my work. I want to bring characters like Aileen to life—to give us patience for how different we all are. If I can do that, I’ll be happy.
Oprah: Are you happy now?
Charlize: Very happy. Over the moon.
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