Charlize Theron is on the publicity trail in hopes someone will notice she’s co-starring in the big Fourth of July weekend extravaganza Hancock. (She was hardly featured in the early trailers, although, perhaps in reaction to some bad buzz, she’s much more of a presence in the latest round of ads.) “When she walks into a room she reduces everyone else to hobbits - but she's better known for her acting,” Carole Cadwalladr writes in The Observer. Maybe that’s true, but it’s probably more accurate to say Theron is best known for her willingness to ugly it up if the role demands it. Not that she’s happy about that.
For instance, for her role in In the Valley of Elah, Theron grew out her natural hair color and wore a ponytail, which is a pretty far cry from the prosthetic teeth and latex skin she used to transform herself into serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Still, the press cited this as yet another example of Theron playing down her beauty. “It just bummed me out because I was, ‘What do you want?’ Do you want me to play a detective from Albuquerque who's a single mom in a Dior dress?...The way they focused on my appearance, I felt like it hurt that film and I was embarrassed because Paul [Haggis] had worked really hard and just because I had a ponytail that's what they were talking about.”
That won’t be a problem with Hancock, in which Theron is “the archetypal soccer mom, a vision of all-American apple-pie goodness, blonde and peachy,” according to Cadwalladr, who notes that while Theron is willing to play down her looks on the screen, she’s perfectly happy to play them up for “photo spreads for the likes of Playboy and Barely Legal.” Says Theron: “Well guess what? I'm a sexual creature. There's nothing wrong with that. Why do we have to be ashamed of being so many different things? Why do we have to be only one thing, a good mother or a hooker? I don't think that what's under my clothes is evil. I'm a woman, I'm feminine. And I like the way I look. And I celebrate that. And I don't make excuses for that.” Screengrab approves this message.
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