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Charlize Theron (born August 7, 1975) is
an Academy Award winning South African actress and
former fashion model. She won an Academy Award for Best
Actress for her role in Monster (2004).
She was first featured in 2 Days in the Valley (1996),
starring alongside such actors and actresses as Danny
Aiello and Teri Hatcher.
Early life: 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."
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 abusive alcoholic; her mother shot him in
self-defense when he attacked her. The police laid no
charges against her.
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 killer Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster
(2003). Film critic Roger Ebert called it "one of
the greatest performances in the history of the
cinema", 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. 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 and was given
positive reviews.
Additionally, she received a Best
Actress Golden 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.
In 2005, Theron also portrayed Rita, Michael Bluth's
(Jason Bateman) love interest on the third season of
FOX's critically acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development.
She also received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for
her role in the HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter
Sellers.
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 Hallstrצm'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.
In the wake of The Cider House Rules came a few highly
publicized but ultimately disappointing projects,
including John Frankenheimer's Reindeer Games (2000),
Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), and
Sweet November (2001), the last of which reunited her
with erstwhile co-star Keanu Reeves. Theron was also
reunited with Woody Allen in his The Curse of the Jade
Scorpion (2001), another widely anticipated film that,
despite a high-profile cast and stylish period design,
was both a critical and commercial underacheiver.
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.
Salary and status: After her Oscar win for
Monster, she earned $10,000,000 for both North Country
and Aeon Flux. According to The Hollywood Reporter's
2006 list of highest-paid actresses in Hollywood, she
ranked 7th, behind Halle Berry, Cameron Diaz, Drew
Barrymore, Renée Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, and
Nicole Kidman.
Personal life: 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. 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. In October
2005, her mother, Gerda, was married in California. The
media thought that Charlize was the one getting married
(to Townsend) and the paparazzi got as close as they
could for the photos.
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. In May
2006, Maxim magazine named Theron #25 in its annual Hot
100 issue. Theron is also involved in women's rights
organizations. 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. |
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