Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron (born 7 August 1975) is a South African and American actress and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actresses, she is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award. In 2016, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Theron came to international prominence in the 1990s by playing the leading lady in the Hollywood films The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). She received critical acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003), for which she won the Silver Bear and Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first South African to win an Oscar in an acting category. She received another Academy Award nomination for playing a sexually abused woman seeking justice in the drama North Country (2005).

Theron has since starred in several commercially successful action films, including The Italian Job (2003), Hancock (2008), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Prometheus (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016), The Fate of the Furious (2017), Atomic Blonde (2017), The Old Guard (2020) and F9 (2021). She also received praise for playing troubled women in Jason Reitman's comedy-dramas Young Adult (2011) and Tully (2018), and for portraying Megyn Kelly in the biographical drama Bombshell (2019), receiving a third Academy Award nomination for the last.

Since the early 2000s, Theron has ventured into film production with her company Denver and Delilah Productions. She has produced numerous films, in many of which she had a starring role, including The Burning Plain (2008), Dark Places (2015), and Long Shot (2019). Theron became an American citizen in 2007, while retaining her South African citizenship. She has been honoured with a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Theron was born in Benoni, in Transvaal Province (Gauteng Province since 1994) of South Africa, the only child of road constructionists Gerda (née Maritz): 16-18 and Charles Theron (27 November 1947 – 21 June 1991).: 16-18, 34 The Second Boer War military leader Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle.: 14 She is from an Afrikaner family, and her ancestry includes Dutch as well as French and German. Her French forebears were early Huguenots in South Africa.: 14 "Theron" is an Occitan surname (originally spelled Théron) pronounced in Afrikaans as [trɔn].

She grew up on her parents' farm in Benoni, near Johannesburg. On 21 June 1991, Theron's father, an alcoholic, threatened both teenaged Charlize and her mother while drunk, physically attacking her mother and firing a gun at both of them. Theron's mother retrieved her own handgun, shot back and killed him. The shooting was legally adjudged to have been self-defense, and her mother faced no charges.

Theron attended Putfontein Primary School (Laerskool Putfontein), a period during which she has said she was not "fitting in". She was frequently unwell with jaundice throughout childhood and the antibiotics she was administered made her upper incisor milk teeth rot (they had to be surgically removed) and teeth did not grow until she was roughly ten years old. At 13, Theron was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg. Although Theron is fluent in English, her first language is Afrikaans.

Activism

The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP) was created in 2007 by Theron, who the following year was named a UN Messenger of Peace, in an effort to support African youth in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The project is committed to supporting community-engaged organizations that address the key drivers of the disease. Although the geographic scope of CTAOP is Sub-Saharan Africa, the primary concentration has mostly been Charlize's home country of South Africa. By November 2017, CTAOP had raised more than $6.3 million to support African organizations working on the ground.

In 2008, Theron was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. In his citation, Ban Ki-Moon said of Theron "You have consistently dedicated yourself to improving the lives of women and children in South Africa, and to preventing and stopping violence against women and girls". She recorded a public service announcement in 2014 as part of their Stop Rape Now program.

In December 2009, CTAOP and TOMS Shoes partnered to create a limited edition unisex shoe. The shoe was made from vegan materials and inspired by the African baobab tree, the silhouette of which was embroidered on blue and orange canvas. Ten thousand pairs were given to destitute children, and a portion of the proceeds went to CTAOP.

In 2020, CTAOP partnered with Parfums Christian Dior to create Dior Stands With Women, an initiative that includes Cara Delevingne, Yalitza Aparicio, Leona Bloom, Paloma Elsesser, and others, to encourage women to be assertive by documenting their journey, challenges and accomplishments.

Theron is involved in women's rights organizations and has marched in pro-choice rallies.

Theron is a supporter of same-sex marriage and attended a march and rally to support that in Fresno, California, on 30 May 2009. She publicly stated that she refused to get married until same sex marriage became legal in the United States, saying: "I don't want to get married because right now the institution of marriage feels very one-sided, and I want to live in a country where we all have equal rights. I think it would be exactly the same if we were married, but for me to go through that kind of ceremony, because I have so many friends who are gays and lesbians who would so badly want to get married, that I wouldn't be able to sleep with myself". Theron further elaborated on her stance in a June 2011 interview on Piers Morgan Tonight. She stated: "I do have a problem with the fact that our government hasn't stepped up enough to make this federal, to make [gay marriage] legal. I think everybody has that right".

In March 2014, CTAOP was among the charities that benefited from the annual Fame and Philanthropy fundraising event on the night of the 86th Academy Awards. Theron was an honoured guest along with Halle Berry and keynote speaker James Cameron.

In 2015, Theron signed an open letter which One Campaign had been collecting signatures for; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the AU in South Africa respectively, which will start to set the priorities in development funding before a main UN summit in September 2015 that will establish new development goals for the generation. In August 2018, she visited South Africa with Trevor Noah and made a donation to the South African charity Life Choices. In 2018, she gave a speech about AIDS prevention at the 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, organized by the International AIDS Society.

Since 2008, Theron has been officially recognized as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

On June 22, 2022, it was announced that Theron and Sheryl Lee Ralph would receive the Elizabeth Taylor Commitment to End AIDS Award for their commitment to raising awareness of HIV at the Elizabeth Taylor Ball to End AIDS fundraising gala.

Personal life

In 2007, Theron became a naturalised citizen of the United States, while retaining her South African citizenship. She lives in Los Angeles.

Theron has adopted two children: a daughter, Jackson in March 2012 and another daughter, August, in July 2015. She has been interested in adoption since childhood, when she became aware of orphanages and the overflowing numbers of children in them. In April 2019, Theron revealed that Jackson, then seven years old, is a transgender girl.

Theron said in 2018 that she went to therapy in her thirties because of anger, discovering that it was due to her frustration growing up during South Africa's apartheid, which ended when she was 15.