Charliz Theron grew up on a farm in South Africa where she performed the regular chores of milking the cows and feeding the chickens. But the farm life wasn't for her and from early on Charlize knew she wanted to be involved in the entertainment field in one way or another, although at the time she believed her future would be in ballet. For a number of years she trained and worked in that craft, and on reaching her teen years she enrolled in a performing arts school in Johannesburg.
      On a whim, a 16-year-old Charlize entered a modeling contest and not surprisingly won. This lead to an offer of work in the modeling industry in Milan, Italy. It was a job that lasted for only a year when on the last day of a modeling assignment in New York, she decided she would not return to Italy, opting instead to go back to her first love...ballet. But tragedy struck when a debilitating knee injury brought an abrupt, heart breaking end to that dream.
      With her mother's blessing and financial aid, Charlize headed to Hollywood to try her hand at another career. Acting. As luck would have it, Charlize was discovered by a talent agent while she was throwing a tantrum in the bank which refused to cash her mother's cheque.
      After first losing her South African accent, she soon got her first acting job in John Herzfeld's, 2 Days in the Valley, in 1996. This role was followed by That Thing You Do!, directed by Tom Hanks, who was quite right in declaring, "She's got it! That girl is going to be somebody." True enough, Charlize went on to win an Academy Award for her leading role in the critically acclaimed Monster.
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