Born in South Africa, Charlize Theron was a ballerina and model before getting attention as an actress in the Tom Hanks film That Thing You Do (1996) and the Woody Allen film Celebrity (1998). She played a New England ingenue in the 1999 art house hit The Cider House Rules, and by the year 2000 she was starring in big budget pictures like Reindeer Games (with Ben Affleck) and Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance (alongside stars Matt Damon and Will Smith). What made her a star was her transformation from offscreen beauty to onscreen nightmare as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003, co-starring Christina Ricci). She won an Oscar for best actress and was launched into the top tier of leading ladies. She won another Oscar nomination for North Country (2005), but the highly-anticipated Aeon Flux (2005) was raspberried by the critics and spurned by moviegoers. Her other films include The Italian Job (2003, starring Mark Wahlberg), the HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004, she plays Britt Ekland) and the 2007 Paul Haggis film In the Valley of Elah (starring Tommy Lee Jones).
Theron was nearly cast to play Nomi, the role later taken by Elizabeth Berkley in the ill-fated movie Showgirls... The gossip sheets like to make hay out of the fact that Theron's mom shot and killed her dad back in 1991; the official story is that the dad was abusive and the mom was never prosecuted... Aeon Flux was a cartoon character from the early 1990s, created by Peter Chung.
Career Highlights: The Cider House Rules, The Yards, That Thing You Do!
First Major Screen Credit: That Thing You Do! (1996)
Biography
As legend has it, Charlize Theron was discovered by an agent while fighting with a bank manager on Hollywood Boulevard. Eighteen and starving, Theron purportedly got into the argument after the manager refused to cash her check. The outburst caught the agent's attention, and eight months later Theron got her first acting job. She subsequently went on to become one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood, thanks to a fortuitous combination of talent and the blonde, statuesque good looks so fervently adored by the camera.
Born August 7, 1975, Theron was raised on a farm in Benoni, South Africa. Trained as a ballet dancer, she was sent to Milan at 16 to become a model following the death of her father (which, it was later revealed, occurred after he was shot by Theron's mother, who was defending herself from his drunken abuse). After tiring of modeling, Theron returned to her first love, dancing, which resulted in a move to New York to dance with the Joffrey Ballet. Unfortunately, her career was halted by a knee injury, which led Theron -- at her mother's behest -- to travel to Los Angeles to try her luck with acting. After a long, unprofitable struggle, fate smiled upon Theron in the form of the aforementioned bank encounter.
Following an inauspicious bit part in 1994's Children of the Corn III, Theron won her first dose of recognition with 2 Days in the Valley (1996). The film wasn't particularly successful, but it did give her both much-needed exposure and critical praise. The film also served as the stepping stone to her first leading role, that of Keanu Reeves' embattled wife in The Devil's Advocate (1997). The film drew poor reviews, but Theron managed to win widespread praise for her performance. Her next project, Trial and Error (1997), surfaced briefly before disappearing with nary a trace, but the subsequent Mighty Joe Young (1998) netted Theron more positive notices. Her ascent was confirmed with her casting in Celebrity, Woody Allen's 1998 cameo-fest that also featured turns from everyone from Kenneth Branagh to Winona Ryder to Leonardo DiCaprio to Isaac Mizrahi. In her portrayal of a perpetually aroused supermodel, Theron shone in a role seemingly designed to allow her to flaunt her natural attributes and little else. She was rewarded with more substantial -- not to mention multilayered -- work in The Cider House Rules (1999), Lasse Hallström's Oscar-winning adaptation of John Irving's novel. As a troubled young woman with secrets to hide, Theron received star billing alongside Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire.
None of this, however, nudged Theron from her A-list status, something that was confirmed by her casting in the flashy, star-studded 2003 remake of The Italian Job, a much-beloved 1969 comedy caper starring Michael Caine. The 2003 version featured Mark Wahlberg in the starring role, with Theron, Edward Norton, Seth Green, and Mos Def, among others, backing him up. That same year, Theron switched gears and dove headfirst into the "serious actress" category with her starring role in Monster, the crime drama based upon the real-life story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who, in the late '80s, murdered seven men in Florida. Co-starring Christina Ricci as Wuornos' lover, the film promised to show audiences a side of Theron that certainly hadn't been hinted at in her previous portrayals of models, girlfriends, and Southern debutantes. It was evidently successful as Theron was showered with more than a dozen awards including an Oscar following her first-ever Academy Award nomination.
2005 would be a decidedly mixed year for Theron. She first appeared in the live-action adaptation of the cult animated series Aeon Flux, a film that was nearly unanimously maligned by critics and largely avoided by audiences. Luckily, she also starred in the well-received docudrama North Country. Playing a woman who successfully battled sexual harrassment, Theron was honored with her second Oscar nomination for the performance. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide
Theron was born in Benoni, Gauteng, South
Africa. Her father, Charles Theron, was a construction company owner of French Huguenot
descent. Her mother, Gerda, is of German descent and took over her husband's business after his
death. Theron's first language is Afrikaans. She is also fluent in English and speaks some Xhosa. In the United States, both in her films and while being interviewed, etc., Theron speaks with a typical
American accent and style of speech, leading most people to assume she is American.
"Theron" is a French surname pronounced in Afrikaans as "Tronn", although she has said
that she prefers the pronunciation "Thrown."[1] The
pronunciation commonly used in the United States involves two syllables, with stress on the first.
Theron grew up as the only child on her parents' farm near Johannesburg (Benoni). At the
age of thirteen, Charlize was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the
National School Of The Arts in Johannesburg. At fifteen, Theron witnessed the death of her father, an abusivealcoholic; her mother shot him in self-defense when he attacked her. The police laid no charges against her.[2]
Career
At the age of 16, Theron traveled to Milan, Italy, on a one-year
modeling contract, after winning a local competition. Her contract ended while she was in
New York City, and she decided to remain there, attending the Joffrey Ballet School, where
she trained as a ballet dancer. A knee injury closed this career path when she was 18.
Unable to dance, she bought a ticket to Los Angeles. After eight months in
the city, she was cast in her first film part, a non-speaking role in the direct-to-video film Children of the Corn III. She followed this with larger roles in widely
released Hollywood films, and her career skyrocketed in the late
1990s, with box office successes like The Devil's Advocate,
The Cider House Rules, and Mighty Joe Young.
The May 1999 issue of Playboy published nude photos of Theron, taken during the early years
of her modeling career. Claiming they had been "for private use", Theron ended up suing photographer Guido Argentini. After
appearing in a few notable films, Theron starred as serial killerAileen Wuornos in the film Monster (2003). Film critic
Roger Ebert called it "one of the greatest performances in the history of the
cinema",[3] for which Theron won the Best Actress Oscar at the 76th Academy
Awards in February 2004, as well as the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award. She is the first South African to win an
Oscar for Best Actress.
Having signed a deal with John Galliano in 2004, Theron replaced Estonian model Tiiu Kuik in the J'ADORE advertisements by
Christian Dior; she is the current spokeswoman for Dior perfume. From October 2005 to December 2006 Theron endorsed Raymond
Weil watches; in February of 2006 she was sued by them for breach of contract.[4] On September 30, 2005, she received her
own bronze star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the same year, she starred in
the financially unsuccessful science fiction thriller Æon Flux[5] and was given
positive reviews. Additionally, she received a Best ActressGolden Globe
nomination for her lead performance in the drama North Country.
Ms. Magazine honored her for this performance as well with a feature article in its Fall
2005 issue. She had also been nominated for an Oscar as a lead actress for the role,
although she did not win; this was her second nomination.
Theron dated the lead singer of Third Eye Blind,
Stephan Jenkins, from January 1998 to July 2001. They broke up after Jenkins failed to
take her requests of marriage seriously.[9] Theron now resides in Los Angeles with her long-time
boyfriend, Stuart Townsend, with whom she starred in the 2004 film Head in the Clouds, as well as in the 2002 film Trapped; she has said that they will not marry until same-sex couples are able to have their marriages recognized.[citation needed] Townsend recently stated he
considers himself and Theron to be husband and wife. "We didn't have a ceremony," he said. "I don't need a certificate or the
state or the church to say otherwise. So no there's no big official story on a wedding, but we are married. ... I consider her my
wife and she considers me her husband".[10]
While filming Æon Flux in Berlin, Germany, Theron had
surgery on a herniated disc in her neck, the result of an injury incurred on the
set during a stunt.
Theron is also involved in women's rights organizations.[11] In 2006, Theron won GLAAD's Vanguard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for increasing
"visibility and understanding in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community". Theron is a supporter of
animal rights and active member of PETA. She recently appeared in a PETA ad for their anti-fur campaign.[12]
Theron became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 2007.[13]
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