Hero worship is the cornerstone on which Hollywood is built. Yet sometimes a person emerges from this dream factory who is admired for more than fame alone. Charlize Theron is not just another pretty face.
She has an arsenal of words that would make a seasoned sailor blush; in jeans and sneakers, she’ll take on a pub filled with men and beat them at darts, and in her evening gown, she’ll outdo Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher at Hollywood Dominoes. She has a raucous laugh, she’s bold, even cheeky. She’s unpretentious, and in her stilettos she towers unashamedly above the rest of the company. To take her for a dumb blonde would be a mistake: she has ice in her veins. You don’t make a blonde joke in Charlize’s presence without the uneasy feeling that she just might break your neck.
What is the secret that has enabled her to progress from a plot at Putfontein to a place in the pantheon of stars? It was certainly more than mere luck or coincidence. Her stunning looks have been an advantage. But she possesses other remarkable qualities too. She has faith in herself and perseveres in the tireless pursuit of a dream.
As a teenager, she saw the movie Splash, starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah, and was convinced that she could have done a better job of playing the mermaid.
Still, thousands of young girls with similar qualities and dreams arrive in Hollywood every year, and few of them succeed.
In the early nineties the musician and singer Jackson Browne, known for his two hit albums, The Pretender and Running on Empty, was still romantically linked with Daryl Hannah. In “Boulevard”, he sings about the hope and despair of aspiring young actresses in Hollywood:
Down at the golden cup / They set the young ones up / Under the neon light / Selling day for night / The hearts are hard and the times are tough / Down on the boulevard the night’s enough / Nobody knows you / Nobody owes you nothin’ / Nobody shows you what they’re thinking / Nobody baby . . .
These words did not turn out to be true of the tough Afrikaans-speaking South African girl who arrived in Hollywood in 1993. Just fourteen years later, at the beginning of September 2007, an entire street block on one of those very boulevards that Browne had been singing about was closed off for three days during the filming of Hancock, in which Charlize co-starred with Will Smith. An irate motorist remarked to a reporter: “It’s bad enough when there’s a major premiere on Hollywood Boulevard – that snarls up the traffic. But for three days? Not everyone in this town is a tourist or a member of the film industry.”
He was probably unaware that the film’s female lead had been discovered on that very same Hollywood Boulevard. Today she’s a member of the A list, has an Oscar on her mantelpiece and an established career as a film maker.
Before the release of Hancock in 2008, she was asked whether the hue and cry of Hollywood didn’t make her yearn for a more carefree lifestyle, like the one she used to enjoy in Benoni.
“My life is carefree,” was her reply. “When I started acting I had no real training, I had no real knowledge of this industry. I read a lot of biographies of the greats – the Marlon Brandos and James Deans. They were very tortured method actors. I thought that if I want to be really good at that, this is what I had to do. I did it. And I hated it. I had a moment when I said: if this is what it is, I don’t think I can do it. You know, because it becomes too isolated and your life becomes so cold. So I did an experiment. I did a film that was incredibly emotional and I actually had a good time. I made friends and I lived my life and the work was good. I went: Wow, okay! I think, like anything, you have to have discipline. When you work, you work, and when you live life, you live life.
“We only get one shot at this. I don’t want to lie on my deathbed and think I screwed that one up. I know for a fact I’m going to lie on that deathbed, whenever that will be, and say: ‘This has been one helluva ride.’”
