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Charlize Theron (born August 7, 1975) is a South African actress and former fashion model. She is best-known for her portrayal as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the film Monster which won her an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Theron was born in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa, the daughter and only child of Charles Theron and Gerda, who is of German descent and took over her husband's business after his death. Theron's first language is Afrikaans. She is also fluent in English and speaks some Xhosa. "Theron" is a Occitan surname (originally spelled Théron) pronounced in Afrikaans as "Tronn", although she has said that she prefers the pronunciation "Thrown". The pronunciation commonly used in the United States involves two syllables, with stress on the first. Theron grew up on her parents' farm near Johannesburg (Benoni). She attended Putfontein Primary School (Laerskool Putfontein). At the age of thirteen, Theron was sent to boarding school and began her studies at the National School Of The Arts in Johannesburg. At fifteen, Theron witnessed the death of her father, an abusive alcoholic; Gerda shot him in self-defense when he attacked her. The police laid no charges against her.

At the age of sixteen, Theron traveled to Milan, Italy, on a one-year modeling contract, after winning a local competition. She went to New York with Pauline's Model Management. She decided to remain in NY after her contract ended, attending the Joffrey Ballet School, where she trained as a ballet dancer. A knee injury closed this career path when Theron was nineteen.

Unable to dance, Theron flew to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket her mother bought her. During her early months there, she went to a bank to cash a check her mother had sent her to help with the rent. When the teller refused to cash it, Theron immediately started into a shouting match with her. Afterwards, a talent agent in line behind her handed her his business card and subsequently introduced her to some casting agents and also an acting school. She later fired him as her manager after he kept sending her scripts for films similar to Showgirls and Species, which would have traded solely on her appearance.

After eight months in the city, she was cast in her first film part, a non-speaking role in the direct-to-video film Children of the Corn III (1995). Larger roles in widely released Hollywood films followed, and her career skyrocketed in the late 1990s with box office successes like The Devil's Advocate (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and The Cider House Rules (1999).

After appearing in a few notable films, Theron starred as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003). Film critic Roger Ebert called it "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema". For this role, Theron won the Best Actress Oscar at the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, as well as the SAG Award and the Golden Globe Award. She is the first South African to win an Oscar for Best Actress. The Oscar win pushed her to The Hollywood Reporter's 2006 list of highest-paid actresses in Hollywood; earning $10,000,000 for both her subsequent films, North Country and Æon Flux, she ranked seventh, behind Halle Berry, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Renée Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, and Nicole Kidman.

Text from Wikipedia