Charlize Theron is not what she appears. A tall, slim blond whose Olympian beauty has served her well in an evolution from small own South African girl to Jeffrey Bailer dancer to fashion model to Oscar nominee, Theron is more big sister than scheming ice princess. Her bubbling, nearly goofy acceptance speech when she won the Golden Globe in January for playing prostitute and seven-time murderer Aileen Wuornos in the brutal, brilliant film Monster was the real deal: In her mind, she's just one of the guys, anxious for people to see through the glossy surface and find the thoughtful, congenial young woman underneath.
That's how she seems sitting at a garden table at the Chateau Marmont hotel in West Hollywood, Calif.: drinking coffee, smoking Winstons, and sharing stories of the month she spent filming Monster in Florida, re-creating both Wuornos's intense love affair with a lesbian named Selby (Christina Ricci) and her gruesome murders of seven johns. "Every (lay was a challenge," Theron says. "Usually, you pick three moments in a script, and you wait for those three days to come and really stretch your acting muscles. But in this case, every scene was that scene."
As an Alexander McQueen fashion show unfolds inside the lobby--an ironic and unexpected counterpoint that has conveniently emptied out the hotel's garden--Theron seems to use the interview to continue the long, therapeutic process of analyzing exactly what happened to her during the making of Monster. Having had it comparatively easy in lead roles in more than a dozen slick, appealingly packaged movies, including The Devil's Advocate, The Cider House Rules, and The Italian Job, Theron poured every ounce of her emotional strength into this indie project, written and directed by first-timer Patty Jenkins. As she tells it, the work brought her to the verge of a breakdown.
Both Theron and Jenkins were determined to humanize Aileen, a complicated, tortured, volatile roadside sex worker who was executed by the state of Florida in October 2002. Both knew that Theron's physical transformation--the convincing makeup to weather her skin, the dentures an contact lenses, the 30-pound weight gain--would be powerless without Theron's ability to feel what Wuornos felt. And that meant getting both the homicidal rage mid the heartbreaking lesbian love just fight.
While both actor and director were intrigued by "how somebody good crosses the line and becomes somebody bad," Theron says that Monster is not so much about a descent into evil as it is "about love, the need and the willingness and the eagerness and the hunger and the survival of wanting to be loved by somebody, anybody."
Putting down her coffee cup, Theron recalls one little-known fact about Wuornos: She was born in a leap year, on February 29. The day the Academy Awards will be given out this year would have been her 48th birthday.
The actual events of the movie take place in 1989--you would have been 14, still growing up in South Africa. When do you first remember hearing about Aileen Wournos? When I read the script.
Really?
Yeah. My manager sent it to me and said, "I really love this script--it's an independent, just read it for about 20 pages--you have to look at it." When I was reading it, I didn't even know it was based on a real person. It was only after I loved the script and I called [my manager] J.J. and said "I really like this" that she said, "Well, maybe you should cheek out this Nick Broomfield documentary [Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer]." He was kind enough to send me a rough cut of [the second Wuornos documentary, Aileen: The Life, and Death of a Serial Killer,] that he was working on at the time. I saw the other one; I saw the A&E biography on videotapes and all of that--that was really when the whole story came to me.
Was the script illuminating in a way the documentaries weren't?
Completely. It was only when we started reading some of [Aileen's] letters from death row that. I started realizing how much research Patty [Jenkins] had really done as a writer, because actual moments in her life that she never talked about, that she only wrote about and talked to [Aileen's longtime friend] Dawn Botkins about, were actually in the script.
The Advocate has been covering the Wuornos story since the beginning, but I did feel the film makes you understand her as a person in a way that news reports just can't capture.
Yeah. Thank you. I feel like that was why Patty wanted to make the story.
Aileen was reduced to so many labels that it was difficult for anyone to see what kind of person could be behind all of those. The movie is able to reveal that person.
I really do think that Aileen didn't start off as a bad person. I don't think anybody starts off as a bad person. I think Aileen started off as a healthy, normal child who was just born into very specific circumstances, dealt with everything in her life, survived it, moved on, put it in the past, and was constantly hopeful to try and fix her life and make it better. But Patty and I talked a lot about what it takes for somebody just like me and you to cross that line and actually become a bad person--to become a killer. This was Aileen's story, but that story in general really fascinates me. That's why I love movies like Badlands and In Cold Blood. I think in films we explore, that world, but in our society we don't.
Your manager was clearly supportive of your wanting to do this role, but how did your friends or other people in your life react when you said, "I'm going to go play a serial killer in a little independent movie by a first-time filmmaker"?
My mom read the script and site really loved it. She actually said, "You'd be crazy if you don't do this." My friends, I think ... it was a slow process for them. I didn't really talk to a lot of people about it. The only thing that happened was, I started watching the documentaries in my trailer [with costars] ,Jason Statham and Seth Green when I was doing The Italian Job. We had, like, four hours off, and I said, "I got an offer to play this woman and the script is really good, but I don't know anything about her, so I was just gonna watch these documentaries, if you guys wanna come watch with me."
When [Aileen] came on [screen], I think Jason or Seth said something like, "You're kidding me, right? This is a joke, right?" I went, "No, it's not." I mean, that was their initial response when they saw her. [After that] we just talked about it every day. They would ask me what's going on and it" I'm going to do it and "How are you guys going to do the transformation?" and "Who's going to play Selby?" They were really interested in it, and I think they were really the only two. And then, of course, my boyfriend, who doesn't have a choice in the matter [laughs], has to hear about, it day in and day out.
Did he read the script?
He did read the script. Yeah. He was extremely shaken up by it. [He said,] "Well, babe, I love you, and I don't know if I want to go and see you go through all of these experiences"--in a very protective way. He was really inspired by the story and by the fact that Patty sat down and in six weeks wrote the script. That she went in and made it the way sire wanted to make it. I think all of that is very inspiring, whether you're an actor or writer or anything.
Who's your boyfriend?
[British actor] Stuart Townsend.
Oh, right. He's cute. We like him.
[Laughs] He's very cute.
Together you can be the newest gay and lesbian icon phenomenon.
Really?
Sure! Speaking of actors, one of the first things that Aileen says in the movie's narration is "I wanted to be a movie star." You had some traumatic events in your early life [including her mother's shooting Theron's abusive father to death when she was a teenager]: Was there any sense of "There but for the grace of God go I"?
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