HER FABULOUS FORTIES
The ‘Tully’ star opens up about how motherhood has transformed her and why her 40s are her favourite decade
Tully star Charlize Theron talks about her favourite decade—and climbing trees with her kids.
She has played a serial killer, a superspy and a one-armed warrior—but Charlize Theron says the role that makes her the happiest these days is the one she plays for an audience of two. “My kids make me laugh like nobody’s business,” says the 42-year-old actress, mum to Jackson, 6, and August, 2. She lights up as she talks about camping, climbing trees and jumping on trampolines with them, dealing with 5:45 AM wake-ups and shuttling them to ballet and gymnastics. “I don’t want to miss out on my kids growing up,” she says. “I don’t want them to all of a sudden be 18 and be like, you know what, I should have been there more.”
The South Africa–born star spent her early career scrambling for success as a model and actress, then fighting to be taken seriously in Hollywood beyond her beauty— a fight she decidedly won after she earned an Oscar for playing murderer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster. She transforms herself again in her new movie Tully (see review, p. 60), in which she plays a mum of three with postnatal depression who bonds with her night nurse (Mackenzie Davis).
Emotionally, for Theron the part came along at just the right time. “When I got the script, my youngest was 8 months old, and I was just coming out of that notsleeping-and-having-anewborn phase. It really spoke to me,” she explains.
Physically the timing wasn’t so ideal— having just finished shooting Atomic Blonde, playing a kick-arse spy, she was in the best shape of her life. “I was so excited to rock a bikini that summer!” she says with a wistful smile. Instead, Theron gained more than 22kg for Tully, gorging on potato chips and sugar, and she says the weight gain took a steep toll. “I dealt with depression for the first time in my life,” she says. “I was very heavy, literally and figuratively. I was unhealthy and threw out my back and couldn’t sleep.” She had gained 13.6kg for Monster, but gaining weight at age 27 is much different from doing it in your 40s. “My body just didn’t respond like last time I did this,” she says. After a year and a half of sticking to a healthy diet and daily exercise—“you know, all that easy stuff,” Theron jokes—she was able to
take the weight off.
She has gravitated to radical makeovers—whether packing on kilos or shaving her head for her role in Mad Max: Fury Road— since the start of her career. The 1.77m beauty was raised on a farm near Benoni, South Africa, by her mother, Gerda, who killed her abusive, alcoholic father in self-defence when Charlize was 15. At age 18, she moved to New York, where she worked as a model and studied at the prestigious Joffrey Ballet School. When a knee injury derailed her dreams of dancing, she decided to try acting. “Once I lost my ballet career, I realised why I loved it so much,” she says. “It was escaping and being something other than me.” She struggled to avoid being typecast, taking on challenging characters. “I liked complicated and conflicted people and wanted to play them,” says Theron. “I realised if I kept doing the same thing over and over again, I wouldn’t have any longevity in this career.”
Theron describes her 20s as a nonstop swirl of work and travel. When she reached her 30s, after ending a long-term relationship with Irish actor Stuart Townsend, she realised it was time to slow down and focus on the next stage in life—starting a family. Theron always saw adoption as her pathway to motherhood and credits her upbringing in South Africa as the guiding force behind that decision. With several orphanages in the community where she was raised, Theron was aware at a very young age that there were children in the world who needed a loving home. “Even when I was in relationships, I was always honest with my partners that adoption was how my family would look one day,” she says. “This was definitely not a second option for me. It was always my first.” She adopted Jackson in 2012, and August three years later. Like her character in Tully, Theron says, she was resistant at first to hiring someone to help her care for her children. “I felt like if I don’t do this all by myself, then people will just assume I can’t handle it or I’m a terrible mother,” she recalls. She leaned on her mother, whom she calls her “Buddha and wise old bear.” But after August arrived, Theron decided to get some additional help, and is glad she did. “I was so much happier. I could actually spend quality time with my kids versus just thinking about bedtime because I am so tired.” It also allowed her to devote more energy to her other two passions—her charity Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, which helps fight HIV in her home country, and her production company Denver and Delilah Films, which highlights female-centric stories.
Raised an only child, Theron says she always knew she wanted more than one kid, even if that meant dealing with sibling rivalry. “We went through this really beautiful stage a year ago where the baby was hugging her sibling, and there was all this love and affection,” she says. “I was bawling my eyes out every day saying, ‘This is the most beautiful love I have ever witnessed in my life.’ Now the baby is almost 3 and realises she doesn’t have to do everything her sibling tells her. There’s a lot of wars in my house. I’m like, ‘ Where’s the cute period that we went through?’” Toddler meltdowns aside, Theron says her 40s are her favourite decade, and she can’t wait to see what comes next. “It just feels like everything I’ve ever wanted has come together,” she says. “I have this beautiful family. I’m living the life that I always wanted to lead.”
‘It feels like everything I ever wanted has come together’