Charlize Theron Quotes & Sayings

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

I think more than anything, people just want to be understood. — Charlize Theron

I've never been driven by box office. — Charlize Theron

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 wanting to go home, to being lonely, to being happy. I mean, it's adapting. For me, it is anyway. And trusting. Adapting and trusting. That's my format right there. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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 — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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? — Charlize Theron

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." — Charlize Theron

I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I don't want to be anything other than what we are. I want to just be a woman. — Charlize Theron

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

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

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

I'm a tough girl, and I can go without a shower bot a week and be fine with that. But I will not sleep on dirty sheets. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

I do this because I'm an observer of people. That's why I want to be an actor. I'm fascinated by human beings and the circumstances they find themselves in. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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

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." — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

I think there is a great quote - and I feel horrible that I don't know who said this - but it was a great quote, it says, "The only difference between all of us are the ones who are loved and the ones who are not." — Charlize Theron

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

I am human, and, yeah, I have very bad days. — Charlize Theron

I think a sense of humor is a very personal thing and I don't know if I am talented enough to do romantic comedies. — Charlize Theron

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?'" — Charlize Theron

Get on my Harley and act like a guy. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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?' — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

I love being a woman and I love being feminine. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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.' — Charlize Theron

I always knew I would adopt. Always. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — 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. — Charlize Theron

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

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

I hate actors who come and quote Nietzsche. — Charlize Theron

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

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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]. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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

I think writing a book with film in mind is a way to write a really bad books. You can usually tell those books that are packaged to become films. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

I havent lost my culture, just my accent. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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.' — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

Like, I think I pussy out. So, I'm not that kind of person. — Charlize Theron

I don't like rehearsal. — Charlize Theron

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

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

I think of myself as a highly sexual creature. — Charlize Theron

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

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. — Charlize Theron

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. — Charlize Theron

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