When beauty becomes a beast

Former model and dancer Charlize Theron transforms herself into a serial killer in Monster

Talk about beauty becoming the beast. For her role as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins' directorial debut Monster, South African actress Charlize Theron gained 30 pounds, wore false teeth and completely altered her body posturing. The result has made this former model almost unrecognizable, and has garnered her a Golden Globe nomination with an Oscar one almost certainly to follow.
A bland ingenue in The Italian Job and Mighty Joe Young, the 28-year-old actress is familiar with real-life tragedies. When she was 15, her father attacked her mother who in turn shot him dead in self-defense. When the script for Monster fell on her lap, she not only jumped at the chance to play a serious role, she also decided to produce the movie through her production company Denver & Delilah Films (named after her two cocker spaniels).
Monster centres on the true-life story of Wuornos, a Florida prostitute since the age of 13 who was arrested in 1990 after killing seven of her customers. In her defense, Wuornos explained that the killings were carried out in self-defense. The fact that Wuornos was a renowned lesbian who was having an affair with a woman identified in the film as Selby (played by Christina Ricci) did not help endear her to the Floridian courts. She sat on Death Row for 12 years and was executed in October of 2002.
Charlize Theron was in Toronto recently to talk about Monster.

What do you think of people who criticize the film for making a serial killer sympathetic?
"I would disagree with that. I don't think that it's an overly sympathetic story, first of all. When I read the script initially - and I really try to pay attention to my reaction when I first read a script - I remember being on the second to last page and still not knowing how I felt about this woman. That's why it was really important for me to meet with Patty, to make sure that she was going to be that filmmaker who was going to stay true to that, because I don't think you can make this story and forget about the facts. This was a woman who didn't start off evil or bad, but who definitely got to a place in her life where she crossed the line and did really terrible things. And that truth was really important for both of us, and right from the beginning we made a pact to always stay very true to that. So I think that in her greater truth when you watch this film you come to a place of empathy, and of understanding. But I don't think it's a sympathetic story."

Did you feel a responsibility to make sure facts were portrayed as realistically as possible?
"It is a huge responsibility. No matter what the person's choices were in their life, it's still a life. You want to be able to walk away from a movie like this and be able to live with yourself. And that was very important to Patty and me. Even when we were doing our research, we discovered things that maybe we didn't want to discover, but we knew that we had come across this material, and we had to stay true to them. You can't start manipulating things, and then, sit in the interview the way we are right now, and not feel good about that truth."

Did you ever think you were in too deep during the film?
"I've learned through the years as an actor to discipline myself, to not carry it home, to not live in it all the time, because I feel that it's not necessarily great for the work. I think you can exhaust yourself when you stay in it all the time. But it's a very hard thing, because it's not the kind of thing that you just switch on and off. So I had to get to a place in my career that I could discipline myself enough to do the work and also go home and have a life, because I love my life, and I didn't want to feel that when I took a movie on for three months I wasn't going to have a life. Also, just being a producer on this was extremely helpful for me, because I didn't have a choice in the matter. At the end of the day, I had to switch hats and I would get in my trailer and have production meetings and things like that, so being a producer was extremely helpful for me."

How much did access to Aileen's letters and journals help you?
"Extremely helpful. I automatically went to the documentaries, and Patty had found some A&E biographies for me and all of that, and that's what I started with, just really studying that, and then I realized that, especially with someone like Aileen, she wasn't going to trust an interviewer and actually open up. Ninety percent of the time she became very defensive, and it was great to see how you could push her buttons, to see her temper, but as far as the more personal, intimate Aileen, I don't think even if I had met her in person, I would have gotten to know her that way. The letters were great because I don't think she knew that anyone was ever going to read them. They were very personal, they were to her friend that she grew up with. You know, when you're on death row for 12 years, you really sit back and reflect upon your life quite a bit. So it was extremely helpful for me to hear her without feeling that she was being judged by what she was saying. She was really writing from her soul. I also thought that I was going to find answers to these really big questions, and you realize that it's the smallest little thing that breaks your heart, and completely crawls under your skin. And all of those accumulate, and by the time you're making the movie, for some reason there's this understanding that you have about this one person's life that changes a lot of decisions that you make."

Were you ever concerned that you were trying too hard to look like Aileen?
"I think that when you take a job, 'you' the person really becomes secondary. I was constantly pulling Patty into my kitchen going, 'If we do that with my eyebrows, I just don't know... then I don't have any eyebrows, and then what do we do?' We were really concerned not to get on this road of turning it into a caricature. When I saw myself in the mirror for the first time, I was extremely happy. People laugh when I say that, but it was really a relief. It wasn't about prosthetics or anything. Even the weight thing. I mean, Patty never said 'I want you to gain 30 pounds.' We both went through the research journey together. And everything about her physically came from her emotional journey. The way she carried herself. The way she kind of puffed herself up and threw her head back. That's not Aileen being eccentric, that's Aileen trying to survive. That's the homeless Aileen who has been living on the streets since she was 13. She had never set foot in a gym. She loved hanging out in her bars and having her beer. Didn't probably know where her next meal was coming from. And I wanted to get my body to that place. I remember we would do rehearsals in the morning, and everything felt wrong until I put the pants on, and the moccasins and the teeth, and suddenly everything would happen."

How do you want us to feel about Eileen?
"One thing I loathe about movies is manipulation. And what I loved about this story is that it never tried to manipulate you in any way. It was never trying to hit you over the head with one point, or made sure by the third act that one specific thing was coming through. Aileen was so unpredictable. There is a moment just before she was sentenced by the judge, that she read a letter to everyone in the courtroom, and her voice softened and she had this attitude that 'I know what I have done is really terrible and whatever you feel should happen, I'll respect.' And it's not what you expect. And then she gets sentenced, and then out of nowhere this other person appears and she's upset about the sentencing. Just when you thought you had kind of figured Aileen out, she would surprise you. But just putting Aileen aside, I loved the way she told the story through the love story, staying very true to a very conflicted character. So it's not the kind of movie experience where everyone walks out of the theatre feeling the same way about the story. You either saw the sensational stuff, or the opposite: the poor, abused child version. I think that Patty was very true to both of those sides. With people like Aileen, we immediately label them. But I don't believe that the human condition is that black and white. It's tough to look at her life - she did a lot of terrible things - and not do that. But maybe in the big picture, we can change things."


Monster is currently playing in local cinemas.

Publication Date: 2004-01-25
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3569