Charlize Theron Quotations

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

Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally.

If they ever do my life story, whoever plays me needs lots of hair color and high heels.

My mom has made it possible for me to be who I am. Our family is everything. Her greatest skill was encouraging me to find my own person and own independence.

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

I am human, and, yeah, I have very bad days.

I'd love to get pajamas. Good, nice and warm flannel ones.

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

I can only hope to be 10 percent of the mom mine was to me. She encouraged me to be confident and enjoy life. That's what I want for my son.

I think today women are very scared to celebrate themselves, because then they just get labeled.

I feel 100% sure that I have the career that I have today because of independent filmmaking.

There's nothing I despise more than people trying to be something that they're not.

I have been working a lot, and I like it. And you know, it's hard for me not to. I guess I've been working a lot because I get to play with brilliant people.

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

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.

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.'

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.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

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

I do not think that condemning people who murder and killing them necessarily sends out the right message.

I'm happy for people who want to get married. It's not my thing.

Something I learned very early on in my career is that there are a lot of things that you do not have any power over.

And doing a film in that period, and having to really celebrate what they wore back then, how they sat and how they spoke. You know, what the etiquette was back then for a lady. All of those things are like putting on a wig and transforming yourself, which I love.

I learned everything about love, watching 'Splash.' That's why I'm still single, so thanks Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah for that.

I think in life we want to challenge ourselves.

At least I know that one film-maker in my career has had the initiative to come to me and thought of me as being capable of doing interesting and complicated work, and so I have a new-found belief that other film-makers will see me in a different way, the way that Patty did.

I have a problem with cabinets being messy and people just shoving things in and closing the door. I will lie in bed and not be able to sleep because I'll say to myself: 'I think I saw something in that cabinet that just shouldn't be there.'

And I do think that earlier in my career, I did make a very conscious decision to make sure that I was doing work that wasn't necessarily given to me, and that people didn't necessarily think that I would be able to do.

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.

So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.

There's only so much you can do, but if somebody doesn't give you a chance there is nothing you can do.

I've always been very aware of balance and, even before I had a child, my life always takes priority to my work.

When they watch a movie and they know that you're in a relationship, you just kind of watch that constantly.

Yet there's a hunger in me still. I'm like only beginning. I feel like I still have so much to learn.

People are so involved with immediate care, but at the same time there needs to be investment in educating people as adolescents when they're still HIV negative.

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.

I grew up on Bette Davis movies, and Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe.

I hate actors who come and quote Nietzsche.

I have OCD, which is not fun. I have to be incredibly tidy and organized or it messes with my mind and switches off on me.

I think of myself as a highly sexual creature

I treat my relationships like marriages. The ceremony isn't that important to me.

I was going to go to Macchu Picchu and then I just ended up working the whole year.

If I don't like seeing myself on the screen, I think when I start seeing that, that's when I think I'll stop.

So far I'm not surprised by anything about being a mom. It's all pretty great - but that's what I expected.

You always have this fear in a movie of just being somebody's woman.

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.

I had called her up a couple of weeks before then, because I had heard this vicious rumour that she did not like the movie. It was very upsetting for me. I am very sensitive to that, because I am portraying her life and did not want her to be unhappy.

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.

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.

I mean, I'm new but I've always been very interested in film making process and I've been lucky enough to work with film makers in my past that have been very encouraging to let me hang around. I get so emotionally vested - that the producer part of me was natural.

They really stay just characters to me. I look at them, and I don't see always the same person up there. And hopefully, people will see that too. Because it's very easy to bore people, and that's a killer. So hopefully that won't happen.

You can never get to a place of comfort in this business. As soon as you hit that little cushy spot, somebody's gonna kick you out. So I have a constant need to do it better.

I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to.

I mean I tried to transform myself through characters throughout my career.

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

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

So I did that for a long time in my career, and I waited for parts to play myself just physically down a little bit. But I do feel like I'm at a place in my career now where I don't necessarily fret about that too much anymore.

I guess there are very few actors that I've worked with that I would like to work with again. You never think you'll have that chance and, if we didn't do Italian Job together, there wouldn't be another one that could be right.

I only worked on Men of Honor for three weeks, but I walked away with so much. Because Bob is the kind of actor who gives you the opportunity to really go there. And we really had to go there. I mean, we were both playing drunks.

We know how much our careers mean to us,

I met a woman in Albuquerque and she came and hung out with me in the trailer. It was really just more to kind of really understand my biggest concern was always the interrogation scenes. Remember, that's why I really wanted to meet somebody because you see those scenes on TV so much.

Tommy [ Lee Jones] doesn't suffer fools easily. I think everybody knows that, but I have great respect for someone that's very direct and very honest. I don't have thin skin so I'm okay with that.

Fran McDormand was great because she said, 'What I used to do when I worked with him was I would just walk on the set and I would give him a big hug. Somehow his guard would just drop.' So I took that advice.

Remember I came to Albuquerque to do a hair and makeup test and wardrobe fitting; you guys were already shooting. It's tough when the movie's already started and you kind of show up. You're the new kid on the block. I walked onto the set and Tommy [Lee Jones] was about to do the scene. I just kind of walked up to him. I was shaking, but I just gave him this big hug and he just had nothing to say. He was like, 'Gotta go to work now.' I had a great time working with him."

You're very in tune with, because actors are all different, and it's very tricky when you throw us all together because we all work differently. You want to get the best work out of every individual actor.

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.

It [Hancock] happens to be a big budget film and big star like Will Smith, but it actually has a lot of weight to it. But it was very smart and very intelligent and had this kind of historical element to it that I was fascinated by. It's not silly. It's not stupid. It's fun, but I think it's smart. I think Akiva [Goldsman] writes really interesting material and there you have it.

I think since I did Monster I really started understanding how hard it is for first time directors. I think there's a lot of great stories out there, but it's high risk.

I tend to, if I decide to do a job, want to be able to trust my director.

When I find something that I really like and I can get it off, then I put my time and energy into that because it is a lot of work.

I've seen people talk about how they stopped polio, that was a generation that came together and said, "Let's do this." I think in the AIDS community we've become so complacent in that, it's like we just plateaued... We've completely neglected a whole young generation that is now highly infected.

You have to be able to feel like you can play way outside of the box. If you're with a great filmmaker and someone you can trust, that's encouraged, and Seth was that kind of filmmaker and co-star.

Actors - we're selfish, but we can't think about the work in that kind of selfish manner. I think that you have to step away from yourself, if you're going to do it. Otherwise don't do it; otherwise why do it?

I don't try to kind of go for the overly sympathetic. I don't really like sympathy; I don't like it for myself. Sometimes sympathy you feel like, you're kind of trying to victimize someone.

We value men more than women... straight love more than gay love... white skin more than black skin... and adults more than adolescents.

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.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

It's so great as an actor to get the opportunity to do something that's incredibly truthful.

Other than vaccines and finding a cure, most funding goes toward putting people on treatment. That's completely valid and I understand that, but it's never how we're going to stop AIDS.

I'm open to anything, dude. I'm open to anything. That's what I would ask the aliens. I'd be like, "Do you watch 'Game of Thrones?'"

You just don't know if you'll be around tomorrow. You just don't.

I don't believe in making five-year plans. I don't want to say, "Yes, I want to have children in the next five years," because I don't know. I've always known that I'd like to be a mom, but I don't want to live by a schedule. If I [did], I wouldn't be living in the moment.

I feel like I know South Africans. I feel like I know our culture.

Boys don't really like big nerdy glasses. Not so much.

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.

I don't really watch a lot of television, and I would watch mindless, mindless television.

I want to be in a good movie, and so the narrative is way more important.

I've never been a fan of labels. I think its very easy to kind of look at somebody and just kind of throw a label on them 'They're crazy.'

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 love the idea of longevity in this career. But [producing] is not about, "Let me do this because this might happen 20 years down the line." Sleepwalking wasn't a vehicle for me, it was a film that pushed the ­envelope. I want to produce good stories, versus creating a niche where I can look after myself as an actor.

One thing can make many other things happen.

The fabric of my life is under my skin; [but] it's definitely not something that comes up in a conscious way when I read material. I have an incredible relationship with my mom, so I'm fascinated by mothers who do not have that. But I've never done anything that resembled my life. People always jump to that conclusion, and I wish life were that simple, but it's not.

I'm interested in human behavior, and what happened in my family life is definitely not a unique story. There are aspects of that I'm sure you can see through the work. But I'm just looking for something that touches me.

Oh my God I am so cool.

The tone is so important to a film, and that tone can really make something fall or succeed.

It's pretty impossible to be a South African and not have been personally affected by HIV or AIDS.

I do have a sense of fear every day going to work, but I think it's something that I like. I mean I do like the feeling of waking up on my own, having this moment of like: "Oh, f**k, I hope I can do this today!" Because it makes you realise that you're working with material or you're working with a director or you're working with a cast and they're keeping you on your toes.

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

People always say to me, "What's wrong with Hollywood? They don't want to make female-driven movies." And that's not where the problem lies. It lies with us, in society. When we make these movies, nobody goes to see them.

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.