Charlize Theron’s embarrassing introduction to Hollywood: “I was dubbed”
Ass-kicking action heroes, jilted superhero ex-girlfriends, a mother in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a queen brandishing a poisoned apple, Charlize Theron has played them all and many more.
For over two decades, the striking star has been a fixture at the very top of the movie business, with easy access to award nominations, box office glory, and international fame, but the trek to the summit has been fraught.
Theron was born in South Africa to Afrikaans-speaking parents, which isn’t exactly the traditional template for a Hollywood conqueror. Her family life was far from perfect, with her mother having to violently shoot down her father after he cornered them in a drunken rage. Theron was just 15 years old at the time, but her mother was spared prison after the act was ruled as self-defence, leaving the family shaken.
After finding success as a model across Europe, Theron decided to go where the action was. Her mother got her a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, and she landed in the famed land, nursing an indistinct determination to cut her teeth in film. The lights of Tinseltown were bright, but the aspiring performer was all too aware of the dangers behind the glitzy curtains.
“I did have a dream, but I knew I had to survive as well,” she told O, The Oprah Magazine in 2005. “I began waitressing so I could pay rent. I also found a modelling agency. I was very marketable in Germany, where there are these big catalog jobs that pay three grand a day. They were crappy jobs that no model wanted to do because the clothes and photographs were so ugly. But I didn’t care. I told the agency, ‘Look, I’m not trying to be a supermodel, and I don’t want to be in magazines. I need three grand a day for the next six months.’”
Her hustle paid off when she was noticed by a talent agent while in the mundane attempt of cashing a cheque. This stroke of luck landed her a bit part in the straight-to-video horror movie, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest. “I was one of the 500 kids running through a field,” she explained, adding that she was actually one of the onscreen murders as a victim dragged to her end, “kicking and screaming”. Alas, it wasn’t quite the dream debut she’d hoped for. “They didn’t even use my voice,” she revealed, “I was dubbed”.
One of the many, many, many films based on Stephen King’s 1977 short story, Urban Harvest centres two young boys from a rural home who struggle to adapt to life in big-city Chicago. One of the reasons for their struggle is that Eli, played by Daniel Cerny, is a member of a murderous cult. Yep, that’ll do it. Theron played one of Eli’s followers. The movie also marked the big-screen debuts of Ivana Miličević, who would go on to appear in the Tom Cruise vehicle Vanilla Sky and poisoner of James Bond in Casino Royale, and Nicholas Brendon, best known to fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as everyman Xander Harris.
One year later, Theron made her first credited appearances in the black comedy 2 Days in the Valley and the Tom Hanks-directed That Thing You Do!. Eight years after her less-than-auspicious debut, she starred in Monster, the film that would bag her the golden-duck Oscar.
