This was news to his glamorous co-star, Charlize Theron, who is herself no stranger to roughing it. However, she was still surprised to hear the news of Mortensen’s method.

Theron told reporters, “What?! I didn’t hear that. I was only there for three days! Even if I didn’t shower for three days, that’s not that bad, right? Compared to an entire film!”

Source: Socialite Life

Based on the Cormac McCarthy tale of a widower (Viggo) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the movie follows the two as they struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Viggo, who was honored by the AFI at the event, said of his young co-star, “I felt such affection for the boy who I didn’t know before this. Now he is like my son.”

Reflecting on what he gained by portraying this role, Viggo said, “I think telling the story made me value just being alive and having family members who are alive, having friends. It’s a simple thing, really, but it’s like in any work of art, great painting, piece of music, a movie, that in the end tells you something that you already knew…A movie that tells you that and earns that like this one does, it’s worth its weight in gold.”

Charlize, who plays his deceased wife, said she “really responded to the book.” It “made me realize that even given the worst case scenario, that there’s great hope in us as human people and we can’t forget that,” said the actress.

‘The Road’ opens in theaters on November 25.

Note: Charlize is wearing a Christian Dior gown in the photos.
Source: Entertainment Tonight

In the post-apocalyptic drama “The Road,” Charlize Theron plays a wife and mother who yearns to commit suicide because she can’t handle the overwhelming bleakness surrounding her.

In “The Burning Plain,” which opens Friday, the 34-year-old portrays a miserable restaurateur whose guilt over past secrets manifests itself in empty sex and self-abuse.

Pretty heavy stuff.

But don’t think Theron isn’t aware of how tough it can be to sell such dark stories to a movie-going audience that is largely looking for lighter subject matter amid the slumping economy.

“Sure, no, of course . . . I mean, look, it’s very hard to ignore,” Theron told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.

“It’s very evident that these (darker) films had a great market in the ’70s. You know, I think that’s changed. It’s sad on the one hand but I do love these films, and I don’t think they’re ever going to die. That’s why I don’t have a fear of doing them.

“You have to work a lot harder to really kind of get people’s attention to go and see them, and drag them in there a little bit, but I don’t think that’s ever going to stop.”

This summer’s record-setting box office ($4.17 billion in North American ticket receipts even before Labour Day) proved that the weak economy could not keep movie-goers at home. Specifically, it was breezy, escapist fare hauling in the most money, including “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” ($402 million), “The Hangover” ($275 million), “Star Trek” ($257 million) and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” ($300 million).

This continued into the fall, where offbeat horror-comedy “Zombieland” and the 3D children’s film “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” have been leading at the box office.

However, the autumn typically offers more serious material, and this year is no different.

There’s “The Lovely Bones,” the Peter Jackson-helmed adaptation of Alice Sebold’s novel about a teenage girl who, after being raped and murdered, watches over her family from heaven. There’s also “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire,” the harrowing tale of an overweight, illiterate teen twice made pregnant by her father who tries to turn her life around.

Even “Where the Wild Things Are,” Spike Jonze’s dreamy adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book, reveals the wonderful, otherworldly creatures of the title to be a dour and discontented bunch.

These darker titles could be particularly depressing for limping Hollywood studios, many of which are already limiting the number of prestige pictures they unroll for Oscar consideration this fall (in fact, Paramount cited “financial pressures” when the studio delayed Martin Scorsese’s thriller “Shutter Island” from October until February).

But in an interview with The Canadian Press, “The Road” director John Hillcoat didn’t sound worried about his film’s commercial potential.

Starring Viggo Mortensen as well as Theron and newcomer Kodi-Smit-McPhee, the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is a relentlessly dreary trek through scorched, desolate landscapes populated by lurching cannibals. The movie, opening Nov. 25, is chilly and disturbing, even bringing some critics to tears during screenings at the Toronto film fest.

But Hillcoat believes that audiences will relate to the mood of the film.

“I think there’s been fear about the environment, fear about the economy, fear about lots of things and the problem is fear shuts off a lot of doors and can create ignorance and … that setting (in the film) is meant to just highlight what happens when fear takes over,” Hillcoat said.

“The word bleak that keeps coming up, I don’t even understand it. … Because for me, emotionally, it is this incredible love story, that’s what … made a profound impact on me just from that point of view. And that’s what we kept trying to focus on.”

Oprah Winfrey, a producer on “Precious,” faced similar questions during her appearance at the Toronto fest. Ultimately, she said she hoped audiences embraced the darkness.

“It is so raw that it will suck the air out of the room at the end of the film, and that’s a very good thing,” the talk show queen said during a packed news conference.

“I think it’s a good thing that we are taken to that level of engagement with this film.”

Theron, meanwhile, has certainly never shied away from gloomy material.

Most famously, the South African actress portrayed a Daytona Beach prostitute turned serial killer in “Monster,” for which she won an Academy Award.

“The Burning Plain,” from Mexican writer-director Guillermo Arriaga (“21 Grams,” “Babel”), tells a convoluted multi-generational story that skips back and forth in time, unravelling slowly. The film jumps from Theron’s story to that of two families living near the Mexican border, and to a plotline involving a plane crash that could orphan a little girl.

Ultimately, it’s about love and family, and Theron says a good story is almost all that she cares about when selecting roles.

But she acknowledges that the future might be in movies that manage to conceal serious messages or social commentary beneath audience-friendly artifice.

“I think a good story is a good story but I do think that there is something interesting happening in our industry right now, and that is I do feel that it’s like a genre change,” she said. “I see filmmakers who really love this kind of storytelling, but who’ve also got a great talent for wrapping it up in something else.”

One summer blockbuster in particular inspired her.

“I’m really fascinated with what (Neill) Blomkamp did with ‘District 9′ – that to me was incredible storytelling,” she said of the sci-fi film that rode a groundswell of buzz to gross nearly $115 million.

“If you told the story of apartheid, nobody would (care), nobody would want to see that, because it’s … not necessarily popcorn fare,” she said. “But nobody realized they went out and watched a film about apartheid, because it was dressed up in aliens and special effects.

“So I do think that there’s something really interesting happening and I’m excited about that. I don’t think I’ll ever stop making these films, but there is an interesting way to try to maybe do them in a different way.”

Source: The Canadian Press

I’ve added lots of videos of Charlize in the Media section. You can see the list below:
Video Links:

• The Burning Plain Clip
• The Road Clip
• The Burning Plain Press Conference in Venice -Part 1
• The Burning Plain Press Conference in Venice -Part 2
• Aeon Flux World Premiere
• Aeon Flux Interview
• Hasty Pudding Awards interview

You can now see a clip of Charlize from her latest movie The Road. I will be adding the video in the streaming video site soon. For now, here’s the video.