Charlize was a happy, spontaneous child, with the confidence often seen in only children, and she had her own streak of stubbornness as well. She was a tomboy, who liked to play and compete with boys. She enjoyed the outdoors and the space the plot offered. To a small child, two hectares is certainly almost a farm. Here she swam, rode on horseback, and on one occasion fell off a horse, breaking her collarbone.
At six she began to take private ballet lessons. She also loved sport. At school she took part in athletics and she was a member of the standard-two netball team.
Sally Beal was her sub B teacher at the Putfontein Primary School, where Charlize would later be elected head girl, like her father, who had been head boy at Springbok. Sally said it was obvious even at such a young age that this child was special.
Retseh Jansen, one of Charlize’s best friends at primary school, remembers how Charlize immersed herself in her fantasy world. They were too small then to know about Hollywood, she said, but Charlize had been convinced that one day she would be on TV. Jansen also remembers that Charlize’s wealthy father had spoilt his only child.
There was nothing the seven-year-old Charlize enjoyed more than entertaining her schoolfriends by singing and dancing. Even if these performances did not always go according to plan, Charlize was never fazed. She once stumbled and fell in front of the entire school during a ballet performance. Any other child might have burst into tears, but Charlize just smiled, tugged at her dress, and kept dancing as if nothing was wrong. Beal thinks it was this quality that might have helped her through the family’s trauma in later years.
On grainy home movies she flutters across the stage like a butterfly, brimming with confidence. Charlize enjoyed any kind of dance, as is evident from photos from her primary-school days, where she is even seen to do volkspele, a traditional Afrikaner dance form. At twelve she made a clean sweep of several dance competitions on the East Rand, and had her photograph published in the local community newspaper.
When Charlize won the Oscar in 2004, a cousin on her mother’s side, Kobus Maritz, a 32-year-old takeaway delivery man from Kimberley, recalled how he and Charlize used to play together on the Therons’ smallholding as children. She had loved riding a motorbike back then and they had fished and played darts. She had been one of those girls who don’t mind getting dirty with the boys – a real little tomboy. (In a scene in North Country she gets to play darts, and even to the untrained eye it is apparent that that arm, wrist and fingers have had years of dart-throwing experience.) She also learned to drive at a young age and became a skilled driver. Years later, while filming The Italian Job, onlookers were gobsmacked at the skilful way in which she handled the Mini Coopers.
Charlize herself said in 2000: “I’ve always loved that duality, where you get dirty with the boys and then put on the ballgown and earrings and do the glamorous thing.”
In the relative isolation of the plot, she amused herself in and around the house by creating a fantasy world similar to the imagined life of Hollywood that she had come to know from her visits to the Benoni drive-in theatre. On Friday nights she and Gerda would go to the drive-in, while Charles preferred the company of his friends. It was on Fridays that the new releases from Hollywood were screened. One of the first films to make a lasting impression on Charlize was Splash, starring Tom Hanks. Later she would take her bike to go and rent videos in Cloverdene Road. Films like Say Anything (1989) and Dirty Dancing (1987), featuring a young Patrick Swayze (with whom she would later co-star in Waking up in Reno), grabbed hold of her fertile imagination. “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1984) changed my life,” is one of her much-publicised quotes.
After her role as a female miner in North Country, she was interviewed for GQ in 2008 and specifically mentioned that Meryl Streep’s Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Silkwood (1983) had impressed her when she was young – both films about strong women who took on the system in spite of heavy opposition.
Could it be that Charlize has tried to emulate Meryl Streep in her choice of character roles?
About the influence of fantasy in her formative years, she later said: “I had a very active imagination as a child and I loved putting on make-up, costumes and playing characters, or telling a story.”
Charlize recalled how she had acted out roles in her favourite films, dressed in her mother’s clothes. “I remember when I saw Splash I felt jealousy, envy and a little bit of a crush – like Tom Hanks is so cute and who’s the blonde and why can’t I be her? So I’d clean out the duck pond and then get in the clean water and play the mermaid I was so jealous of.”
About her growing-up years she remarked: “I feel extremely fortunate to have had that innocence of nature as my constant surroundings. I didn’t have computer games or Nintendo. We barely had television. We had TV for three hours a day and it was one channel and that was it. [South Africa got limited TV broadcasts only in 1975.]
“I grew up on mythology [about the tokoloshe, for instance] and people telling stories by the fire. Your imagination is all you have. I wasn’t a shy child at all, that was just part of getting through the day as a child. We didn’t have anything, and not because of poverty. I barely had a doll, just because I wasn’t interested. It was all about the mind for me.”
In 2008 she told a New York Times reporter: “I was usually barefoot in the dirt, no Game Boys, no computers, and we had sanctions, so there were no concerts. You had to entertain yourself.”
Did her budding teenage sexuality play any role in her imaginary world? she was asked in 2000. When she kisses famous actors in her films today, does she happen to remember her first kiss?
“Sure do. He had braces. We were in the backyard. Anyway, it was after we had just watched Friday the 13th. What a real romance movie! So we were just standing there because it was so planned. Like okay, you’re gonna come over, watch a movie, then we kiss. His name was Nicky. We were standing in the backyard and I’m like, you wanna do it, you wanna do it? Well, okay, then let’s do it. And we were standing there arguing about it for so long, it was just awful. But then it was darkness, saliva and tongue. I was twelve, I think, twelve or thirteen.”
Pottie Potgieter, who used to live in Putfontein, remembers the Therons. Charlize was the apple of her dad’s eye, he says, but it was actually her mom who was behind her success. Gerda always groomed and polished Charlize. She was a pretty girl and her mother made sure that people noticed.
Another school friend says that she always knew Charlize would go far. She was hardworking. She had the same determination her late father had.
During her seven years at primary school she received numerous trophies, medals and other awards for a variety of performing art forms, from ballet and Spanish dance, to singing and acting. Michèle Pöhl-Phillips, Charlize’s dance teacher between the ages of six and thirteen, calls her an exceptional student. She recalls how Charlize was once the loyal swallow in the school’s performance of Oscar Wilde’s Happy Prince. In the death scene she was so dramatic that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Gillian Bonegio taught Charlize Spanish dancing, and Charlize would often later refer to her love of the flamenco. Bonegio remembers that Charlize had a wonderful sense of humour, was practical, humble and full of confidence. The moment she appeared on stage, the audience was swept away. It wasn’t just her beauty, but also her grace. She had always been different, older than her years. Always special.
Once, at the Spanish dance championships, Charlize walked on stage four counts early and when she realised this, improvised a turn and dropped her fan. Bonegio says that she was sitting in the audience wondering what Charlize would do. But she just continued, improvised with her arms, performed the steps and looked absolutely
