RISKS AND NO REGRETS
THE DYNAMIC BLONDE IS FEARLESS FOR HER CHILDREN
Charlize Theron on life as a single mum
For Charlize Theron, life has always been a balance of living without regrets, while taking as many risks as she can.
The stunning South African actress has adopted two children, Jackson (6) and two-year-old August, as a single mum and has taken on roles other actresses would baulk at – who can forget her turn as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster?
Now, fed up with the lack of action-based lead parts for women in Hollywood, she has started producing them herself.
Her latest project, playing a Cold War-era MI6 agent named Lorraine in Atomic Blonde, is a case in point. It took more than five years to get off the ground and it’s perhaps her boldest role yet.
“We women are more capable than we are portrayed to be in movies,” she says. “We’ve been due characters like this for a long time.”
Charlize hopes Jackson and August will follow her lead. “I’m going to hopefully live my life in a way where it will be enough for them to learn by example,” she tells. “I’m also always driving in the car with them and telling them they can be anything. And they’re like, ‘Yeeees, Mum. We get it.’”
Of course, her gorgeous kids are the centre of her world. Charlize adopted Jackson from her native South Africa in 2012 and she adopted August as a newborn in the United States in 2015. And any potential suitor will have to get past her dynamic duo!
Her 18-month relationship with fellow movie star Sean Penn ended in 2015 and Charlize has been single ever since. She has only just begun dating again.
“Once you have children, that’s who you are,” she explains. “There’s no way around that. You turn into such a mum. Your body almost switches off. I had no desire to date during the first few years.”
The desire to meet someone special is there, Charlize adds, although she wishes she could find someone who wasn’t in the showbiz industry.
“That’s my problem. I watch documentaries about adventures and I’m like, ‘I want to be with someone like that who can climb a mountain… But [potential partners] have to wait a long time – a very long time. I think you have to be really, really slow with that stuff.”
However, the actress does reveal she has just been on a date – and it was a raging success. “This guy really impressed me,” she gushes. “He was a really cool dude… We went for a nine-mile hike in the middle of the night. It was a full moon. I was really impressed. It was fun! I wasn’t scared – it was just really fun. He was super-funny.”
Charlize is keeping mum on the identity of her mystery man, only admitting that he too is famous. Sources are speculating it could be Gabriel Aubry, Halle Berry’s exhusband. The pair have been linked since May, as Jackson and Gabriel’s daughter Nahla attend the same school.
Still, it’s clear her priorities are her kids and her career, in that order. Enjoying something of a resurgence since taking time out for her kids, Charlize is loving starring in strong, female-led movies as well as producing them.
She has even been lauded by her Hollywood peers as a frontrunner to take up the 007 mantle, since Thor star Chris Hemsworth named her as the perfect person to play James Bond.
“She embodies every sort of ounce of strength and nobility and dignity and integrity that that character should have,” he says.
For her part, Charlize believes it should come as no surprise she’s attracted to troubled, complex characters.
She grew up just outside Johannesburg with an alcoholic mother. Her life changed forever when her mother, Gerda, shot and killed her abusive father in self-defence.
“I just pretended it didn’t happen,” she says. “I didn’t tell anybody – I didn’t want to tell anybody. Whenever anyone asked me, I said my dad died in a car accident. Who wants to tell that story?”
It was Gerda’s strength and courage that got the duo through the tough time, she continues.
“I have an incredible mother. She’s a huge inspiration in my life. Her philosophy was, ‘This is horrible. Acknowledge it. Now make a choice. Will this define you? Are you going to sink or are you going to swim?’ That was it.”
And swim, she has.