Charlize Theron Quotes

1. Nelson Mandela said to me that he thinks he's not getting into Heaven, I said: "if you don't get in, I am screwed".


2. I really don't understand why anyone would think that you have to be physically perfect to be in movies, because it's so not true. When you look at the amount of MTAs that are successful, it's a minute proportion. You might get in the door for a couple of years playing the beautiful girl, but then Hollywood is going to be done with you.

3. There are so many unwanted children on this earth and its our job to take care of them. And if we don't, we're doing the world a disservice.




4. And I was victim to that very early in my career, where I would go into auditions, and I'd be wearing a big T shirt, a big baggy T shirt and loose jeans. You know, to try and show people that there was more to me than just that.

5. I love cutting flowers and working in the garden. I like doing dishes. I can become obsessive about mundane things like cleaning out my closet, which is so lame.




6. Everyone says: "oh, she has such perfect skin and her hands are so beautiful", as if I'm this kind of untouchable creature. But I have never thought of myself as this exquisite thing. I think of myself as a very approachable woman. But people used to think that when I said that I grew up on a farm it was this schtick, just me trying to say: "look, I'm really a normal girl".

7. I've always been very aware of balance and, even before I had a child, my life always takes priority to my work.




8. South Africa is my home and will always be in my roots.

9. I can only hope to be 10 percent of the mom mine was to me. She encouraged me to be confident and enjoy life. That's what I want for my son.

10. I can't see myself with anybody who takes things too seriously or can't have a decent laugh about himself.


11. I've always known I wanted a family.

12. Women have conquered the world. And with everything we go through, it's about time we had a female president. I don't think we're that far away, but it should have happened already. I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary Rodham Clinton runs - I really admire her.

13. Some days I look in the mirror and feel hot. others, I say: "I've got back fat and need bigger jeans".

14. I don't feel it's my job anymore to be nice. In the beginning, if a stranger said: "your movie was great", I thought we had to be friends.

15. I don't really like wearing bras. There's not a lot to put in them.




16. I always knew I would adopt. Always.

17. Well, I am like this far away from jumping on the couch like Tom Cruise, but I am not gonna do that!

18. I've never wanted to be a celebrity. I didn't know what a celebrity was until I came to America.





19. We are not planning a wedding. Still, every time we get the Irish papers there is something in them about the wedding Stuart and I are supposedly having. It's like the perfect wedding with the flowers and music and Keanu Reeves walking me down the aisle. I read about it and think "wow, these Irish sure know how to do it - even when they're making it up".

20. You can live vicariously through the characters you play.


   
21. If I don't like seeing myself on the screen, I think when I start seeing that, that's when I think I'll stop.

22. If they ever do my life story, whoever plays me needs lots of hair color and high heels.

23. If I knew that 3D was going to be such a big deal, I would have gotten that boob job 10 years ago.






24. I suppose there is this little bit of a wild child in me just from growing up on a farm and having parents who were mechanics...I do like to think I've evolved since then.

25. I had a sex scene with Keanu Reeves in "Devil's Advocate", but I turned into a different girl in the middle of it. The other had better breasts than I did. I was very upset about that.

26. I feel really lucky to have the body I have; I love it!

27. I am a relationship girl. That's kind of just how I'm made…When you're in my life, it's actually very contained.




28. I'm not for the death penalty and working on this film didn't really change anything for me. If anything it made me more aware of how ineffective it is.

29. I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what I had under my clothes was bad or evil.






30. At first I found it really hard using three different English accents: South African, faking the American, faking the accent required by the job. I decided to make it easier for myself and just do one...I haven't lost my culture, just my accent.

31. During my 20s at auditions, I felt I had to prove that I wasn't just pretty, that I had acting chops. Now I don't do that anymore. I know who I am.




32. (on the revelation that Charlize's mother shot and killed Charlize's father while he was in a drunken rage. The shooting was ruled self-defense) I was always Mama's girl, and I always felt like her protector.

33. So far I'm not surprised by anything about being a mom. It's all pretty great - but that's what I expected.

34. I've always been very proud to be a South African and I've always been very honest to people about that. And whatever I can do in my power I promise you I will do.

35. You know, I don't think any mother aims to be a single mom. I didn't wish for that, but it happened.

36. I'm 50-50 on glamour stuff. I'd rather put on a pair of jeans and get on my Harley and act like a guy.

37. You need to surround yourself with people you really do trust and people who really love you who are willing to show you your flaws.

38. So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.







39. From the moment this baby came into our home, those two dogs have never been more in love. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed. People keep saying: "Oh, you're a single mom." I'm like: "Actually, I'm not. I've got two boys helping."

40. (on the importance of the Toronto Film Festival for smaller films) If people, critics respond to the film there (Toronto Film Festival), it starts a nice little wave of chat, which for a movie like "North Country" (2005) is really important. It's one of those films that travels by word of mouth.

41. So I did that for a long time in my career, and I waited for parts to play myself just physically down a little bit. But I do feel like I'm at a place in my career now where I don't necessarily fret about that too much anymore.


42. I think today women are very scared to celebrate themselves, because then they just get labeled.

43. (on bad habits and guilty pleasures) Anything fried I'll take. Are you kidding me? I will fry my shoe and eat it.







44. They really stay just characters to me. I look at them, and I don't see always the same person up there. And hopefully, people will see that too. Because it's very easy to bore people, and that's a killer. So hopefully that won't happen.

45. I am human, and, yeah, I have very bad days.

46. Looks alone won't get you that far. It may get you in the door, but there's always somebody younger, somebody prettier. You have to rely on something else.

47. Marriage equality is about more than just marriage. It's about something greater. It's about acceptance.

48. You always have this fear in a movie of just being somebody's woman.

49. I feel 100% sure that I have the career that I have today because of independent filmmaking.

50. You are only as great as the opportunities that are given to you.








51. When I'm working I don't have room to think about myself and my own issues. It's really freeing. There is no room for me, which is really nice.

52. You can never get to a place of comfort in this business. As soon as you hit that little cushy spot, somebody's gonna kick you out. So I have a constant need to do it better.

53. I grew up on Bette Davis movies, and Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe.








54. What kind of stories can you tell with glamor? There are very few stories of conflict you can tell, right? I look for good stories; I'm not driven by anything other than good filmmakers and good stories. And then my job as an actor is to service those stories as well as I possibly can. The physical is the last thing that drives me.

55. My mom has made it possible for me to be who I am. Our family is everything. Her greatest skill was encouraging me to find my own person and own independence.


56. I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.

57. At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

58. I guess there are very few actors that I've worked with that I would like to work with again. You never think you'll have that chance and, if we didn't do "Italian Job" together, there wouldn't be another one that could be right.

59. And doing a film in that period, and having to really celebrate what they wore back then, how they sat and how they spoke. You know, what the etiquette was back then for a lady. All of those things are like putting on a wig and transforming yourself, which I love.

60. I hate actors who come and quote Nietzsche.

61. I live a very simple life. I don't have to make those giant movies. I don't have a yacht or a private plane. As long as I can maintain this life, which is pretty low-maintenance and simple, then all of a sudden you don't have to worry about all that stuff. I don't have to take a job to pay a mortgage on a house I can't afford.

62. Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally.






63. I had called her up a couple of weeks before then, because I had heard this vicious rumor that she did not like the movie. It was very upsetting for me. I am very sensitive to that, because I am portraying her life and did not want her to be unhappy.

64. Hey, I'm a girl, and we like to play dress-up.








65. I've always said that I worry about being with a man who doesn't flirt.

66. I had these fangs because I had jaundice when I was a kid and I was put on so many antibiotics that my teeth rotted. They had to cut them out. So I never had milk teeth. That was tough, you know, being in school having photos taken while I was pretending I had teeth. It was hideous.

67. (on a possible biopic of her life) God I hope not. I've been working harder than anything in my life to try and keep my life sacred. I really don't mind when I'm in front of a camera and playing a character I'm comfortable with…but I don't necessarily like the spotlight to be about me - not at all. The idea of sitting in Cannes and watching that… ugh. No.

68. There's nothing I despise more than people trying to be something that they're not.

69. I learned everything about love, watching "Splash." That's why I'm still single, so thanks Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah for that.




70. People are so involved with immediate care, but at the same time there needs to be investment in educating people as adolescents when they're still HIV negative.

71. I have OCD, which is not fun. I have to be incredibly tidy and organized or it messes with my mind and switches off on me.

72. Something I learned very early on in my career is that there are a lot of things that you do not have any power over.






73. I mean I tried to transform myself through characters throughout my career.

74. At least I know that one film-maker in my career has had the initiative to come to me and thought of me as being capable of doing interesting and complicated work, and so I have a new-found belief that other film-makers will see me in a different way, the way that Patty did.

75. I mean, I'm new but I've always been very interested in film making process and I've been lucky enough to work with film makers in my past that have been very encouraging to let me hang around. I get so emotionally vested - that the producer part of me was natural.

76. I do not think that condemning people who murder and killing them necessarily sends out the right message.

77. I like what I do, and I'm very fortunate now to be in a very nice place. Which is that I don't have to work anymore. So the work that I do now is purely because I really want to.






78. I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to.

79. I think in life we want to challenge ourselves.




80. I have a problem with cabinets being messy and people just shoving things in and closing the door. I will lie in bed and not be able to sleep because I'll say to myself: "I think I saw something in that cabinet that just shouldn't be there."

81. I think of myself as a highly sexual creature.

82. I have been working a lot, and I like it. And you know, it's hard for me not to. I guess I've been working a lot because I get to play with brilliant people.

83. I only worked on "Men of Honor" for three weeks, but I walked away with so much. Because Bob is the kind of actor who gives you the opportunity to really go there. And we really had to go there. I mean, we were both playing drunks.

84. Modeling was never a passion of mine.

85. I think substitution is a huge part of acting, but I don't personalize my work that much.

86. I have very talented people dress me and put my makeup on, stuff like that. But I do love that look, and I think it's maybe because I grew up on that old glamour.

87. I treat my relationships like marriages. The ceremony isn't that important to me.

88. There's only so much you can do, but if somebody doesn't give you a chance there is nothing you can do.


89. I was going to go to Macchu Picchu and then I just ended up working the whole year.

90. Yet there's a hunger in me still. I'm like only beginning. I feel like I still have so much to learn.

91. I'd love to get pajamas. Good, nice and warm flannel ones.

92. When they watch a movie and they know that you're in a relationship, you just kind of watch that constantly.







93. I'm always open to a relationship, but I'm not putting those feelers out there now.

94. And I do think that earlier in my career, I did make a very conscious decision to make sure that I was doing work that wasn't necessarily given to me, and that people didn't necessarily think that I would be able to do.

95. I'm happy for people who want to get married. It's not my thing.


What do you think of Charlize Theron's quotes?


Feel free to comment and share this blog post if you find it interesting!