Charlize Theron Biography And Filmography:

Hollywood actress Charlize Theron has won Oscar and Golden Globe awards, and gained attention with heavy roles which frequently cast her as  under pressure to survive life and death situations. Her own experiences with the the stress of a bad childhood gives her perspective, as does the strong self-determination that moved her to move to Europe and start a modeling career while she was still a teenager. But if the 5’10” blew away audiences with supporting roles in “Monster” (2003) and “North Country” (2005), both roles of women who came to deal with lower class status in very different ways.

Theron was born on August 7, 1975, and raised on a farm outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Along with English, she grew up speaking the Afrikaans language of her parents and ten local dialects she learned from friends. An only child, she was an daring girl who took care of the family’s animals and farm business. But she was also a natural entertainer, encouraged by her mother to take dance and acting lessons at the age of eight. When she was thirteen, she left home to attend a private school in Johannesburg where she started dance training. While home on a school vacation in 1991, her parents became involved in a domestic dispute that ended in gunfire and the death of her father. Gerda had fired in self-defense from her violent husband, and was not charged with any crime. The episode strengthened the mother-daughter bond even more.

She returned to school and entered a modeling contest in Johannesburg. After winning first place, she was flown to Italy and signed to a modeling agency and quit school to travel Europe as a runway and advertising model. Her work took her to New York City, where she started dance training with the distinguished Joffrey Ballet. She suffered a serious knee injury that ended her dance career, and she decided to move to Miami, Florida, earning more money modeling before deciding to relocate to Los Angeles and try to break into the movie business as an actress.

In just six months, she made her grand Hollywood appearance with a three second, unscripted role in the video “Children of the Corn III” (1995). She was then hired and cast as a sexy Norwegian bad girl going next to Teri Hatcher and James Spader in  "2 Days in the Valley" (1996). 

Movie and job offers flooded in and she next appeared in the Tom Hanks' film, "That Thing You Do!" (1996) with Liv Tyler. Next was her comedic role as a waitress who finds Jeff Daniels' love interest in "Trial and Error" (1997), and audiences loved her role as Keanu Reeves' wife in Taylor Hackford's thriller "The Devil's Advocate" (1997). She more than kept up with Al Pacino and Reeves – most notably with her stirring onscreen breakdown that sent her character to the nuthouse.

Woody Allen gave her the chance to parody her modeling experience as the sex addicted supermodel of "Celebrity" (1998), before she starred as an orphaned African girl who grows up with an orphaned gorilla in Disney’s movie "Mighty Joe Young" (1998). She then took a starring role next to Johnny Depp in the science fiction thriller "The Astronaut's Wife" (1999), about astronaut Spencer Armacoust who was on a mission when he suddenly lost contact with earth. She then portrayed a young woman tempted by lust while her boyfriend is away at war in "The Cider House Rules" (1999) with Tobey Maguire. She next endured freezing temperatures and performed her own stunts for John Frankenheimer's "Reindeer Games" (1999) with Ben Affleck, where after assuming his dead cellmate's identity to get with his girlfriend, an ex-con finds himself the reluctant participant in a casino robbery.

She continued to be cast alongside top Hollywood actors, even if the roles were of the low impact “girlfriend” type. In 2000, she played a heroin addict with a romantic lust for ex-cons (Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix) in "The Yards." She went on to appear in "Men of Honor" (2000) starring Robert De Niro and Cuba Gooding Jr., in the story of Carl Brashear, the first African American and first amputee United States Navy Diver and the man who trained him.

A bigger role in Robert Redford’s "The Legend of Bagger Vance" (2000) with Matt Damon and Will Smith saw the actress as the moving force of a golf tournament in 1930's Georgia. She finally got her big break as the terminally ill woman looking for love in “Sweet November” (2001), but unfortunately her pairing with Keanu Reeves in the romantic drama did not do well at the box office. With Woody Allen’s “Curse of the Jade Scorpion” (2001) with Helen Hunt, she showed her comedy talents as an opium smoking Hollywood super-celebrity, but the film was a dud, as was the drama "Trapped" (2002) with Kevin Bacon, in which she played a kidnap victim alongside Stuart Townsend, with whom she would star a long-term romantic relationship. She wrapped her year alongside Billy Bob Thornton and Patrick Swayze in the romantic comedy "Waking Up In Reno" (2002) about two trashy couples traveling to Reno to see a monster truck show.

In 2003, she was hired and cast in "The Italian Job” with Edward Norton and Mark Wahlberg, but her performance was soon eclipsed by her Oscar and Golden Globe winning role as convicted murderer Aileen Wuornos, one of America's first known female serial killers, in "Monster" (2003). She followed up with the wartime drama "Head in the Clouds" (2004) starring Penelope Cruz, before winning an Emmy nomination for her role in "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" (2004), starring Geoffrey Rush.

The following year she was cast in "North Country" (2005), which was based on the true events surrounding the first class action sexual harassment suit against an American corporation. She then starred as a physically abused, single mother of two who finds fulfillment and economic freedom as a miner, only to face the constant humiliation of sexual harassment on the job. She won Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

Her reputation for portraying forceful women led her to take the science fiction hero role in "Aeon Flux" (2005). The movie did well at the box office but failed to impress critics or change the actress’s onscreen image into that of a Jennifer Garner type action hero. She then followed with a recurring role on the television comedy “Arrested Development” (2003-06), playing a British schoolteacher who catches the eye of Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman). In 2007, she co-starred in “Battle in Seattle” (2007), and “In The Valley of Elah” (2007) with Susan Sarandon, about a career officer and his wife who work with a police detective to uncover the truth behind their son's disappearance following his return from a tour of duty in Iraq. 

She again received applause for playing an abandoning mother in the family drama “Sleepwalking” (2008) with Nick Stahl, but the Sundance Festival screened independent received overall poor reviews and the project stalled. 

She returned to the big-screen in the summer of 2008 starring alongside Will Smith in “Hancock” (2008), about a hard-living superhero who has fallen out of favor with the public and enters into a questionable relationship with the wife of the public relations professional who's trying to repair his image. Next was the thriller "The Road" (2008) with Robert Duvall, a post-apocalyptic tale of a man trying to get his son to safety. She then won the starring role next to Kim Basinger in the dramatic "The Burning Plain" (2009), a drama with a two-tiered storyline concerning a mother (Kim Basinger) and daughter who try to form a bond after the young woman's difficult childhood. She wrapped the year working with Seth Green and Mark Wahlberg in the crime thriller "The Brazilian Job" (2009), where Charlie Croker and his fellow crew of expert thieves head to Rio de Janeiro to pull off another heist in this follow up to "The Italian Job" (2003).