People used to refer to Charlize Theron as that South African actress who saw her mum shoot her abusive dad in self-defence. Now, after delivering a stonking performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the brilliant Monster, she’s bagged the Best Actress Oscar and marched straight to the top of Hollywood’s most-wanted list. Not bad for a girl who freely admits she breaks out in hives at the thought of public speaking!
Your role in Monster is a pretty daunting one, what attracted you to it?
I knew that it was the sort of material that, if it was done correctly, could be something incredibly interesting. It was definitely the kind of story, first and foremost, that I was interested in because I find it very rare that women get to play really conflicted, flawed characters. Those are normally the parts that De Niro gets to do, or Dustin Hoffman, and when they do it, it’s accepted and it’s almost cool. For some reason when women do that, it’s almost not encouraged because it’s uncomfortable to watch. So I knew this was definitely a great opportunity to get to do that. I also knew that filming it with Patty (Jenkins, Monster’s writer and director), it was really going to be in the hands of the filmmaker as opposed to being in the hands of a young, kind of lets do the MTV, lesbian, pumping kind of film. That would have been a disaster. So, meeting Patty was really important to me and after I met her, it was then that I knew “I really want to do this film,” because it was her vision.
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