Charlize Theron Quotes

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.

Right now the institution of marriage feels very one-sided, and I want to live in a country where we all have equal rights. I have so many friends who are gays and lesbians who would so badly want to get married, that I wouldn't be able to sleep with myself [if I got married before they could].

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

When I'm naked, I really like to do push-ups. No. I think I really tackle it like everything else. If you're going to commit yourself to playing something, you have to be able to understand it. If you can understand it, then you can do it and go balls out with it. But, I've never been in a position where I've been like, "This doesn't feel right." I wouldn't do it, if it was that. I like the shock value of it. I think that, if you use it correctly, it's pretty effective, as long as I'm lit really, really, really well.

I've tried most of my career to transform myself towards characters.

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

I think of myself as a highly sexual creature.

People need to understand that what happens in people's homes and behind closed doors, unless you were there, you really shouldn't make any analogy or any assumption, which writers do quite a bit. It's not something I ever for one second thought about. This is not my life story, and I've never told my life story, and I have no interest in telling my life story.

I'm very attracted to characters who don't necessarily make it easy to be loved.

Too many people have died so unnecessarily; AIDS is completely preventable, yet it's killing more kids in South Africa then everything else, and that's just not how it should be.

In the story, I think as an actor you're just trying to fit into the world.

I'm happy for people who want to get married but it's not my thing. I'm extremely happy in my relationship and I would love to have kids.

Pride comes from a place of real acknowledgment that somebody's actually living their life for themselves, and I want to be that example for my son.

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

I think some of the most creative work is coming out of television. I felt it's very immediate and I like that. It's really fast. It's got a pace to it, and that's why I think everybody in my field wants to just do good material.

I havent lost my culture, just my accent.

I grew up during apartheid; there was never a day in South Africa that was just great. I love that I've had success as an actor and producer, but I know the thing my children will know most about is the work I've done with HIV. Success in life is all about humanity.

I think that luxury is to be used when you are in your jeans and your T-shirt and you want to feel a little extra special, and you want to go and walk into a store and have somebody go, "Wow, what is that?" Maybe that's the one and only thing you give yourself that day, but I think women like to give that to themselves.

I think there is a part of me that's always a little bit like, "Why would I torture myself? Just in case you forgot how big the shoes are you're walking in, take a look again"

At the end of the day, I'd much rather do a piece about people in a story that I find riveting and intriguing and moving, versus really carrying some kind of heavy political agenda on my sleeve. That's not who I am.

I think acting is really fully adapting - to your surroundings, to your emotions, to the people that you're working with, to being tired, to want to go home, to being lonely, to being happy. It's adapting for me, and trusting. Adapting and trusting, that's my format right there.

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

Our mechanics are engineered so that we can survive quite a lot, but I think our need to be loved is so great that it’s the thing that damages us the most.

I've never been the kind of actress that just likes to show up and say my lines. I'm fascinated by what the crew does.

It's in the eyes, mostly. Don't listen just to the other actor's lines. Look at - and listen to - their eyes. That's where the emotion comes through.

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.

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.'

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.

I hate table reads. I hate anything where you have to say the words out loud.

My job is to be a blank canvas & embody the characters that I'm playing.

I was pretty much a mess out of primary school. I really experienced a lot more of that stuff from the ages of seven to twelve, where there was a really popular girl at my school, and I was obsessed with her, like you'd go to jail for that stuff today. I'm so embarrassed to say this, but I was in tears one day, because I couldn't sit next to her.

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.

Well, life is dark. We live in a very dark world. When they call them "dark films" it annoys me, because they're very real stories. They're stories I have seen or experienced or witnessed, and coming from that place, that is the hope of humanity.

You can live vicariously through the characters you play.

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

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.

I am South African and I am so aware, even as a white, privileged South African, that even within our community of privilege the idea of talking about sex or sexual preference or sexual identity or anything like that was just, nobody ever did that and nobody ever felt comfortable doing that.

I want to be part of the generation that stops AIDS.

A while back there was this fad where a big star [would get] a producing credit and you'd ask around, and people were like, "No, they didn't produce, they just took the credit." I was flabbergasted. So when I started, people were weirded out by the fact that I was like, "How long is our prep? I'll come a week before that." They were like, "We're not shooting for six weeks."

I can't live in a bubble and expect to come and work with Dior or go work on a movie and not have some kind of an evolution within myself and my own thought process and a passion about things or what's happening in the world. All of those things are the elements that make you who you are, and those are the things that sincerely come across in a photo or a commercial or in an interview. That's a constant thing for me.

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.

Women are not allowed to be [complicated] in our society. We're comfortable seeing women as great mothers, and then we're comfortable seeing them as hookers, but there's no in-between.

The thing I noticed is that a lot of times great material can get ruined if its not in the right hands.

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

I want my son to grow up with a mom that he could see and look at her life with all the mistakes and with all the failures and all the flaws and say, "My mom lived an authentic life. That was the life she wanted to live."

I've never been driven by box office.

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.

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