The secret of Charlize Theron
First comes the dog. Short legs, disheveled. Stoically, he navigates the corridor of the Four Season Hotel in Beverly Hills. "Denver," calls Charlize Theron after him, but Denver just keeps marching. And while one thinks how touching, a world star with an old, deaf dog, behind it appears a pair of patent booties in bright blue. And far, far beyond it - Charlize Theron is already 1.80 meters without these stilettos - one looks into a perfect face, pink-powdered cheeks, platinum-blonde curls, and in clear light blue eyes.
She is pretty, not pretty, not in the first 30 seconds. She is beautiful when she plays, then her porcelain face gets something lived, emphatic. There are two moments in the following conversation in which something similar happens. Two questions that move you. But first, Charlize Theron says, "Where should I sit?" and he straightens the chair which one points to, as if she were the guest in this encounter. You think: she's probably just nice. Denver looks out the window.
The first question, which she answered very emphatically, concerns June 21, 1991, the day her mother shot her father in self-defense in her native Johannesburg. A similar family drama is also in Charlize Theron's new film: In "On Burning Earth", the directorial debut of "Babel" author Guillermo Arriaga, the girl Sylvia kills her mother (Kim Basinger) when she reveals her affair , and suffers from this guilt for many years.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Did you hesitate to take on the role of the guilty daughter because she has questions about her own family tragedy?
Charlize Theron: No, I just liked the script. But it's true: I do not like to talk about the history of that time, it's nobody's business. Not only me is involved in the whole thing, but also other people, my family. They have the right not to want anyone to write about them. You have to respect that.
Charlize Theron himself explained for a long time that his father had died in a car accident. In 2004, a few weeks after she received the Oscar for her role as a murderous prostitute in Monster, a newspaper dug up the South African police report. Charlize Theron had no choice, she had to reveal her family secret.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Why are you still answering questions about your father's death?
Charlize Theron: Just to prevent misunderstandings.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Which?
Charlize Theron: That I'm a victim. That's not me. What was then does not determine my life. not my job. My life is much more complicated than just having one element.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Do you use the feelings of the past while playing?
Charlize Theron: Yes, of course. Of course my work is my therapy and there certainly is not a single artist out there who does not draw on his real life.
Charlize Theron left soon after the death of her father South Africa, made a short, promising career as a dancer, which ended when she injured her knee. She modeled in Milan and Paris, but found the work stupid and moved to Los Angeles at 19, because the mother said: You have to find something other than the dance - go to the movie.
Charlize Theron with her mother
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Sounds like cliché ...
Charlize Theron: Yeah, but it really was like this: I had no idea how to become an actress, but I liked movies, my mother and I went to the movies together every Friday. She said: movies make her in Hollywood, why do not you go and just try it?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Your mother later followed you to America, she lives around the corner today. How is your relationship?
Charlize Theron: Very honest. There is nothing, nothing that I would not tell her. Even things that I know she does not like - I could not hide anything from her.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: There was no rebellion, no demarcation in your youth?
Charlize Theron: No, I never had a conflict with her. I know, that's weird. I'll fall on my nose if I have daughters and expect the same from them. But I did not rebel, I had a lot of freedom.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: They also lived together.
Charlize Theron: Yes, I left South Africa when I was 15, after that we hardly saw each other for six years, just talked on the phone and did not hear much about each other. Then my mother came to visit me, first for a few months, we stayed together in the hotel. Then I bought a house and they one near.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: And the shots on your father did not matter?
Charlize Theron: At first it was funny.There was a part in my mother who wanted to protect me and a part of me who wanted to protect her. We had to look at each other and say: We are now independent women, grown up, that's the way it is, it's cool.
Charlize Theron in "On Burning Earth"
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: "On Burning Earth" is an intricate, visually stunning movie. They play in it very reduced and precise. Would you say that you play differently today than you did ten years ago?
Charlize Theron: Of course. That's an age question. As a young actress you want to play a big scene, feelings, pain, everything is there and should go out. Now, at my age, I'm at the core, at the core.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: What's more important to you: the script of a film or the director?
Charlize Theron: It has to be both. It is impossible to like a book but not the director. I certainly could not. And the other way around: If I do not like the book 100 percent, I can not develop the role with the director. I like the book of this raw, tense - that can only a few authors.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: How do you feel that a role is right?
Charlize Theron: Vibration. That's when the role surprises me. If you react to a story right from the beginning, you wonder, want to know more, if you realize that bigger questions are being addressed - then the role is right.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Is there anything that you take away from this role?
(Charlize Theron turns her right forearm up, you see a red, burned-in dot)
Charlize Theron: If I keep some of this movie, then this scar. We shot a scene in which Sylvia looks at the baby photo of her daughter. She takes a cigarette out of the ashtray and pushes it on her arm to feel this intense pain. I had a protective film on my skin, but it burned through. The director said to me afterwards: You may have felt a bit too much at this point.
Denver is now asleep, "look at this angel," she says, "I like the total loyalty of a dog, its forgiving, conciliatory nature, and its love."
But the nature of the dog is, above all, to think of its use, and for us it then looks like love?
"Never," she says, the second time in this conversation she becomes very explicit. "I'm one hundred percent sure that they can feel love, so I bet my life, look at a homeless dog's dog, what's the use of it?" This dog stays with the human being because man loves him, you know exactly who loves her and who hurt her. "
