Charlize Central

4 Charlize Theron: The Oscar winner, who stars in “In the Valley of Elah,” says her favorite scenes were the ones where she has no dialogue. “A look can speak volumes,” says Theron, who plays a police detective looking for a soldier who has gone missing after returning from Iraq. Adds Theron: “For me, it reminds me of being a ballerina for 12 years and never having words. In fact, I’m not a big fan of words and directors hate me sometimes for that fact. I have a very clear understanding of how powerful the physical can be. You can have an entire monologue, and sometimes as actors we get lost in those showy moments. I have no desire for monologues.”She even had a strange request for director Paul Haggis. “When Paul started writing my part, I was like, ‘Can you cut down the lines? Please?’ ” She laughs and adds, “I always say I’m a really good actor when I’m not speaking.” She stars later this year in “Sleepwalking,” about an 11-year-old girl (AnnaSophia Robb) who must deal with the mother who abandoned her. She will also star in “The Ice at the Bottom of the World,” a drama about a retired Navy captain who comes home to the Chesapeake Bay to reunite with his family.

Source: suntimes.com (click to view full article)

That Paul Haggis (call him London, Ontario’s favourite son) is a veritable Oscar machine. He crested the horizon for a Best Picture win for Million Dollar Baby, then one for Crash, which he wrote/directed, then a screenwriting nom for Letters From Iwo Jima, and now his latest, In the Valley of Elah, should be good for bagging a coupla big ones. Consider a scene early in the film, in which Tommy Lee Jones, a bereaved father, tells a runty kid, whose single mom is Charlize Theron, the story of David and Goliath. The Bible says the fight supposedly takes place in the valley of Elah. You can almost hear that Best Pic trophy factory working overtime.

Don’t mistake this seasonal cynicism for a dislike of this film, by the way, because it is fantastic. You’ve probably already heard about Tommy Lee Jones’s performance. He plays a dad whose son, just after returning home from a tour in Iraq, goes AWOL, so he drives downstate to the army base looking for him. Theron, the beat cop, gets the drab brown and the middle part of her hair just right. Each minor character, from Susan Sarandon’s bereaved mom to Jason Patric’s army cop, is a perfectly measured ingredient in what is bound to be a rousing success on the awards circuit.

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Charlize Theron has signed a multi-year deal with Italian luxury watch and jewellery brand, Breil Milano. The Oscar-winning Monster star was shot for Breil’s upcoming campaign in LA, looking pensive whilst laden with jewels and timepieces from Breil’s Eden and Eros collections. “Ms Theron was chosen not only for her natural beauty, but because she epitomises the modern woman; a mix of sensuality and determination, sophistication and down-to-earth attitude, elegance and simplicity,” said a spokesperson for the label. The new campaign will debut another “star” - the new Breil Milano mantra, “Touch, Feel, Breil” - when it breaks in the European and US press in the run up to Christmas.

Source: vogue.co.uk

Charlize Theron has heaped praise on her “incredible” boyfriend Stuart Townsend after watching him toil over his first movie script. The Oscar-winning actress reveals Townsend wrote the screenplay for Battle in Seattle at the home the couple shares in Los Angeles - and suffered the rejections and nerves as her partner attempted to shop his script around Hollywood. She says, “The amount of passion, of time and effort that he committed to writing that script really blew me away. “When you love somebody and you’re that close somebody, we always expect the worst because he had never written a script before, but we’re very good at kind of separating our work from our relationship so, as a work colleague, when he gave me the script and I read it I wanted to be as honest as I possibly could. “I’ll never forget the day when he gave it to me and the paper was still hot from coming out of the printer and I was in the kitchen. “He left because he was nervous and disappeared for three hours. I sat in the kitchen and I couldn’t stop reading it. “Then I saw him go through the struggle that a lot of first time filmmakers go through when they have a great piece of material but it’s original and it’s different. “I tip my hat to this guy because what he did was really incredible.” Theron was so impressed with the Irishman’s efforts, she insisted on taking a lead role, opposite Ray Liotta, Andre Benjamin, Woody Harrelson and Michelle Rodriguez.

Source: contactmusic.com

Paul Haggis, the co-writer and director of the volatile Crash, essays the toll of the Iraq war in In the Valley of Elah.

That premise suggests horrific combat scenes and explosive emotions among a range of characters, all caught with the intense close-ups and jerky editing rhythms that propelled Crash.

Yet Haggis’ new film, which is set almost entirely stateside, is slow, somber and discreetly framed. It takes its cue from its central character, a retired Army sergeant who served in the military police and for whom ironclad control is first nature.

Tommy Lee Jones pours his underspoken authority into the painful role of Hank Deerfield, an unapologetic patriot who will interrupt an important errand to see that an incorrectly displayed American flag is flown properly.

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On December 10, 2006, singer-actor André Benjamin of Outkast fame donned a cardboard turtle suit and joined a group of fellow “protesters” on the streets of Seattle. Seven years before, tens of thousands of real demonstrators had descended upon the Seattle Convention Center and surrounding hotels to protest the actions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The turtle-clad demonstrators — whose costumes highlighted the plight of turtles killed by shrimp nets — joined other anti-globalization vocalists and rallied against the leaders of the WTO, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank in sometimes violent clashes with police. Benjamin’s participation in the re-enactment of the events of November 30, 1999, was for Battle in Seattle, a feature film by first-time helmer Stuart Townsend (perhaps best known for his role as Lestat in Queen of the Damned that stars an ensemble cast including Woody Harrelson, Michelle Rodriguez, and Martin Henderson, as well as Townsend’s long-term girlfriend, Academy Award–winner Charlize Theron.

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The super gorgeous scans of Charlize from the October issues of Esquire and Vogue are now available for you viewing pleasure in the gallery. The big Esquire reveal will be in the next issue and I will have the full feature available as soon as the magazine hits my doorstep.

Oscar-winner Charlize Theron has shown a range of talent acting in thrillers and in movies on social issues but her latest film about the Iraq war reveals another side to the actress — her political awareness.

Theron, 32, won the best actress Oscar of 2005 for playing a female serial killer in “Monster,” and her new movie, “In the Valley of Elah,” which opened last week, looks at the impact of the Iraq war on returning soldiers and their families.

The South African actress, who also acquired U.S. citizenship this year, took some time to talk to Reuters about the movie and her interest in politics and social issues:

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A great big “thank you” goes out to Jess for making us the featured site at Nicole’s Magic this month. If you aren’t familiar with the site, then you should definitely head on over and check it out because it is a fantastic site dedicated to the lovely Nicole Kidman.

Charlize Theron plays another put upon working woman in In the Valley of Elah. The only female detective in a police precinct, her character, Det. Sanders, faces sexism and resistance from her colleagues and superiors. She colors her hair dark and wears long sleeves and pants to cover her fabulous curves, but it’s not about how she looks.

“Paul [Haggis] and I talked a little bit when we started to talk about Sanders. I said to Paul, ‘People make such a big deal about it. The irony of it is when it comes to finding a character for me, it’s just about the facts.’ You look at this woman, so it’s not about how can we make me look different? I think the great thing about being an actor, it’s not about that. It’s about how do we get access to the truth. To me, that’s always the biggest question whether it’s where is the scene going or how do I physically look or how are we going to facilitate Paul in telling this story correctly.â€�

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