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That fearlessness has served her well. When director John Herzfeld was auditioning actresses for 2 Days, he asked them to sit and read a scene in which Helga was shot. But Theron unexpectedly fell to the floor and crawled across the room as she read her lines; when she died, a star was born. In Bagger Vance, as a steel magnolia rekindling sparks with the lover who once abandoned her (Damon), she bites bravely into the hammiest of lines--"Now I'm supposed to run inta ya ahms and melt like buttah on a hot muffin?"--and chews so deftly that she avoids choking.
Like any other Thoroughbred, she can bite off-camera as well. "She needs you to focus on what she's doing, and if you neglect her, she gets really upset," says James Gray, the director of The Yards. He and the star quarreled often while making the movie, having one blowout over the way Theron was holding a glass of beer. "I thought, 'What the f___?'" recalls Theron. "'What about my acting?'"
"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.