all and
fearless. That's how Irish heartthrob Stuart
Townsend describes Charlize
Theron, the leggy blonde he fell in love with on the set of Trapped.One glance at Theron and it's easy to see why Townsend (Queen of the Damned) succumbed to her charms. With a classically beautiful appearance masking a fiery, outspoken temperament, Theron is reminiscent of such old-time stars as Carole Lombard and Grace Kelly.
Exuding sass, class and the courage of her convictions, the former model and ballerina burst onto the Hollywood scene in 1996 in an unforgettable catfight with Teri Hatcher in 2 Days in the Valley. Since then, the hard-working, South African-born Theron has starred in 18 movies
Theron, pronounced "Thrown" in her native Afrikaans, has been an "It" girl without the requisite slide into oblivion (remember Gretchen Mol?), and was voted one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2000. She is also a staple of late-night TV in her role as spokesperson for the World Society for the Protection of Animals.
Raised on a farm in Benoni near Johannesburg, surrounded by wildlife, Theron comes by her idealism naturally. Whether she's protesting the sale of a rare black rhinoceros to a big-game hunting company or taking part in a controversial series of anti-rape ads in South Africa, Theron gets involved.
Active in several animal and humanitarian charities, she radiates a compassionate maturity that belies her 27 years. An only child with an affluent, but turbulent, childhood that saw her German-born mother shoot her alcoholic, French father in self-defense when she was 15, Theron prefers to keep those memories private.
Unlike many of her Hollywood contemporaries, Theron lives large but doesn't regret it. Tearful confessions aren't her style. She'd rather act than talk about herself.
Although Theron's tried to give up her beloved Marlboro Red cigarettes
more than once, she's unashamed of her passion for good times and
adventure. Whether she's tramping through the Australian
outback on location with Townsend for Queen of the Damned, lounging
on a Mexican beach last Christmas with her beau, his family and her
mother, or handing her platinum credit card to Trapped co-star Courtney
Love to buy the house a drink in a Vancouver nightclub, Theron is a
free spirit who knows the value of discipline. Nobody gets to be a model,
dancer and a movie star without an iron will.After a crippling knee injury interrupted her studies at Manhattan's Joffrey School of Ballet, Theron's mother sent her daughter a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. She arrived in 1995 with little money, a strong South African accent, and dreams of stardom. Making her way to the divey Farmer's Daughter motel on the Sunset Strip, she soon met an agent who signed her and urged her to lose her accent. Scant months later, Theron snagged her first movie role, which was quickly followed by a part in Tom Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do! Hanks was bowled over by the newcomer's flair for comedy and drama but the two haven't worked together since.
While the actor has appeared opposite many of Hollywood's sexiest leading men, including Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, she's rarely been linked romantically with them. Only Keanu Reeves, who Theron worked with in The Devil's Advocate and Sweet November, is a close friend. The actor turned down the lead in Pearl Harbor to work with Reeves again.
A two-year relationship with actor Craig Bierko (the "sax man" in TV's Sex and the City and Meg Ryan's current boyfriend) that began in 1996 was followed by a three-year on-again, off-again romance with Third Eye Blind singer/
songwriter Stephan Jenkins. Theron also caught George Clooney's roving eye. Now that she and the smitten Townsend are an item -- "My sister, Chloe, is 14 and Charlize is like the ultimate big sister to her, which is great." Townsend told a hometown Dublin newspaper recently -- Theron's old-fashioned insistence on keeping her personal life out of the press has resurfaced.
But on the set of Trapped, originally known as 24 Hours, which lensed in Vancouver from March to June last year, their torrid romance was anything but secret. While cast and crew dealt with a six-day shutdown in March after the unexpected death of the movie's director of photography, Theron and Townsend cuddled. Theron's infamous open trailer-door policy was shut firmly on the curious.