Charlize Theron is an actress and producer who hails from South Africa and has become an American citizen by naturalization. She is regarded as one of the world's highest-paid actresses. She has received different awards which include a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Her name was added to the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2016. In the 1990s, Theron rose to fame when she took the lead role in the Hollywood movies, The Devil's Advocate in 1997, Mighty Joe Young in 1998, and The Cider House Rules in 1999.
In 2003, she portrayed the role of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the movie, "Monster". This movie received a lot of positive reviews from the public and also made her win both the Siver Bear and Academy Award for Best Actress. This made her the first South African Actress to win an acting Oscar.
She also played the role of a woman who suffered sexual abuse and was seeking justice, in the movie, North Country, in 2005 which also gave her another Academy Award nomination. She has also received the honor of having a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early Life
Charlize Theron was born on the 7th of August 1975 in Benoni located in the Transvaal Province (the now-Gauteng Province) of South Africa. Her parents, Gerda Theron and Charles Theron were road constructionists and she was the only child. Theron's father was a drunk and physically abused his wife, Theron's mother. After having too much to drink on the 21st of June, 1991, Theron's dad physically attacked his wife and only child with a gun which made Mrs. Gerda Theron retrieve her handgun and shoot back at her husband. He died instantly. The case was legally judged to be an act of self-defense, so her mother didn't face any charges.
Theron attended her early education at Putfontein Primary School (Laerskool Putfontein), where she faced difficulties fitting in with other children and experienced some attention-related issues. When she was 13 years old, her mother decided to enroll her in a boarding school, and Charlize began her education at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg. She started to develop a passion for dancing, which became her favorite way to spend her free time.
When she was 16 years old, she won a modeling competition that took her to Milan, Italy. When she turned 18, she got a scholarship to pursue ballet studies at the Joffrey School in New York. Her path shifted towards acting when she suffered knee injuries that dashed her dreams of a ballet career.
Charlize hadn't always been fluent in English. Her first language is Afrikaans. She learned the English language on her own by watching American shows
Personal Life
In 2007, Charlize Theron became an official citizen of the United States while she still kept her South African citizenship.
Theron adopted two daughters; one in 2012 and another in 2015. She's been interested in adoption since she was a kid and learned about orphanages and the many kids in need of families. In 2019, she shared that her seven-year-old daughter, Jackson, is transgender, emphasizing that her children are who they are, and she supports them in becoming their true selves.
Theron mentioned in 2018 that she went to therapy in her thirties because she had anger issues. She traced it back to growing up during South Africa's apartheid, which ended when she was 15.
Breakthrough in her Career
At a time, Theron fell into depression because all that she tried to do to survive didn't work out. In 1994, her mother bought her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles with the hope that she would work in the movie industry when she got there. When she got there, she spent her first few months living in a motel with the cheques her mother sent to her. She went to a Hollywood Boulevard bank on one of those days to cash one of the cheques her mother sent to her but the bank teller rejected it. This caused a scene between Theron and the bank teller until the next customer after her which happened to be John Crosby, a talent agent, helped her out and handed her his card.
Crosby introduced Theron to an acting school. In 1995, she appeared in her first movie, but she didn't have any lines in it. It was a horror film called "Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest." Her first role with speaking lines was in a movie called "2 Days in the Valley" in 1996. Even though the movie got mixed reviews, people noticed Theron because she looked beautiful and had a memorable fight scene with Teri Hatcher's character. Afterward, she started getting bigger roles in popular Hollywood movies, and her career grew throughout the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, Charlize Theron kept accepting roles in various movies like "Reindeer Games" (2000), "The Yards" (2000), "The Legend of Bagger Vance" (2000), "Men of Honor" (2000), "Sweet November" (2001), "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" (2001), and "Trapped" (2002). Although these films didn't become huge box office hits, they played a significant role in building her career as an actress. The movie "Monster where she took a starring role in 2003 was one of her major stepping stones to fame. In 2005, she took another lead role in the movie, North Country. These movies earned her awards, more fame, and larger movie roles.
Achievements in Her Career
Charlize started her movie production company in the early 2000s by the name Denver and Delilah Productions where she produced numerous movies like; Dark Places, The Burning Plain, and Long Shot and took the lead role in most of them.
In 2016, her name was added to the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Charlize Theron has received numerous awards and honors throughout her career, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. As of early 2020, her work in film had garnered an impressive total of 100 award nominations and 39 wins.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlize_Theron#Career_hiatus_and_fluctuations_(2009%E2%80%932016)