July
28
2008
Charlize Theron: I am no pin-up
Posted by Stef | Category: Interviews

WHEN Charlize Theron appears onscreen in her latest film, Hancock, it’s as the archetypal soccer mom; a vision of all-American apple-pie goodness, blonde and peachy, wearing a look of tender concern towards her blonde and peachy son.

She looks as if she was born for the part, raised on a diet of milk and cookies in the ’burbs before setting off for Hollywood – which just goes to show.

She has the looks and the accent, but English isn’t even her first language: she’s actually an Afrikaner from small-town South Africa.

She grew up under apartheid. When she was 15 years old, her mother gunned down her alcoholic father on the family smallholding after he turned violent.

So much for soccer mom. But Theron’s cheesecake looks are always a bit of a red herring. She’s known for her beauty – how could she not be?

When she walks into a room, she reduces everyone else to hobbits. But she’s better known for her acting.

Her looks marked her out for a lifetime of girlfriend roles, such as those she played in The Cider House Rules or The Italian Job.

Then, in 2003, along came Monster and an Oscar for her terrifying portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

At times, talking to her, it feels as if she’s a double agent in deep cover. As if there’s not one Charlize Theron, but at least two, if not a few more.

Even her choice of films make it seem as though the Charlizes are all in conflict with one another. Her recent films have been small indies on politically contentious topics: In The Valley of Elah, a story on returning soldiers from Iraq; Battle in Seattle, about the anti-globalisation riots; and Sleepwalking, the tale of a woman who abandons her child.

And then there’s Hancock, a major studio picture starring one of the biggest stars around, Will Smith, as an antisocial superhero.

It’s a blockbuster, which makes it sound like dross, whereas it’s actually smart and funny, but definitely more commercial than anything Theron’s done in recent times.

She obviously enjoys keeping her audience guessing, I tell her. “I keep myself guessing,” she muses. “I become bored so quickly. But I really liked the material. I just try to do good material; how it’s made is secondary. Anyway, it’s really nice to receive a decent pay cheque.”

It sounds as if she’s unlikely to make a habit of it, though. “I do like the challenge of finding material people don’t want to risk a lot of money on and that studios don’t necessarily jump to and go, ‘Yeah! We want to tell that story.’ How could I not, after I had done Monster? Everybody wondered how that movie could be successful.”

Monster is the touchstone of her career. With the help of prosthetic make-up, Theron made the character of Aileen Wuornos her own; a woman who was beaten, raped, abused and went on to exact brutal revenge against men as a serial killer.

It could so easily have never happened. Theron could have continued playing the types of roles she had before – a supermodel in Woody Allen’s Celebrity, the love interest in The Legend of Bagger Vance. That she didn’t is down to an unknown director, Patty Jenkins, who sent her the script for Monster.

“I was never offered parts like that – never,” says Theron. “And it took a woman, a first-time female director, to offer me that role. Paul (Haggis, director of Crash and In the Valley of Elah) recently said to me, ‘You know, often it’s the material that will define an actor, but you didn’t do that. You defined yourself with what you chose to do.’ I thought that was a nice compliment.”

Theron not only took the part, she also co-produced Monster, put her own money into it and agreed to work for free. Jenkins says she wanted Theron because there was a ferocity to her.

“I could see from a distance that she was not someone who you’d want to mess with. A lot of the women I met with, who were also incredibly talented actors, had a much sweeter, softer side. But I think Aileen became incredibly strong and disciplined and macho, so an inability to deal with confrontation would never have worked.”

Theron’s South African childhood helped create her discipline and strength, something that quickly becomes apparent when she describes her early years: “I was trying to make the correlation between Aileen Wuornos and her experiences when she was very young. And I was reminded of something that happened to me.

“I was five years old and we were driving. All the cars stopped because a truck had rolled over and was ablaze, and there was a man trapped inside.

“In South Africa, everybody carries a weapon, and the man begged for someone to shoot him.

“Nobody could get him out, so somebody shot him. It was horrific, but definitely a moment that made me have a great value for life. Other things in life have taught me not to take a moment for granted.”

The ‘other things’ almost certainly include the death of her father, shot in self-defence by her mother, Gerda.

His drinking, Theron says, was just considered normal. “People drank. Some people drank more, but it was never considered that this might be a problem. It was just the way it was then.”

Gerda was never charged for the killing, and she encouraged her daughter to leave the country almost as soon as she turned 16.

Theron went on a modelling assignment to Europe and never returned home. These days, her mother lives near her in the US. But Theron has been involved with various South African charities, sponsoring an AIDS clinic, a DNA laboratory and anti-rape advertisements. She campaigns for animal rights, too, and owns a handful of rescue dogs.

Theron grew up in the small farming town of Benoni. After she won the Oscar, she was welcomed back in South Africa as a returning hero. Nelson Mandela, who she describes as “like a grandfather to me”, thanked her for putting South Africa on the map.

President Thabo Mbeki claimed, “Her personal life represents a grand metaphor of South Africa’s move from agony to achievement.”

It’s quite a claim and Theron doesn’t accept it.

“I don’t think I want to be a pin-up for anything. The people who inspire me are the ones who just live life and live it in a way that’s good natured. Do unto others what you want done unto yourself.

“Enjoy life, travel, adventure. Enjoy. I try to just live my life in as good and authentic a way as possible. And I just wish people would write about that and the matter-of-fact way that that is, rather than: ‘On a summer’s day, her mother shot her father.’

I try to say something at this point, but Theron is not to be interrupted. “I live my life the way I want to. I have chosen this life. I want to be able to go to sleep at night and feel that I’m not haunted and I’m happy, and that I enjoy my friends and my love, and that if this is all gone tomorrow, that it was good.”

Phew. It’s quite a speech. I’m beginning to see what Jenkins means about her ferocity. A lot of the interviews I’ve read with Theron have been written by men who can’t quite get over her beauty or, if they do, it’s to note her ‘salty language’ and ability to take a joke, which only makes them salivate more when combined with her astonishing beauty.

But the fact is, Theron has the sort of charisma that works not just on men but on women, too.

I find myself thinking that she has the most charmed life of anybody I’ve ever met, which isn’t usually how you’d describe someone with her sort of upbringing.

And anyway, she makes the point that, “I don’t believe in charmed lives. I think that tragedy is part of the lesson. You learn to lift yourself up, to pick yourself up and to move on.”

Which she has done by sheer force of character and it’s that which makes her so attractive. She has a new accent, a new country – she became an American citizen last year (she’s retained dual citizenship, but wants to vote in the US) – and she has a wholehearted appetite for life.

She seems to have the same effect on other people. Writer/director Paul Haggis wrote In The Valley of Elah especially for her, which prompts another outburst from Theron.

When it came to answering questions from the press, she became exasperated that they focused on the fact she had ‘transformed’ once again, although this time it only involved letting her hair colour grow out and wearing a ponytail.

“It just bummed me out because I was, ‘What do you want?’ Do you want me to play a detective from Albuquerque who’s a single mom in a Dior dress?’”

But isn’t it hypocritical that, when it comes to having an ugly woman in a film, people still need to know that it’s OK – it’s actually a beautiful Hollywood actor up there onscreen?

“No, I think it’s the opposite to that. The way they focused on my appearance, I felt it hurt that film. I was embarrassed; Paul had worked really hard, and they were talking about my ponytail.”

The funny thing is that she resents the emphasis on her physical transformation, rejects the notion she’s attracted to stories that involve it, and yet her whole life is a testament to the very concept. Her life, as she points out to me twice, is not the one she was born to, it’s the one she has chosen.

And then she’s off again, this time on the Madonna-whore complex. “People aren’t willing to see conflict or ugliness, or the more flawed side of life, through a female character’s eyes.

“I mean, can you imagine a woman playing Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver? When Robert De Niro does it, it’s fine, (but) people are very uncomfortable seeing that through a woman’s eyes. We aren’t allowed complexity.”

Maybe she’s the living rebuttal of that, though. She takes on the sort of roles Jodie Foster played a decade or so ago, and is quite happy to speak out on women’s rights and injustice, but she’s equally happy to pose naked for the camera, having done photo spreads for Playboy and GQ.

It’s interesting, I say to her, that in her work she often takes parts where she’s working against her looks, but in life, she’s quite happy to showcase them.

“Well, guess what? I’m a sexual creature. There’s nothing wrong with that,” she says. “Why do we have to be ashamed of being so many different things? Why do we have to be only one thing – a good mother or a hooker? I don’t think that what’s under my clothes is evil. I’m a woman, I’m feminine. I like the way I look, and I celebrate that. I don’t make excuses for that.”

I believe her, but the other thing that occurs to me is that it’s a distancing mechanism. A sort of ‘look but don’t touch’ approach. When I ask her if there would ever be a film made of her life, she looks truly appalled – the idea of being revealed in any way, anathema.

“God, I hope not. I’ve been working harder than anything in my life to try to keep my life sacred. I really don’t mind when I’m in front of a camera and playing a character I’m comfortable with, but I don’t necessarily like the spotlight to be about me – not at all. The idea of sitting in Cannes and watching that… Ugh, no.”

It’s a shame, because her story has all the key ingredients you need for a Hollywood film: triumph over adversity, hope over experience and a beautiful woman in the leading role. And no prosthetic teeth or ponytail required.

Source: news.com.au




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