She’s Living on Fast Track Reserved for the Beautiful

Interviewing a great beauty is like interrogating a perfect piece of fruit; shouldn’t we simply give thanks for nature’s bounty? Why poke and prod? We do so because we’re curious about these rarefied creatures. Are their lives actually easier than ours, as we tend to assume? Not necessarily.

Great beauties have no choice but to grow up fast, for instance. The world rushes at them with invitations and desires, industries spring up around them, doors open and rose petals are strewn in their paths, with little thought given to the tenderness of their years.

Such is the case with actress Charlize Theron. Co-starring with Jeff Daniels and Michael Richards in the Jonathan Lynn comedy “Trial and Error,” which opens Friday, Theron was on her own and working as a model in Milan by the time she was 16. By 18, she’d lived and worked in Hamburg, New York and Miami, and at 19 she was cast as a hard-boiled femme fatale in John Herzfeld’s film “2 Days in the Valley.” Mind you, this was all happening to a girl who couldn’t legally buy a beer.

Theron finally turned 21 last year, and since then she’s co-starred, with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves, in Taylor Hackford’s thriller “Devil’s Advocate,” which wrapped last winter and will be released later this year, and is shooting director Ron Underwood’s remake of the 1949 film “Mighty Joe Young.” Obviously, Theron’s more than just a pretty face; there is, however, no dismissing that face.

I first encounter Theron on a gray Saturday morning at the recently renovated Mondrian Hotel, where she’s having her picture taken. I find her at the center of a busy beehive of photographers, photo assistants, experts in hair, clothing, makeup, phone answering and order giving, all of whom rush about excitedly. The object of all this attention sits and smokes a cigarette, patiently allowing herself to be fussed over. She’s obviously too busy to chat, so I adjourn and we meet the next day for a late breakfast at an L.A. restaurant.

After ordering poached eggs, Theron proceeds to tell the story of her life; it’s inarguably been a fortuitous one, but it hasn’t been strictly a bowl of cherries. She is an only child born in 1975 in the small South African farming community of Benoni; her parents were third-generation South Africans who met at school and married young.

“My father studied engineering in London, then returned to South Africa and started a road construction business, which floundered for a while. When I was born, my parents had no money and lived in a trailer park,” Theron recalls.

“After a few years, things started going well, though, and we moved to a huge farm, where I grew up surrounded by animals. There was very little culture in Benoni, and I was always dying to get to the big city,” she continues, neatly nibbling at a piece of toast. “When I was 9, we got a VCR, and I watched each of the 20 videos stocked in the local store repeatedly. My favorite was ‘Splash,’ and I had a huge crush on Tom Hanks.

“I also took ballet classes from an early age, and when I was 12, I went to boarding school in Johannesburg and started dancing in productions there. I loved dance but knew my time in ballet would be brief because I’m too tall to be a dancer; all that weight puts too much strain on the knees.”

Theron’s life took a dramatic turn in 1990, when her father was killed in an accident; a short time later she moved to Milan to work as a model.

“Going to Milan was partly my way of trying to escape the loss of my father, who I doubt would’ve let me leave home at such a young age,” says the actress, who obviously would prefer to discuss something else.

“It was a depressing time because I didn’t like modeling. I hated dragging my body around and presenting it to be judged.”

After a year in Milan, Theron got a booking in New York and decided to stay in America. Modeling to pay for classes with the Joffrey Ballet, she gave up dance eight months later because of a knee injury and left New York.

“I’d never liked it there,” she says. “Maybe it’s because I grew up on a farm, but I feel claustrophobic when I’m surrounded by tall buildings.

“I’d heard it was easy to get work in Miami, so I headed there,” she adds. “That was the worst time in my life, because the only way I’d been able to handle modeling was if I had ballet to keep me sane, and I’d had to quit dancing. There I was living alone in Miami doing these stupid jobs, so I bought a one-way ticket to Hollywood.”

Arriving two weeks after the 1994 earthquake, Theron was 18, had $400 to her name and didn’t know a soul in L.A.

“Driving in from the airport, I asked the cab driver if he knew a cheap place to stay, and he took me to the Farmer’s Daughter Motel,” she recalls.

“I immediately got an agent and started doing modeling jobs, then one day I was in line at the post office and I met a manager who turned out to be legitimate and began sending me on auditions.”

Living in a tiny loft on Wilshire Boulevard she shared with another aspiring actress, Theron first tackled the job of losing her accent. “My native language is Afrikaans, and I knew I had to lose my accent or I wouldn’t get any work. I couldn’t afford a coach, so I lost it by watching lots of television.”

Her accent dispensed with, Theron landed her first part when she was cast as an undercover detective in “Hollywood Confidential,” a TV movie starring Edward James Olmos that never aired. It was while she was shooting that pilot that she got the script for “2 Days in the Valley,” which she immediately loved.

Writer-director Herzfeld felt the same about Theron when she read for the part of Helga, the blond bombshell. “Charlize had a soulful edge that offset her beauty,” he recalls. “She hid the fact that she was 19 from me because she thought I wouldn’t cast her if I knew how young she was, but I probably would’ve given her the part anyway because she’s pretty irresistible. She’s sensitive, game for anything and is incredibly eager to learn.”

Theron’s work in “2 Days” led to several job offers, among them an opportunity to work with Tom Hanks in his directorial debut, “That Thing You Do!” (Theron played Tina, a shallow, small-town beauty.) While Hanks’ film was hitting theaters last summer, Theron was in Lone Pine, Calif., working on her third feature, “Trial and Error,” for Jonathan Lynn.

“I was knocked out when she came in to read,” says Lynn, who cast Theron as a savvy small-town waitress. “Obviously, she’s jaw-droppingly beautiful, but she’s also intelligent and is a real movie star in that she has a vulnerability that makes audiences care about her. If she makes the right choices and has a bit of luck, I think she’ll do very well, because she’s highly motivated and takes acting quite seriously.”

For proof of that, look no further than the fact that Theron obliterated her most recognizable feature--her shimmering platinum hair--by dying it brunet for “Devil’s Advocate,” which is slated for release this fall.

“When I was auditioning, one of the big questions was whether I was too pretty to play this character, and it took lots of screen testing with no makeup to prove I could play the girl who’s not too pretty. I play the wife of a lawyer played by Keanu; she’s a supportive wife who’s dying to have kids, so it was easy for me to get into this character, because I can’t imagine going through life without having children,” says Theron, who’s been romantically paired with actor Craig Bierko for the last year. “I’m the luckiest girl in the world, because Craig is incredibly supportive and makes me feel really safe and protected.”

So solid is their relationship, Bierko had no trouble with the fact that Theron has a love scene with Reeves. “It’s an interesting love scene, and Keanu is a fabulous person,” Theron says. “I’ve never met anyone so polite and have no idea why he has the weird reputation he’s been saddled with. It’s completely sad and unfair.”

She is equally glowing in her assessment of Pacino. “That someone with his talent could also be so much fun made the shoot absolute heaven,” she says.

Having zoomed through the story of her life, we pay the check and go shopping. Theron mentions in passing that between now and the next morning when she flies to New York, she and her two cocker spaniels are moving from her tiny apartment in the Larchmont area to a bigger place in Hollywood. Because she’s in the midst of moving, she’s driving her boyfriend’s Range Rover today, and as she lights the first of several cigarettes, she asks, “Do you think my boyfriend will be able to tell I was smoking in his car?” Apparently nobody’s told Theron about the stealth of cigarette smoke.

En route to a dance supply store to buy ballet slippers for a 2-year-old friend, we stop first to pick up her friend Mary, who will accompany us. Like Theron, Mary is a lithe, lanky beauty, and as she bounds out of the house, I ask the actress if she knows any ugly people. She giggles.

The dance supply store is closed, so we head to Fred Segal so Theron can buy a shirt for a friend. A polyester grunge shirt is selected, and Theron and Mary wander off to the women’s department. Minutes pass, then stretch into half an hour. I cruise the store several times looking for Theron and ask various salesclerks if they’ve seen her. After nearly an hour has elapsed, I track her to a dressing room, where I find her surrounded by heaps of clothes, with a dazed look on her face. Apologizing profusely, she stammers, “I don’t know what came over me!”

I have an idea about that, however: It must be a blast to try on clothes when you’re Charlize Theron.