HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARLIZE THERON - "How can we go through our lives not wanting to have any element of surprise?" - Charlize

Charlize Theron  was born 7 August 1975) is a South African and American actress and fashion model. She rose to fame in the late 1990s following roles in the films The Devil's Advocate(1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). Theron received critical acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the Silver Bear and the Academy Award for Best Actress, among several other accolades, becoming the first South African to win an Academy Award in a major acting category. In recent years she has also moved into the field of producing, both in television and film.

She received further Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for her performance in North Country in 2005, and a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in Young Adult in 2011. In 2012 she appeared in Snow White & the Huntsman and Prometheus, both of which were box office successes. Theron became a US citizen in 2007, while retaining her South African citizenship.

Early lifeTheron was born in Benoni, in the then-Transvaal Province of South Africa, the only child of Gerda (née Maritz; who has also called herself Gerta) 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; her French forebears were early Huguenot settlers in South Africa.

"Theron" is anOccitan surname (originally spelled Théron) pronounced in Afrikaans as [tron], although she has said that the way she pronounces it in South Africa is [θron]. She changed the pronunciation when she moved to the U.S. to give it a more "American" sound.

Career
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."

She grew up on her parents' farm in Benoni, near Johannesburg. Her father was lawfully killed by her mother with a firearm on 21 June 1991. Theron's father, an alcoholic, physically attacked her mother and threatened both her mother and her while drunk. The shooting was legally adjudged to have been self-defense and her mother faced no charges.

Theron attended Putfontein Primary School (Laerskool Putfontein), a period she later characterised as not "fitting in". At 13, Theron was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg. Although Theron is fluent in English, her first language is Afrikaans

At 19,  Theron flew to Los Angeles, California, on a one-way ticket her mother bought her, intending now to work in the movie industry. During her early months there, she went to a Hollywood Boulevard bank to cash a check her mother had sent her to help with the rent.  When the teller refused to cash it, Theron engaged in a shouting match with him.  Upon seeing this, talent agent John Crosby,  in line behind her, handed her his business card and subsequently introduced her to casting agents and also an acting school.  She later fired him as her manager after he kept sending her scripts for films similar to Showgirls and Species. 

 After several months in the city, she was cast in her first film part, a non-speaking role in the direct-to-video film Children of the Corn III (1995). Her first speaking role was a supporting but significant and attention-garnering part as a hitwoman in 2 Days in the Valley (1996). 

Larger roles in widely released Hollywood films followed, and her career expanded in the late 1990s with box-office successes like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999). She was on the cover of the January 1999 issue of Vanity Fair as the "White Hot Venus". She also appeared on the cover of the May 1999 issue of Playboy magazine.

However, the nude photos inside the issue had been taken several years earlier before she became famous and Theron unsuccessfully sued the magazine for publishing the photos without her consent. 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."

Personal life

Theron has a son, Jackson, whose adoption was announced in March 2012. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Theron became a naturalised citizen of the United States in May 2007, while retaining her South African citizenship.

In the mid-1990s, Theron had a two-year relationship with actor Craig Bierko. From 1997 to 2001, she dated Third Eye Blindfrontman Stephan Jenkins. Theron then began a relationship with Irish actor Stuart Townsend, with whom she starred in Trapped(2002) and Head in the Clouds (2004). Theron and Townsend separated in January 2010 after nearly nine years together.

Health concerns

While filming Æon Flux in Berlin, Germany, Theron suffered a herniated disc in her neck, caused by a fall while filming a series of backhandsprings. This required her to wear a neck brace for a month. In July 2009, Theron was diagnosed with a serious stomach virus, thought to be contracted while travelling outside the United States. When filming The Road, Theron injured her vocal cords during the labour screaming scenes.

Promotional deals

Having signed a deal with John Galliano in 2004, Theron replaced Estonian model Tiiu Kuik as the spokeswoman in the "J'adore" advertisements by Christian Dior.

From October 2005 to December 2006, Theron earned US$3 million for the use of her image in a worldwide print media advertising campaign for Raymond Weil watches. In February 2006, she and her loan-out corporation were sued by Weil for breach of contract. The lawsuit was settled on 4 November 2008.