Interview: Charlize Theron
Woody Allen said it: ‘She’s so hot that if she was in this room, your buttons would melt.’ Body of a dancer, crystal complexion, hypnotic green eyes, a shock of blonde, all offset by low-key style (jeans, T-shirt, heels)… and her cocker spaniel, Denver. ‘That guy there,’ she says pointing to the dog, ‘that guy makes all the decisions. Look at him. He’s working very hard. He’s thinking about what’s next for me.’
The dog is the giveaway. Charlize is quirky. More than that – she’s not obvious A-list.
You can go as far as to say Theron is the Johnny Depp of the Hollywood beauty palette. She consistently refuses to capitalise on her looks. An Oscar winner (Monster) and Oscar nominee (North Country), she subverts her beauty in nearly every movie she makes. Her most recent roll was in anti-superhero movie Hancock. She played a teacher, married to Jason Bateman, with the perfect suburban life until tortured superhero Will Smith drops in and blows their life apart.
She chose the role for its subversion of an archetypal American tradition. ‘It’s always brave to take a quintessential genre and turn that on its head,’ she says. ‘What if superheroes were alcoholics, tired of saving people, actually lonely, wanting love. I thought that was interesting.’
Why she doesn’t want a traditional career is obvious when you meet here. She’s off-the-wall, she’s funny, she’s strong and if you haven’t heard her story, it helps to explain why.
Brought up in South Africa, on a farm, her parents ran a construction company. Living in a state of unrest they were political, ‘in our house the news was always on, the newspaper was always on the dining room table and my parents had a real thirst for politics’. When she was 15, her estranged father Charles, broke into the house drunk, with a gun, fired it and was shot dead by her mother, Gerda, in self-defence. This isn’t something she talks about, other than to say: ‘I don’t think you can go through something like that and not kind of walk with it, hand in hand.’
Her burgeoning career was only quintessentially pin-up for the first film, Two Days in the Valley. By The Devil’s Advocate, she snaffled the role because, she says, ‘I stopped wearing make-up and brushing my hair, cut down on my sleep and turned up with dark circles under my eyes. Eventually, I convinced them I was physically right.’ She has since gone mainly for meat and anti-glamour. Treading the terrain of the character actress. And every time she’s opted for this route, she’s garnered accolades.
Mention this and Charlize gets antsy with the argument. She’s into real: ‘you can’t fit into a lot of worlds wearing John Galliano or Dior dresses.’ And being herself, saying of her ‘dowdy’ in Valley of Elah ‘that’s my natural hair colour. That’s me with very little make-up. That’s what I look like, so if you don’t consider my character beautiful, I’m sorry, but that’s really me.’
Read the full interview in our July 2008 issue.
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Interview: Audrey Tautou
Not since Garbo has a star more ferociously protected her privacy. For us press, you meet Audrey Tautou and you get ‘first of all I don’t answer questions about my private life. I do my work for the film and after that I try not even to exist for the press.’
So who is Tautou – this 5ft 3in, 31-year-old Bambi, who bears a striking resemblance to Hepburn? The consolation is that it’s not simply the press she hides from – all her directors have found her incredibly committed and professional but completely enigmatic. Jean-Pierre Jeunet who ‘discovered’ her in Amelie said, ‘we are not close in real life. Everything I know about her I learned reading interviews.’ And Ron Howard, who directed her in The Da Vinci Code, agrees: ‘Audrey is a very private person.’
Five minutes in her company, however, and, though she gives away nothing, you do sense more. Jean Reno, her Da Vinci co-star and fellow Gaul got it right when he said ‘she reminds me of Edith Piaf; such a little body and yet she radiates so much energy.’ And Gaspard Ulliel who played her lover Manech in A Very Long Engagement said, ‘when you see Audrey, you just want to take her in your arms. She seems so fragile, yet she’s really a very strong person.’
And reading between the lines you do see an intelligent, shy young woman who had the tenacity to refuse to do publicity to campaign for an Oscar nomination for Amelie (for which she was a serious contender) and who evaporates between every film. Here and now she’d rather be mist – but quick, before she disappears into thin air, we worked out 20 things you didn’t know about Audrey Tautou…
Read the full interview in our June 2008 issue.
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Interview: Saffron Burrows
Let’s get something out of the way – Saffron Burrows is spectacularly beautiful.
A willowy 6ft, with the most arresting hazel eyes, Burrows has become famous for her sensuous good looks and those cheekbones upon which you could sharpen a knife.
Now 35, and arguably at the peak of her career, she complains that on reflection her looks have been something of an occupational hazard. Not only has she had trouble convincing the film and theatre world of her talent and ambition, there are practicalities to consider too.
‘Well, my height is never not an issue,’ she explains. ‘They’ll phone me and say “What exactly is your height again?” and then sigh. I’m running out of leading men!’
Vanity does not sit comfortably with her moral values either. Burrows has always been a champion of various causes and an active campaigner for disabled rights and equality. ‘What I find most objectionable is this obsession with the ideal body,’ she explains. ‘I find it nauseating. And it irritates me, since I know a lot of disabled people, and parents of disabled children.’
Saffron is keen to prove that she is so much more than just a pretty face. Intelligent and highly cultured, she litters her conversation with literary, philosophical and political references, with the confidence that comes from mixing with eminent politicians and erudite directors.
She explains that her highbrow interests were a result of entering the modelling world at such a young age. She was only 15 when she was scouted and sent to Paris to work with the likes of Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Karl Lagerfeld. ‘I was thrust into that world, probably too young,’ she says. ‘And so I carried around books as if they were friends to protect me.’
Those early modelling years were not always easy for the actress – ‘I got out before I fell flat on my face…’
Read the full interview in our May 2008 issue.
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