Charlize Theron

• 1. Introduction

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  Charlize Theron landed in Los Angeles in 1994 on a one-way ticket her mother had bought, carrying a budget of $300. She lived in a motel and went from paycheck to paycheck. At one point she took bread from a restaurant basket to get by. One day she stood in a Hollywood Boulevard bank, pleading with a teller who would not cash a rent check from her mother. The check came from out of state, and she was not an American citizen. The next customer in line was a talent agent named John Crosby. He cashed the check himself and handed her his business card. Born on the 7th of August 1975, Theron went on to a career that includes an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. In 2016, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. How did a girl from a South African farm, who thought of herself as a dancer, get there? Why did she keep choosing demanding directors and unglamorous characters? And what did she do with her influence once she had it?

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• 2. From Benoni To Milan

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  Benoni, then part of Transvaal Province, is where Charlize Theron grew up, on her parents' farm near Johannesburg. She was the only child of Gerda, born Maritz, and Charles Theron, both road builders. Hers was an Afrikaner family with Dutch, French and German roots. Her French ancestors were among the first Huguenots in South Africa. A great-granduncle, Daniel Theron, had been a military leader in the Second Boer War. English came easily to her, yet Afrikaans was her first language.

  Jaundice kept returning through Theron's childhood, and the antibiotics she was given rotted her upper baby teeth. They had to be surgically removed. Her permanent teeth did not appear until she was about ten. At Putfontein Primary School she felt she did not fit in, and other girls teased her. Looking back, she described going barefoot in the dirt, with no Game Boys and no computers. Sanctions meant no concerts either. In her words, "This meant you had to entertain yourself."

  At 13, Theron was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg. On the 21st of June 1991, when she was 15, her father, an alcoholic, drunkenly attacked her mother and fired a gun at both women. Her mother fetched her own handgun, shot back and killed him. The shooting was legally judged to be self-defense, and her mother faced no charges. In 2018, Theron said she had gone to therapy in her thirties because of anger. She traced it to frustration at growing up under apartheid, which ended when she was 15.

  At 16, still seeing herself as a dancer, Theron left South Africa to model in Europe. That same year, a local competition in Salerno, Italy, gave her a one-year modeling contract. She and her mother moved to Milan. After a year of modeling around Europe, the two relocated to the United States, living in New York City and Miami. In New York she trained at the Joffrey Ballet School, until a knee injury closed that road.

  A friend's windowless basement apartment is where Theron spent a New York winter, broke, as she recalled in 2008. She said, "I realized I couldn't dance anymore, and I went into a major depression." Her mother's message was blunt: "Either you figure out what to do next or you come home." Theron chose to figure it out, and the answer lay on the other side of the American continent.

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• 3. Climbing Hollywood

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  John Crosby's card led to an acting school, and in 1995 Theron played her first film part, a non-speaking role in the horror film Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest. A year later, in 2 Days in the Valley, she spoke her first lines as the hitwoman Helga Svelgen. Reviews of the film were mixed. Still, viewers noticed her, thanks partly to a scene in which she fights Teri Hatcher's character. Casting directors then asked her to repeat that performance in auditions. Theron feared being typecast. As she put it, "Playing the same part over and over doesn't leave you with any longevity."

  Showgirls is how she met the agent J. J. Harris, who was introduced to her by the co-casting director Johanna Ray. Theron was surprised by how much faith Harris had in her. She has called Harris her mentor. Harris sought out scripts and films in a variety of genres and urged her to become a producer. She served as Theron's agent for more than 15 years.

  The Devil's Advocate, released in 1997, is credited as her break-out film. She played the haunted wife of an unusually successful lawyer, alongside Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. Mighty Joe Young followed in 1998, with Theron as the friend and protector of a giant mountain gorilla. It flopped at the box office. In 1999 she appeared in The Cider House Rules as a woman seeking an abortion in World War II-era Maine. That film and The Devil's Advocate were both commercial successes.

  Vanity Fair put her on its January 1999 cover as the "White Hot Venus." Playboy followed with a May 1999 cover built from photographs taken years earlier, when she was an unknown model. Theron sued the magazine for publishing them without her consent and lost.

  The new century brought a run of films including Reindeer Games, The Yards, The Legend of Bagger Vance and Men of Honor, all in 2000. Sweet November and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion came in 2001, and Trapped in 2002. None did more than modest business, but together they established her as an actress. She explained her choices this way: "I kept finding myself in a place where directors would back me but studios didn't." She admitted Reindeer Games was not a good movie. She made it because she loved its director, John Frankenheimer. Two releases in 2003 would end that pattern.

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• 4. Monster And After

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  The Italian Job, released in 2003, remade a 1969 British film of the same name. Theron played a safe and vault technician under director F. Gary Gray. Her co-stars included Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Jason Statham, Seth Green and Donald Sutherland. It grossed US$176 million worldwide.

  Aileen Wuornos is the woman Theron portrayed in Monster, also from 2003. Wuornos was a former prostitute who was executed in Florida in 2002 for killing six men in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The critic Roger Ebert felt Theron gave "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema." At the 76th Academy Awards, in February 2004, she won Best Actress. She also took the Screen Actors Guild Award, the Golden Globe Award and the Silver Bear. She became the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. By 2006, The Hollywood Reporter ranked her seventh among Hollywood's highest-paid actresses, at up to US$10 million a film.

  The small screen came next. For the 2004 HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, she played the Swedish actress and singer Britt Ekland and earned Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. In 2005 she played Rita, the mentally challenged love interest of Michael Bluth, on the third season of Arrested Development. The same year she led the science fiction thriller Æon Flux, which did poorly with audiences. Filming in Berlin, she fell during a series of back handsprings and herniated a disc in her neck, which meant a month in a neck brace.

  North Country, also from 2005, cast her as a single mother and iron mine worker who endures sexual harassment. Variety's David Rooney wrote that she moved on from Monster to a performance in many ways more accomplished. Ebert called her an actress with the beauty of a fashion model who had found powerful resources for roles about unglamorous women in a world of men. She earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Ms. magazine gave her a feature in its Fall 2005 issue. On the 30th of September 2005, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  In the Valley of Elah in 2007 had her playing a police detective. In 2008 she starred in The Burning Plain, with Jennifer Lawrence and Kim Basinger, directed by Guillermo Arriaga. It earned $5,267,917 outside the United States after a limited American release. Hancock, that same year, paired her with Will Smith as the ex-wife of an alcoholic superhero and made US$624.3 million worldwide. Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals named her Woman of the Year in 2008.

  Filming The Road in 2009, she injured her vocal cords by screaming through the labor scenes. She also voiced a character in the animated Astro Boy. On the 4th of December 2009, she co-presented the draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Cape Town. In rehearsal she drew an Ireland ball instead of France, a joke about a handball controversy involving Thierry Henry. FIFA worried she might repeat it live in front of a global audience. After that came a two-year break from films.

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• 5. Villains And Furiosa

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  Young Adult, released in 2011, ended that two-year absence. Jason Reitman directed her as a depressed, divorced, alcoholic 37-year-old ghostwriter. Critics were warm. Richard Roeper gave the film an A and wrote that she "delivers one of the most impressive performances of the year." She earned a Golden Globe nomination, and Ebert named her among the best actors working.

  In 2012 she played villains in two big-budget films. As Evil Queen Ravenna, Snow White's wicked stepmother, she faced Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth in Snow White and the Huntsman. In Ridley Scott's Prometheus she was a crew member with a hidden agenda. A San Francisco Chronicle critic found the first film slow and dull, with only a few special effects and Theron's "truly evil queen" to recommend it. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said she was in "ice goddess mode" in Prometheus. Each film earned around US$400 million internationally.

  On the 10th of May 2014, Theron hosted Saturday Night Live on NBC. That year she played the wife of an infamous outlaw in Seth MacFarlane's western comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West. Reviews were mediocre and the box office moderate.

  Mad Max: Fury Road arrived in 2015, with Theron as Imperator Furiosa opposite Tom Hardy. Critics praised the dominant nature of her character, and the film made US$378.4 million worldwide. The same year she played the sole survivor of a family massacre in Dark Places, adapted from a Gillian Flynn novel.

  The next year was less kind. The Huntsman: Winter's War brought back Ravenna and was a critical and commercial failure. The Last Face, in which she played a physician and activist in West Africa opposite Sean Penn, was seen by few. She also voiced a character in the stop-motion fantasy Kubo and the Two Strings. Her next role would turn her into a franchise name.

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• 6. The Action Star Era

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  Cipher, a cyberterrorist, is the character Theron played in 2017's The Fate of the Furious, the main antagonist of the entire franchise. The film took US$1.2 billion worldwide. That same year she starred in Atomic Blonde, directed by David Leitch, as a spy on the eve of the Berlin Wall's collapse in 1989. Richard Roeper called her "officially an A-list action star" on the strength of that film and Fury Road. The shoot cost her teeth. She broke them by clenching her jaw, then needed surgery that involved donor bone and, later, a metal screw.

  Tully, directed by Reitman in 2018 from a script by Diablo Cody, showed her as an overwhelmed mother of three. Critics admired its mix of humor and raw honesty. During filming she herniated a disk in her lower back. She also felt a depression-like state, which she blamed on the processed food she ate to build her character's post-natal body. In Gringo, the same year, she played the president of a pharmaceutical corporation.

  Bombshell, from 2019 and directed by Jay Roach, followed the sexual harassment allegations against Fox News chief Roger Ailes. Theron played Megyn Kelly. The role brought her third Academy Award nomination. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe, a Critics' Choice Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a BAFTA. That year Forbes ranked her ninth among the world's highest-paid actresses, at $23 million a year.

  The Old Guard, in 2020, paired her with KiKi Layne under director Gina Prince-Bythewood. During a fight scene her thumb caught in another actor's jacket and tore a ligament. She needed three operations and six months in a brace. F9 brought Cipher back, after the COVID-19 pandemic pushed its release from the 22nd of May 2020 to June 2021.

  In 2022 she appeared as Clea in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, debuting in the mid-credits scene of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. She played Lady Lesso in the Netflix fantasy The School for Good and Evil. She also filmed a cameo as an actress playing Stormfront in the third season opener of The Boys. Cipher returned a third time in Fast X in 2023. In 2024 she was cast in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, set for 2026. She also took part in the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics at San Siro stadium in Milan.

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• 7. Producer And Process

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  Denver and Delilah Productions is the company Theron has used since the early 2000s to produce films, many of which she also stars in. The advice of her agent J. J. Harris to become a producer had taken root. Her credits include Sleepwalking in 2007, in which she played a reckless, slatternly mother opposite Nick Stahl and AnnaSophia Robb. The Christian Science Monitor said the film had a core of feeling despite its deficiencies. She also produced The Burning Plain, Dark Places, the independent drama Brain on Fire and the war drama A Private War.

  Long Shot premiered at South by Southwest in March 2019 and opened on the 3rd of May. Directed by Jonathan Levine, it starred Theron as a U.S. Secretary of State and Seth Rogen as a journalist she used to babysit. Reviews were positive. She promoted it with a story of knocking her head against a bench and ending up in the ER while putting on knee pads. She co-produced Bombshell and The Old Guard. In 2023 she executive produced the HBO documentary series Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.

  Susan Sarandon and Sigourney Weaver are the actresses Theron says inspire her. Her admiration for Tom Hanks she calls a "love affair," and she watched many of his films growing up. Hollywood actors were not featured in South African magazines, so she did not grasp how famous he was until she reached the United States. Some have seen that as a root of her down-to-earth attitude to fame.

  In 2019 she described her method. Building a physical identity alongside the emotional side of a character, she said, makes for "this beautiful thing that happens when you can get both sides." Preparing, she treats the work like studying. She finds a space where nobody is in her house, then looks at her own face, listens to her voice and walks around. Her dogs are the only witnesses.

  After filming wrapped on That Thing You Do!, she got Hanks's autograph on her script. In 2020 she presented him with the Cecil B. DeMille Award. There Hanks revealed that he had admired her career since the day they met.

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• 8. Causes And Commitments

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  The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project was created in 2007 to support African youth in the fight against HIV/AIDS. By November 2017 it had raised more than $6.3 million for organizations working on the ground. In 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named her a United Nations Messenger of Peace. He praised her dedication to improving the lives of women and children in South Africa. In 2014 she recorded a public service announcement for the UN's "Stop Rape Now" program.

  Ten thousand pairs of shoes went to destitute children after a December 2009 partnership between her project and Toms Shoes. The vegan shoe was inspired by the African baobab tree, whose silhouette was embroidered on blue and orange canvas. A share of the proceeds went to the project. In 2020 it teamed with Parfums Christian Dior on Dior Stands With Women, an initiative encouraging women to document their own journeys.

  Fresno, California, hosted a rally on the 30th of May 2009 that Theron attended in support of same-sex marriage. She said she would not marry until it became legal in the United States, explaining, "I want to live in a country where we all have equal rights." She has also marched in pro-choice rallies and works with women's rights organizations.

  Her commercial ties have had a rougher edge. After signing a deal with John Galliano in 2004, she replaced the Estonian model Tiiu Kuik as the face of Dior's J'Adore advertisements. In June 2024, Dior announced that Rihanna would take over. A 2005-06 campaign for Raymond Weil watches earned her US$3 million. In February 2006, the company sued her and her production company for breach of contract. They settled on the 4th of November 2008.

  In 2007 Theron became a naturalized American citizen while keeping her South African citizenship. She has two adopted daughters and has been interested in adoption since childhood. In April 2019 she said one of them, then seven, is a transgender girl. Who her daughters become, she said, "is not for me to decide."

  Theron gave a speech on AIDS prevention at the 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam in 2018. On the 22nd of June 2022, it was announced that she and Sheryl Lee Ralph would receive the Elizabeth Taylor Commitment to End AIDS Award at the Elizabeth Taylor Ball to End AIDS.

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