100 Quotes by Charlize Theron

I don't think you can create anything interesting from a comfort zone. You have to work from a place of fear and failure.

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

I think, like many women, I was judgmental toward women as they aged.

When a person lives a very happy life they become beautiful.

I was raised with the idea that you can feel sorry for yourself, but then, get over it, because it doesn't get you anywhere. There was always this awareness that you have to be responsible for yourself in order to have what you want

We all understand situations where it's swim or drown. Sometimes we surprise ourselves when we start swimming and see how well we can do it.

You choose the life you want for yourself, and then you just shut up and go about it. That's how I've lived my life.

What I know in my heart is that women and girls on the ground are powerful and that they are leaders.

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I'd rather put on a pair of jeans and get on my Harley and act like a guy.

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 think more than anything, people just want to be understood.

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.

My job as an actor, and the part of my job that I love is the transforming-and-becoming aspect of it, and so it doesn't become about me anymore.

I've always been comfortable with my sexuality. I'm blessed to have been raised by a woman who never made me feel ashamed about what's underneath my clothes. That's a part of me and I don't run away from it.

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

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

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

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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.

I'm a true believer that everything happens the way it should.

We just need to put our foot down. This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way.

I like being a cog in a wheel. I like being a small aspect of a much bigger thing, and I think my interest in that takes the pressure of myself.

I think it's interesting that women, by nature, are way more conflicted than men.

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

I've always said that I worry about being with a man who doesn't flirt.

You have to discipline yourself and not carry the character with you. You need to switch it off and take time to re-energize.

I love fragrance for the pure fact that I think it's something that women utilize in a way to make themselves feel good, and I think this idea that we do it for men or for other people is such a misconception.

I make a real effort to try and live in the real world and not just the dream world.

You can live vicariously through the characters you play.

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

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 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."

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.

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

There's an instant access to luxury that I think women really appreciate.

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.

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

I really love having an awareness.

Of course you want your son, your children, to be proud of you.

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.

You're either a really good hooker or a really good mom. That kind of conflicted nature is very much a part of being a woman.

We don't live the lives of Eskimos. We don't need to kill animals for fashion.

I think that women find their strength and power in their sexuality, in their sensuality within, [through] getting older and being secure within that.

I've never been driven by box office.

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.

I think people say women come into their prime in their 40s. And then for some reason our society just wants to go... it's like a dead flower.

As actors, we were fighting that tooth and nail because of fear, because language is a crutch and dialogue is a crutch, and it's so easy to just have a great writer write you a line.

I think we're at a time where people just want to join together and cause change. People don't want to live like this any more.

I'm not a fan of justifying bad behavior or justifying why people are the way they are. I think that's a cop out. I don't have a lot of empathy for that.

I love that old glamour look. I think it's because I grew up on it.

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

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 try to hang on to as much mystery as possible. How can we go through our lives not wanting to have any element of surprise?’

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.

As you get older, you get wrinkles and your boobs sag. But you get wisdom, too. So it's not all bad!

My whole concept in life is if you're not using it, you should give it to somebody else so they can use it.

Beauty is more than skin deep.

You get yourself out there and you work hard, and you hope that word of mouth carries and one day somebody will actually step up to the plate and say, 'I believe that you can do this.'

I'm 50-50 on glamour stuff. I'd rather put on a pair of jeans and get on my Harley and act like a guy.

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.

That's why I like my job so much, because at the end of the day they're fruits of labor that you don't pick very easily. And I love that.

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

I know what I'm capable of wearing in one lifetime and what I really need.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 want to be part of the generation that stops AIDS.

One thing can make many other things happen.

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

I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil.

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

Blade Runner was an incredibly influential movie, in terms of the way that it envisioned what the future was going to look like.

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.

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.

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.

If you were a single mom, there's no way to support yourself and your kids by working in a hair salon. It's about a woman who decides to go and do what was considered a man's job, but was treated quite horribly for it and decides she has to fight for her rights when everyone thinks she should just shut up and take it.

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

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.

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.

Think bigger than society lets you think. And find mentors. My life is filled with people who knew me when I was 19 and had a horrible South African accent and bleach-blond hair and who believed in me in a way that was brutal. They were just unbelievable and consistent and smart. Find mentors who, every time you're with them, you're being schooled. Just absolutely schooled.

My mother is one of those very unusual, superb human beings-she's innately strong and incredibly smart. She created an environment for me to explore who I was.

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.

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

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 do think that when you're specifically working in a country like South Africa, you have to be able to be aware of the cultural truth of what people are raised in and believe in and how they function within their society.

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.'

I think of myself as a highly sexual creature.

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

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

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

I think actors who know their job know that's how you do it. You don't show up and make people miserable. That poor grip who's standing there, he just wants to feed his family. He doesn't need to hear about your psychosis on life and love and death.

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.

Men are like fine wines - the older they get, the better they get.

We value some lives more than others.

I think good filmmaking is when you really hold the mirror up truthfully, and you don't angle it and you don't hide things with smoke and mirrors.

My thoughts and love go out to the Mandela family. Rest in peace Madiba. You will be missed, but your impact on this world will live forever.

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

You have to keep evolving.

I'm an Academy Award winner. I'm serious.

I don't want to live in a world with blinders on.

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.

Life is what you make it... and nowhere close to making mine the best it can be.

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.

[If you want to] ask the question what is beautiful? It's the life that you lead. It's the life that all women lead.

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.

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

I'm voting for Barack Obama. He's inspiring.

Modeling was never a passion of mine.

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

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.

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

There are very, very few brands that will be brave enough to really, completely take a step back and not to try and control what is considered beautiful.

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.

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.'

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

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

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.

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.

It took a while for me to be able to sit in a room of studios and financiers and say, "I'm not some hoity-toity actress looking for a vanity deal - I really know how to make a film!" In order to do that, you've got to break your f-cking back.

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

In life we want to challenge ourselves...

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.

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

I don't want to live in a world where I just kind of play on my naïveté - well if I don't know it, then it doesn't exist.

I'd be unbelievably wrong to say there isn't such a thing as the right place, right time-luck.

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.

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

I just want to make good movies. Honestly, the only difference for me with this stuff is that there is more people on the set.

I look at my career and how I'm doing it now. I feel like there is something authentic in that process that I still try not to over manipulate. When I feel something, I try to listen to that.

The human condition is all about us pretending to be something sometimes that we're not. When you get into the core of people kind of stripping all of that away, that's for me, as an actor, always the most fun stuff to do.

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

I am going home and I think in a week or so, hopefully, I'll be done with all the press stuff, and then I can kind of into my cave and start preparing for "Mad Max."

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

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.

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.

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". Like, I think I pussy out. So, I'm not that kind of person.