Charlize Theron (/ʃɑːrˈliːz ˈθɛrən/ shar-LEEZ THERR-ən;[1] Afrikaans: [ʃarˈlis ˈtrɔn];[2] born 7 August 1975) is a South African[3] and American actress and producer.

Theron came to international prominence in the 1990s by playing the leading lady in the Hollywood films The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999).

She received critical acclaim for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003), for which she won the Silver Bear and Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first South African to win an acting Oscar.

[17] She was frequently unwell with jaundice throughout childhood and the antibiotics she was administered made her upper incisor milk teeth rot; they had to be surgically removed.

[6] Theron argued and pleaded with the bank teller until talent agent John Crosby,[25] who was the next customer behind her, cashed it for her and gave her his business card.

[6][29][30] Theron feared being typecast as characters similar to Helga and recalled being asked to repeat her performance in the film during auditions:[6] "A lot of people were saying, 'You should just hit while the iron's hot' [...] But playing the same part over and over doesn't leave you with any longevity.

In the horror drama The Devil's Advocate (1997), which is credited as her break-out film,[31] Theron starred alongside Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino as the haunted wife of an unusually successful lawyer.

She subsequently starred in the adventure film Mighty Joe Young (1998) as the friend and protector of a giant mountain gorilla, and in the drama The Cider House Rules (1999), as a woman who seeks an abortion in World War II-era Maine.

[10] While Mighty Joe Young flopped at the box office,[32] The Devil's Advocate and The Cider House Rules were commercially successful.

[36][37] By the early 2000s, Theron continued to steadily take on roles in films such as Reindeer Games (2000), The Yards (2000), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Men of Honor (2000), Sweet November (2001), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), and Trapped (2002), all of which, despite achieving only limited commercial success, helped to establish her as an actress.

[46] In 2005, she portrayed Rita, the mentally challenged love interest of Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), on the third season of Fox's television series Arrested Development,[47] and starred in the financially unsuccessful science fiction thriller Æon Flux; for her voice-over work in the Aeon Flux video game, she received a Spike Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Human Female.

[48][49] In the critically acclaimed drama North Country (2005), Theron played a single mother and an iron mine worker experiencing sexual harassment.

"[50] Roger Ebert echoed the same sentiment, calling her "an actress who has the beauty of a fashion model but has found resources within herself for these powerful roles about unglamorous women in the world of men.

The Christian Science Monitor praised the latter film, commenting that "Despite its deficiencies, and the inadequate screen time allotted to Theron (who's quite good), Sleepwalking has a core of feeling".

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle found Snow White and the Huntsman to be "[a] slow, boring film that has no charm and is highlighted only by a handful of special effects and Charlize Theron's truly evil queen",[64] while The Hollywood Reporter writer Todd McCarthy, describing her role in Prometheus, asserted: "Theron is in ice goddess mode here, with the emphasis on ice [...] but perfect for the role all the same".

[69][70] In 2014, Theron took on the role of the wife of an infamous outlaw in the western comedy film A Million Ways to Die in the West, directed by Seth MacFarlane, which was met with mediocre reviews and moderate box office returns.

[71][72] In 2015, Theron played the sole survivor of the massacre of her family in the film adaptation of the Gillian Flynn novel Dark Places, directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, in which she had a producer credit,[73] and starred as Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), opposite Tom Hardy.

[81] In 2017, Theron starred in The Fate of the Furious as the cyberterrorist Cipher, the main antagonist of the entire franchise, and played a spy on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in Atomic Blonde, an adaptation of the graphic novel The Coldest City, directed by David Leitch.

[83] and Atomic Blonde was described by Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times as "a slick vehicle for the magnetic, badass charms of Charlize Theron, who is now officially an A-list action star on the strength of this film and Mad Max: Fury Road".

[84] In the black comedy Tully (2018), directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, Theron played an overwhelmed mother of three.

The film was acclaimed by critics, who concluded it "delves into the modern parenthood experience with an admirably deft blend of humor and raw honesty, brought to life by an outstanding performance by Charlize Theron".

[86] In 2019, Theron produced and starred in the romantic comedy film Long Shot, opposite Seth Rogen and directed by Jonathan Levine, portraying a U.S. Secretary of State who reconnects with a journalist she used to babysit.

Directed by Jay Roach, the film revolves around the sexual harassment allegations made against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes by former female employees.

The shoe was made from vegan materials and inspired by the African baobab tree, the silhouette of which was embroidered on blue and orange canvas.

[115] In 2015, Theron signed an open letter which One Campaign had been collecting signatures for; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the AU in South Africa respectively, which will start to set the priorities in development funding before a main UN summit in September 2015 that will establish new development goals for the generation.

[119] 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.

[132][6] Hollywood actors were not featured in magazines in South Africa so she did not know how famous he was until she moved to the United States,[6] which has been inferred as a factor of her "down-to-earth" attitude to fame.

I will find space where I am alone, where I can be focused, where there's nobody in my house, and I can really just sit down and study and play and look at my face and hear my voice and walk around and be a fucking idiot and my dogs are the only ones who are seeing that".

[137] Theron is a longtime fan of the English band Depeche Mode and was the presenter for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2020.