Last updated: September 06, 2014

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Movies

Charlize Theron's awakening

charlize theron

MANY and varied roles ... Charlize Theron. Source: The Courier-Mail

SOUTH Africa's Charlize Theron gained dual US citizenship this year and in her first movie since the announcement, the Hollywood A-list actor tackles a very American subject with In the Valley of Elah.

The drama looks at the human toll of the Iraq war in the US.

Theron calls herself politically aware and not one to "walk around with blinders on".

Whether it's Elah or workplace drama North Country or her Oscar-winning turn in Monster, Theron, who not so long ago was named the "sexiest woman alive" in an annual poll by Esquire magazine, wants roles that challenge fans to think.

"I question authority, question what the Government is doing, and I think that is an incredibly patriotic thing to do," Theron said.

Theron is quick to add: "I love America and love living in this country".

To be sure, she sees Elah as a story about people, not politics.

Yet it is hard to imagine Elah, which opens in cinemas in Australia on February 28, as anything but a story about the distress the war has caused US citizens, critics say.

Time magazine's Richard Corliss said the film demands viewers "consider the cost of the Government's decision to invade a land no American was properly prepared for fighting in".

The movie was written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose 2005 racial drama Crash won the best film Oscar, and hopes are high among the movie's backers that Elah could vie for awards too, particularly for star Tommy Lee Jones.

Elah Valley is the setting for the ancient tale of a fight between the Philistine warrior Goliath and the young boy David, who bravely killed the giant with his sling and stones.

The movie tells of a father (Jones) whose son has been murdered outside a US Army base after returning safely from Iraq. The dad, a retired Vietnam-era military policeman, goes to the base to look into the crime and meets Theron's character, Detective Emily Sanders, the only female policewoman among the local cops. Just as in Monster, where Theron put on 13kg and had her face altered with make-up and crooked false teeth, she plays against her good looks. This time she's stripped of make-up and her hair, dyed brown, is scraped back from her face.

Together, the pair bypass police procedure and work around army red tape to solve the murder. But the real crime is what the war has done to the young men and women fighting it.

Elah is meant to spark conversation about the war's impact on people who fight it and their families in the same way Crash was meant to spark discussion of race relations in the United States.

"Nothing gives me more joy than talking with people coming out of a theatre and hearing different opinions," Theron said.

"This film isn't really about whether the war is right or wrong. I don't want to be that kind of actor. If I was that kind of person I'd be a politician."

Certainly, the actor has taken her share of roles in typical Hollywood fare – such as action adventure Aeon Flux – but she is better known for movies of the ilk of Elah, which is loosely based on a true story.

In Monster, Theron portrayed real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who is driven to kill after a life of physical and mental abuse. Audiences were left to ponder what drove her to kill and who, exactly, was at fault: Wuornos or our culture.

"When you read something and it's really good, then on top of that somebody says, 'By the way, this really happened' it's extreme and riveting," Theron said.

Drama has followed Theron in her real life, too. When she was 15, at home in South Africa, she watched as Gerda, her mother, shot dead her drunken, abusive father Charles in self-defence. (Her mother was never charged, the police ruling that she had acted in defence of herself and her daughter.)

"I believed, up to that point, that I would live in the same house until the day I died," she says.

"I was going to get a job, get married and raise a family. I spoke Afrikaans at home. The only English I learnt was from a ballet teacher."

That moment of violence shaped her young life.

Theron was born in Benoni, near Johannesburg, in 1975.

She won a modelling competition at age 16 – she was once on the cover of Playboy – then moved to New York to train as a dancer before taking up acting.

In New York she tried to improve her English by watching films and trying to mimic the American accents.

She used a one-way ticket to Los Angeles to get started. An agent discovered her by chance and after just a few months she landed her first role.

In the business now for 10 years, she identifies a couple of key differences, with a laugh: "I've got wrinkles and my boobs have started to sag. But you get wisdom too, so it's not all bad. I'm 32 and loving it – I wouldn't want to go back to my 20s."

While Theron now has dual citizenship, she has not abandoned her home country. In fact, she is active in trying to get mobile clinics to provide health care in South Africa's rural areas.

Now the actor is gearing up for the release this year of her new film Battle in Seattle, written and directed by her boyfriend of seven years, Irish actor Stuart Townsend. The couple live together in the Hollywood hills.

"I am just so impressed by his movie," she says.

"Everybody will say I am biased because I sleep with the guy. But if he wasn't my boyfriend I would be saying the same thing, it is an incredibly powerful film.

"But I've always known Stuart is an incredibly talented person."

Theron is also keen to take some time out to start a family.

She says: "I don't know when it's going to happen. There's not any kind of planning. I just know in my bones that I would want to be a mum one day."

In the Valley of Elah opens in cinemas on February 28.

 

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