Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron grew up on a farm outside Benoni, South Africa, as the only child. She got an education as a ballet dancer and has danced both the "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker". There wasn't much for a young actress or dancer to do in South Africa, so she soon traveled to Europe and United States of America, where she got job at the Joffrey Ballet in New York. She was also able to work as a photo model. However, an injured knee put a halt to her dancing career.

At the age of 18, her mother made her go to Los Angeles to try a career in the movie industry. She came to Los Angeles without knowing anyone in the city but after two weeks when she was standing in line on Hollywood Boulevard an agent gave her his card. After eight months in Los Angeles she got her first part. Since then, she took acting lessons and her career skyrocketed in The Devil's Advocate (1997).

Early life

Theron was born in Benoni, in the then-Transvaal Province of South Africa, the only child of Gerda (ne Maritz) and Charles Theron (born 27 November 1947). Second Boer War figure Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle. Her ancestry includes French, German, and Dutch persons; her French forebears were early Huguenot settlers in South Africa. "Theron" is an Occitan surname (originally spelled Thron) pronounced in Afrikaans as [tɜːron], although she has said that the way she pronounces it in South Africa is. She changed the pronunciation when she moved to the U.S. to give it a more "American" sound.

Career
Early work

Although seeing herself as a dancer, Theron at 16 won a one-year modeling contract at a local competition in Salerno and with her mother moved to Milan, Italy. After Theron spent a year modeling throughout Europe, she and her mother moved to New York City and Miami, Florida. In New York, she attended the Joffrey Ballet School, where she trained as a ballet dancer until a knee injury closed this career path. As Theron recalled in 2008,

I went to New York for three days to model, and then I spent a winter in New York in a friend's windowless basement apartment. I was broke, I was taking class at the Joffrey Ballet, and my knees gave out. I realized I couldn't dance anymore, and I went into a major depression. My mom came over from South Africa and said, "Either you figure out what to do next or you come home, because you can sulk in South Africa."

Success and hiatus

She starred in four films in 2000 – Reindeer Games, The Yards, The Legend of Bagger Vance and Men of Honor – and was briefly considered a new It girl. Theron has said of this period in her career that, "I kept finding myself in a place where directors would back me but studios didn't. [I began] a love affair with directors, the ones I really, truly admired. I found myself making really bad movies, too. Reindeer Games was not a good movie, but I did it because I loved John Frankenheimer.