[Label Basher]

Wow she looks like a sea goddess in those Vogue pics. Straight up Aphrodite.

[kobro22]

Thank you for the additional Vogue pictures, they are stunning, although I hope we get more close ups of that gorgeous face. Cannot wait for the interview!!

[dennab216]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kobro22 Cannot wait for the interview!!

Here it is

Quote:

After a hiatus from leading roles, Charlize Theron returns full-on with this month's Young Adult, a film that showcases her Oscar-worthy talents—and the liberating energy of her newly single life. “We should keep it classy,” Charlize Theron says. It’s a warm autumn evening in Los Angeles, and I’m sitting with Theron at a near-empty Japanese restaurant. Up the road, Barack Obama is wooing the beautiful and boldfaced at a $17,900-a-plate fund-raiser, and for hours, the Hollywood sky has rattled with helicopters. But this feels like a much better place to be, across a small table from the 36-year-old native South African and Oscar winner who director Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) says is “in every conversation about the greatest living actresses.” There’s also sake, poured in wooden boxes filled to the brim, so that one has no choice but to lean over, inelegantly dip one’s nose, and slurp it like a Labrador retriever. Which now I do. Theron laughs loudly. “That’s why I ordered it,” she says. “To make you do that.” I’d been warned about Theron. Good warnings. She is an actress who doesn’t take herself seriously, who loathes phoniness, who chooses not to live in a gilded fantasy of air kisses and fake compliments, and is not afraid of an adult beverage, a pointed jab, or a scattering of F-bombs. Click here to see a slideshow of Charlize Theron throughout the years in Vogue. “She’s a lottttt of fun,” says her friend the actor Jason Bateman. This rowdy image amuses Theron. “She swears! She drinks you under the table!” she says, writing her own headline. For the record, in our two days together, Theron does not drink me under the table, though I stop counting the F-bombs after 50. She will mock my voice, and when I move too slowly for her, she will refer to me as “Grandpa.” We will be photographed together by the paparazzi, causing Theron to speculate we will soon be described by the tabloids as “getting it on.” (A prospect fine by me and comical to my wife but surely mortifying for Theron.) That said, we will do the most intimate, soul-baring thing two people can do: exchange music. We do not keep it totally classy. Somehow, Theron will get me kicked out of a coffee shop, which I didn’t think was possible. Click here to see a slideshow of Charlize Theron's best red carpet moments. She is so unpretentious and easygoing, it gets to the point where you almost forget that she’s Charlize Theron, until she rises from her restaurant chair in her light-brown sweater and Rag & Bone jeans and reveals what her producing partner, Beth Kono, describes as a “freaking five-foot-ten genetic mutation”—what Patton Oswalt, her costar in the upcoming Jason Reitman–directed Young Adult, refers to as “a nerd locked in a grace machine on automatic pilot.” Theron is not what you’d expect. But it’s true: She’s a lot of fun. “Did you get hit at all?” Bateman asks later. “A South African love tap? Those can bring bruises.” The Charlize Theron story is not supposed to happen. The teenage girl who leaves the farm in South Africa to be a fashion model in Milan does not actually become a fashion model. The fashion model who tries to become a dancer does not get admitted to the prestigious Joffrey Ballet School. The injured ballerina who goes to Hollywood to be an actress doesn’t become an actress. Somewhere along the way, reality intrudes on the dream. But Theron pulled it off. There were early signals she could—stolen scenes as a bombshell girlfriend in 2 Days in the Valley; as a “polymorphously perverse” supermodel straddling a New York Knick in Woody Allen’s Celebrity. There were celebrated films everyone saw (Cider House Rules), and brash ones few did (Reindeer Games). In 2003, there was a breakthrough: an acclaimed performance in Monster, for which Theron physically transformed herself to play the prostitute turned serial killer Aileen Wuornos. She would win awards, including the big one. “The Golden Frog, you’re talking about?” Theron asks coyly. Winning the Oscar was “amazing,” she says. The night she was up for it, in a shimmering Gucci dress, she felt “like a princess.” At the last second, Diane Lane switched her seat so Theron’s mother, Gerda, could be next to her when the envelope was opened. “It was life-changing—it opened a lot of doors,” says Theron, who was nominated again for 2005’s North Country. “But it made people have a lot of opinions about what should happen next. You realize quickly that you can never please everybody.” Today, Theron has her own production company, Denver and Delilah, with projects ranging from films to reality TV. There is her foundation, Africa Outreach Project, where the primary mission is reducing HIV/AIDS and sexual violence among African youth. Last summer, during South Africa’s historic World Cup, the foundation broke ground on four soccer fields in rural communities, far from the sports-crazed spotlight. Though Los Angeles is her home, Theron is in it but not of it. The celebrity machinery doesn’t interest her much. “For a woman that beautiful and that intelligent, she has a very down-to-earth approach to life,” says Shirley Mac*Laine, who befriended Theron after an awards ceremony in which an awestruck Theron planted a playful kiss on MacLaine’s behind. “She has opted for simplicity, and that is a very wise choice.” Theron chooses films carefully, often passing over the easy money for projects she strongly believes in, films like Young Adult, the second movie from the celebrated Juno pairing of Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, which opens this month. In it, Theron plays Mavis Gary, a lonely, binge-drinking writer of serial teen romances who makes an awkward return to her Minnesota hometown, trying to win back her married high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (played by Patrick Wilson). Mavis is a hot mess—icy and self-absorbed on the surface, but reeling underneath. Theron was offered the part after she introduced herself to Reitman at the Oscars. “I did that horrible, embarrassing thing,” she says, shaking her head. She mocks herself talking to the then 33-year-old director after a couple of glasses of champagne: “ ‘I just really, really, really loved Up in the Air.’ ” But Reitman didn’t need a sell. “Really the only way I was going to do this movie was if Charlize wanted to do it,” he says of Young Adult. “It’s a really tricky screenplay to pull off, because the main character is so unlikable.” Theron went all in. To see Mavis in an oversize Hello Kitty T-shirt and baggy sweatpants, gorging on Diet Coke, fast food, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians, is to witness a slow unraveling. Theron gave Mavis a pigeon-toed walk, which she says is based on Reitman’s shuffle. She added hair extensions and stuffed silicone cutlets into Mavis’s bra—the latter a detail she lifted from a romantic episode in her own life. “I was on this date and started making out, and it was moving a little further, so I realized I had to get the cutlets out,” Theron recalls. “But my bag was small, and I couldn’t fit them in the thing. Jason [Reitman] was like, ‘No way. That doesn’t happen!’ But that stuff happens to girls all the time.” Whatever happened to the cutlets? Theron pauses. “I may have hid them in his trash with lots of toilet paper.” The end result is another indelible Theron character. Young Adult is funny but not a lighthearted romantic comedy. The movie revels in the painful awkwardness of real life, the feelings of isolation that often lurk below the surface. Late in the film, there’s a scene in which a furious Mavis, her shirt soaked in red wine, rages at partygoers outside Buddy’s happy suburban house. It is both hard to watch and utterly believable. “Never for a moment do you feel you’re watching an actress who’s letting you know, ‘By the way, I’m nothing like this character,’ ” says Reitman. “She’s diving 100 percent in.” “I admit, deep down, I was concerned because Charlize is so gorgeous,” says Cody. “It’s important to me to populate the films I write with real people, and she looks like an international supermodel, you know? And yet, she managed to channel her beauty into this homecoming-queen sense of superiority that Mavis never let go of. She’s incredibly convincing.” “She lays it out there, man,” says Oswalt, who plays a forgotten high school classmate who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mavis. I ask Theron if she ever had a lost teenage love—a real-life version of Young Adult’s Buddy Slade. “I didn’t have a high school boyfriend,” she confesses. “But there was this guy, Johan Botha, who I was obsessed with. Obsessed! There was a school dance coming up, and I told my mom I needed a dress, and I bought this amazing crushed-velvet burgundy dress—long-sleeved, off-the-shoulder, at Woolworth’s. And then Thursday came, and Friday came, and he did not ask me to the dance. And I had to call my mom to come get me. “Johan Botha! I haven’t thought about him in so long. He was a really good cyclist. I think I spoke five words to him. I would lie in my bed and listen to those heartbreak eighties songs and think it was the end of the world that this boy did not know I existed.” A week or so later, I locate Johan Botha via e-mail. He’s an artist, living in Johannesburg, still riding his bicycle, and singing and playing guitar in a band called Billy Buckle. “Haha, yes we were in school together,” Botha writes of Theron. “If you interview her again, you may tell her that the crush was definitely mutual, for what it’s worth. “Oh, and she wore glasses at the time, which I thought was very cute.” Young Adult is a music-driven movie—the opening credits launch with an old Memorex cassette playing a poppy Teenage Fanclub song called “The Concept”; Mavis howls the 4 Non Blondes anthem “What’s Up?” from her Mini Cooper; Patton Oswalt’s character pads around in a Pixies T-shirt. Before filming, Reitman gave Theron mix tapes labeled MAD LOVE, BUDDY designed to get her in the mood. “Best rehearsal I’ve ever had,” Theron says. Inspired by this theme, it has been proposed that I make a mix tape for Theron, and that Theron make one for me. Had this idea been suggested to me in, say, 1987, I’d have aced it, but my mix-tape skills have atrophied. A good mix tape is an intimate endeavor, and it’s strange to make one for someone you hardly know, and for a famous person at that (and now everyone makes them with iTunes, which feels like cheating). Still, I try. I avoid anything that sounds too weird or personal or stalkery. I start to search for tracks with titles related to Theron’s career—Kanye West’s “Monster,” for example—but that gets corny. Eventually I just give up and make a mix that I’d listen to: Jackson Browne, Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, Radiohead, Ginuwine, Evan Dando, R.E.M. It’s the kind of mix you might play stoned in a vintage Saab. At the last moment I add a filthy single (“Fish Paste”) by a South African hip-hop group named Die Antwoord, whom I saw at a concert in New York a summer ago. Will she like it? I have no idea if she’ll listen to it. Young Adult is Theron’s first major movie role in three years, and in the middle of filming she had a revelation. “I realized how much I love what I do,” she says. “I really, really missed it. Like around week three, I had this horrible, sappy moment where I got a little overwhelmed. It was just a really great ****ing experience.” She hesitates. “I’d gotten out of a relationship, and I was in this really floaty place. My feet weren’t touching the ground. I just kind of turned to [Reitman] and was like, ‘I feel like me again.’ ” The relationship, of course, was Theron’s longtime partnership with the Irish actor Stuart Townsend, whom she dated for almost ten years. When the pairing began to falter, Theron says, she was desperate to save it; acting took a backseat. “It was sinking, and I had to give it a fight,” she says. “I really wanted to try and make it work. That was the priority. I wouldn’t do it any different way.” As we meet, Theron is single—a foreign experience. “I’ve never been single,” she says. “This is the first time in my life. From the time I was nineteen, I’ve been in relationships, literally gone from one to the other within a month. “It’s been good for me,” she continues. “I’m a creature who’s really found her comfort zone in relationships.” We are eating ice cream across the street from the Japanese restaurant. To be specific, we are sitting at a table outside a coffee shop next to the ice-cream store, because all the tables outside the ice-cream store are taken. “It’s been nice to rediscover myself,” Theron says. “I had to make a real conscious effort to do it—it’s hard. It’s much easier to lose yourself in flowers and cigarettes and coffee with somebody else.” Suddenly a barista appears at the table. “Just to let you know, these tables are for customers only.” Theron apologizes and bolts up from the table. And with that, the barista officially has a story titled “The Time I Kicked Charlize Theron Out of My Coffee Shop.” Fleeing the scene in her car, Theron is howling. “We ran away with our tails between our legs,” she says, slapping at the steering wheel. “I finished my ice cream in front of a garbage can!” Suddenly, she swerves aggressively to take a turn. “****,” she says. She sees me coiling in my seat, gripping the door. “Don’t worry,” Theron says, pumping the brakes. “Italian Job! Do you remember that movie? I won’t brag about anything, but I’m a really good driver.” She pulls her car in front of my hotel. We make a plan to meet for a hike the next morning. A high-five is exchanged. “Eww,” Theron says. “Did we just high-five?”

[dennab216]

Part 2

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The next morning, at 7:30, Theron arrives at the top of Run*yon Canyon. She is dressed in a purple workout shirt and tights, and is accompanied by her two dogs—a pit bull named Blue and a Border-terrier puppy named Berkeley, a.k.a. Lucifer. Theron is a known dog obsessive. She once peaked with eight. “After three, it doesn’t matter anymore,” she says. Theron powers down the hill, Blue and Berkeley by her side. It’s not a vigorous workout, but it’s not a casual stroll. Theron quit smoking a while ago but refuses to go into detail of how she did it, not wanting to jinx it. “I was highly addicted,” she confesses. “I thought, I don’t smoke like normal people. I smoke to die.” Though she’s better known for taking risks with smaller films, Theron will soon be seen in a series of big popcorn movies. In June comes Prometheus, from director Ridley Scott, its plot shielded in secrecy but rumored to share DNA with Scott’s iconic Alien. “What can I say that won’t get me into trouble?” Theron asks. She offers a joke teaser. “Dogs. In. Space. “I’ll tell you this,” she says. “It’s not a prequel to Alien. Everyone thinks it’s a prequel, but it’s not. It’s a stand-alone movie.” Then comes Snow White and the Huntsman, in which Theron plays Ravenna, the Evil Queen hell-bent on destroying the princess played by Kristen Stewart, the brooding Twilight comet endlessly chronicled in celebrity weeklies. “She just turned 21,” Theron says of Stewart. “She’s a child. When I think about myself at 21, I had just done The Devil’s Advocate, and Keanu [Reeves] had paparazzi following him and Al Pacino said this thing to me: ‘If I knew that my life would be under this kind of scrutiny, I would have never become an actor.’ ” And I thought, Wow. I couldn’t comprehend it. “And Kristen is just living this to the max and still has a sense of humor about it. There’s this really lovely quality about her that just doesn’t give a ****. A lot of people say they don’t, but then they go home and cry and pop a Xanax. Kristen actually doesn’t give a ****. That’s what’s so refreshing about her. “I’m looking forward to killing her and taking her beauty,” Theron says. “That’s what happens, right?” Next spring, Theron is expected to begin work on Fury Road, the latest installment of George Miller’s famous apocalyptic Mad Max franchise. Floods in Australia delayed the shoot and may force its move to Namibia, a region with significance to Theron. Several years ago, she rented a private plane with friends and flew around the country, visiting places where her mother, Gerda, grew up. “That was pretty magical,” Theron says. “We spent, like, a month, my mom educating me about her life and family and heritage. That was really, really moving.” Theron lives not far from Gerda, speaks to her every day, and remains protective of her mother’s privacy; as Charlize became a household name, the attention revived a harrowing, now decades-old, family trauma when her mother shot and killed Theron’s father in self-defense. “She gets tossed into that darkness, and it’s not who she is at all,” Theron says. “She is not that person. She has a love for life. She is very, very private. . . . It’s hard when you have a child who decides to do something that you know will throw your whole life out there.” Theron mostly manages to duck the paparazzi. She avoids the usual celebrity hangouts, declines to play the game. “Some people are really into that world, of being photographed, being at the party, being with the guy, being in the Bentley,” she says. “Good for them, because it’s so entertaining to watch. It’s just not me.” Of course, just as she finishes saying this, a photographer surfaces from the bushes. “That never happens on this hill, ever,” Theron says. Tiny Berkeley charges up the hill, yipping at the paparazzo. “Get him! Get him! Get him!” Another photographer appears, joining the party. “Char*lize, you are the most beautiful!” he shouts. Theron sighs ruefully. “Now we’re dating,” she says to me. “You are going to be part of the rumor mill now. Dude, me and you are totally doing it.” Paparazzi escaped, we drive down the hill to Theron’s house, a 1920s Spanish colonial hidden behind an inconspicuous gate. She has owned it for fifteen years, and as we walk inside, it unfolds like a long, breezy weekend—sunlit sitting areas, a vast open kitchen, a backyard with a pool and long communal tables and couches. “That’s my clubbing,” she says, pointing to the comfy outdoor spread, where nights with friends can stretch into the early morning. Theron’s dinner parties are epic. “The way to get to know Charlize is to have her cook a meal for you with lots of her friends,” says MacLaine. Says Beth Kono: “The woman can cook a ten-course meal for 25 people. I’m like, ‘Are you Mrs. Doubtfire?’ ” Theron goes to the counter and pours two cups of coffee. We step outside and sit at a table. Blue tries to hop up on a bench next to her and thwaps his head on the bottom of the table. “Honey, that must have hurt so badly!” she coos. “Are you OK? Dizzy?” The canine-mothering skills are obvious. I ask Theron if she’s eager to have children. “I do want to have kids, yeah,” she says. “I always have. I’ve never had a rush for it, a moment where I really wanted to do it. I don’t have a panic about it.” Lots of kids? “I don’t think about the amount so much. You have to be aware of what you can give. I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years. I might be in a place where I’m like, ‘Yeah! Six!’ ” Theron laughs. “I don’t think it will ever be that,” she says. We talk some more about the house. Theron warns me that she isn’t a huge fan of people writing about what’s on her kitchen table. (It’s not hard to see why; on her kitchen table is the taboo trio of a MacBook, a copy of National Geographic, and a bag of Cadbury chocolates.) We discuss her neighbor, a famous author. (“He’s just brilliant . . . he blasts these great operas.”) We talk about her new affection for steel-caged, often bloody Ultimate Fighting Championship. We examine the fact that Theron has yet to be embroiled in a true Hollywood scandal. Give her time, she pleads. “I’m going to really go big in my 40s and make my own reality show,” Theron says. “It could totally happen! It’s going to be beautiful.” A few days later, a package arrives in the mail from Theron’s production company. Inside is a handwritten note from Theron. She’s been playing the mix CD I sent. The filthy Die Antwoord single is apparently a hit. “ ‘Fish Paste’ is legendary,” she writes. “And my mom’s new favorite song.” Theron has sent her own mix CD in response. Actually, she’s enclosed two CDs, which is probably cheating. Her mix contains moody songs from Deer Tick and Bon Iver; dance-floor booty-shakers (Fatboy Slim and Mos Def); a few classics (Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Virginia”); bass-thumpers from Dr. Dre and Ludacris and Nicki Minaj. I’ve been listening to the mix for weeks now, and can’t get it out of my brain. Like Charlize Theron, it surprises. It’s not what you’d expect. But it’s a lot of fun.

[dennab216]

Charlize in a barely there dress at the screening of young adult in London

[pixiedust1603]

Where in London was this screening? I really want to see Young Adult so badly.

[dennab216]

The caption said that she was at a BAFTA screening in London. I don't really know when it was to be honest.. They have been doing secret screening in the USA for a while now, guess it is Europe turn

Edit : after reading the interview I must say that it was very average but at least now we know why she went so much under the radar. She chose to try to save her relationship instead of letting her career flourish.. But really..couldn't they have talk about more interesting things? I love Vogue..

[pixiedust1603]

I think the interview was great as it showed her personality. I really didn't know she was so funny, potty mouthed and likeable in real life. I mean you see a really hot actress who can act and you never think that they don't have the ability to laugh at themselves which she clearly does.

[dennab216]

Maybe I am such a die hard that I knew that But I thought this Vogue ed would have been a way to 1)show her versatility as an actress with a more interesting/edgy shot and 2) talk about her career finally in depth. Her past, present and future. I love NYT because of that, it was kind of a straight window into how she picks role, how she thinks she can grow as an actress etc.. I don't care that she has dogs, quit smoking by whatever magic and all that jazz. But again it's Vogue, not the NYT. I think the Life in Pictures event will be a better place to learn about that

[kobro22]

Ammarra thanks so much for the interview. And I totally agree with you, but then again I am a die hard Charlize fan and I am always left with wanting more info on all things Charlize.

She really has a wall up around her persona, she rarely lets anyone in, I guess that is understandable since all the trauma she went through and it must have been so tough to come to Hollywood all alone at such a young age.

Like she said in the NYTimes interview she went through some horrible stuff.

[dennab216]

Exactly! I feel like I know Charlize Theron the public persona, gorgeous woman who doesn't take herself seriously, love wine and drinking games. And then I see a different part of her with CTAOP (one of the reason I absolutely loved the Living Peace Series and her speech there) but then as an actress it seems like it is a very internalised process for her. She always find a way to dodge more interesting questions with humour or maybe not enough journalists ask her questions that matter, that are so close and so connected with her being that at some point we might say "I have a bit of an idea of what drives her and of who she is". She is an actress but I feel like she rarely really talk about it and how it affects her..Yes she wants to tell good stories and yes she think damaged people are more interesting because more real to her and allow her to connect with a part of herself that people rarely got to see but..There is always something missing..

(and that may be why I am such a die hard )

[dennab216]

Charlize and Vogue through the years

[dennab216]

Part 2

[ALAUU]

I think the main reason why her editorials for Vogue are always so good is that she's a real sport about it. She's willing to do fun stuff outside of a studio. She's also extremely photogenic and gorgeous. I also love her interviews. She seems like so much fun.

[dennab216]