Glamour Guts And Glory

20TH CENTURY FOX
MEN OF HONOR: Getting Gooding's attention

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MIRAMAX

THE YARDS: Putting the moves on Phoenix

"She's an astonishing actress," says Gray, now that they're friends again. "I got the sense that she has an interesting and troubled past. It's the only thing that could explain the depth of emotion." He may be referring obliquely to Theron's adolescence, when her father was shot and killed by her mother in self-defense. Though her mother wasn't charged with a crime, Theron previously told reporters that her father died in a car accident. These days Theron, who lives near her mother, who has also immigrated to Los Angeles, prefers not to talk about the tragedy. ("We've moved on," she says.) Asked what lasting effect it had on her, she replies, "You realize life is very short. You can't mess around."

That sense of the clock ticking is what compels Theron to work so much and push so hard. While her innate star quality has propelled her to the front ranks of the up-and-coming ingenues, she still must keep an eye on Cameron Diaz, Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow. "You have to be willing to go to the director and go, 'Look!'" says Theron. "You sometimes have to convince them." While she doesn't plan to lighten her work load, she is becoming more reticent with the press. Asked if she's engaged to her longtime boyfriend, singer Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, she responds, "This is the part where I would shoot my mouth off. He's great. There ya go."

But just as you start to worry that Theron is clamming up--which would have huge implications for the publishing industry--she lets loose with a vintage Charlize Theron statement: "I'm gonna live till I'm 80, and when I'm wrinkled and dying, I can say, 'I f______ tried everything.'" We look forward to parachutes and pink mules.