Charlize Media

CHARLIZE Theron has come a long way — from singing as a young girl in a Benoni mall to earn her pocket money to being an awarding-winning Hollywood star.

And her journey has been pieced together in a new book: Charlize: Life’s One Helluva Ride.

The book, written by South African author Chris Karsten, traces Theron’s rise to fame and includes interviews with estranged family members on her late father’s side.

Despite attempts to reach Theron for comment, Karsten says there was no feedback from the star or her managers. “I would love to have had some feedback from her on some questions, and there are some things I would have liked to verify with her,” Karsten told The Sunday Times.

The book documents Theron’s life chronologically and the movies she has starred in.

Karsten refers to the story as more of a tribute to her life than a biography.

But before the fame, there was farm life, school, her first kiss — with a boy named Nicky, who wore braces — and the tragic death of her father only a few months before she won her first modelling pageant.

For many years, she told the world he had died in a car accident.

It was only during a US TV interview in 2004 that Theron revealed the truth about her father’s death — that her mother, Gerda, had shot him in self- defence.

On the kiss, Theron said in an interview quoted in the book: “He had braces.

“We were in the backyard. Anyway, it was after we had just watched Friday the 13th. What a real romance movie!

“We were standing there arguing about [whether to kiss] for so long, [when it happened], it was just awful. But then it was darkness, saliva and tongue. I was 12 , I think, 12 or 13 .”

Karsten said he had managed to trace Theron ’s family back to Danie Theron, the nephew of a famous Boer hero of the Anglo-Boer War.

Her name is from her father Charles and grandmother Elizabeth . Theron was very close to her grandmother but, after her father’s death, Theron and her mother cut ties with that side of the family.

The book tells how, after her father’s death and only days before her 16th birthday, Theron started her career by winning a modelling competition.

Soon, she was modelling overseas. But Theron , who studied ballet at the world-renowned Joffrey Ballet School, in New York, was determined to act.

Karsten writes that it was while throwing a tantrum in a bank that she was first spotted by talent manager John Crosby.

The author attributes Charlize’s success to her father’s death and her mother’s support .

Source: The Times