hand, drama training is the cornerstone of a stage actress’s career, not necessarily that of a Holllywood star. And Charlize had stars in her eyes.
At high school in Johannesburg she and a close school friend who had been in ballet class with her had considered a career in dance. “We were getting to that place where you start to figure out what you’ll do when you leave school. The idea was to go and dance for a ballet company. And then we found out what they paid and we thought, not much to live on. So I came up with this crazy idea that maybe we should dance at Sun City [as chorus girls] because they paid incredibly well.”
In the South Africa of the apartheid years, in the midst of economic and cultural boycotts and strict censorship against what was considered communist and moral corruption, the Sun City hotel and casino complex, like a smaller version of Las Vegas, was an escape to a life of topless dancers and sensual pleasures. Fortunately, before Charlize could become a chorus girl, the opportunity to become a model presented itself. But as she took her first steps in Hollywood, she very nearly fell into the showgirl pothole again.
Ballerina
As long ago as the nineteenth century, ballet was considered in certain circles as a trivial pastime with which chorus girls amused themselves between flirtations with married men. But to a serious dancer like Charlize, ballet offered a freedom of movement in which she could express herself. Feet turned out, buttocks tucked in, she learned the discipline of grace at an early age. Ballet poses gave a natural sensuality to her body. And about her body, even what is hidden under her clothes, she has never been shy, she was to say later.
The Joffrey ballet school in New York was established in 1952, a year before Gerda’s birth, by Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, with the aim of developing and training professional dancers for American ballet companies. The school, which also has its own ballet company in Chicago, soon attained a reputation as one of the foremost training facilities in the country, especially in classical ballet. Students from abroad enrolled for the intensive four-year course and came from countries as diverse as Israel, Russia, Spain and Italy. And then, of course, there was Charlize, all the way from South Africa, as Maurice Brandon Curry, director of educational programmes at Joffrey, later recalled, after Charlize had won an Oscar as an actress.
Joffrey died in 1988, but his influence and spiritual legacy remain strong in the vision of the school. Students must realise that they cannot simply rely on their physical talents, but that the aspiration of a career in ballet must ultimately also be resolved “between the ears”. Joffrey made his students believe that they could achieve anything. But Brandon Curry says that anyone who is in the performing arts expecting fame and success is there for the wrong reasons.
Initially the school was situated in an old chocolate factory in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, before it found a permanent home in 1960 in a building at 434 6th Avenue, also known as the Avenue of the Americas, in the Village.
Edith D’Addario, known among the students as “Mrs D”, was director of the ballet school. Strict but compassionate, she took pity on the teenage students, who suddenly found themselves on the merciless streets of New York in the eclectic neighbourhood of Manhattan. New students from outside New York were introduced to the environment of the ballet school in a special directive, warning them against the dangers.
If they were hungry at any time of day or night, they were to go to the French Roast Café on the corner of 6th Avenue and 11th Street. At Cosi, just further along, they could buy Java coffee and a healthy salad roll. Also in 6th Avenue, was Sammy’s Noodle Shop, the Bagel Buffet and Ray’s Pizza.
If they needed to go shopping for clothes or shoes, they were directed to inexpensive stores, like Urban Outfitters, a short distance down 8th Street. If they were looking for fresh vegetables, bread and cheese to make their own food at home, Union Square at 14th Street was the chosen destination. And they could do their laundry at Suds, just west of 10th Street, and Jerry’s Dry Cleaners had been doing the ballet school’s cleaning for decades.
It was into these surroundings in 1993 that the young ballet student, Charlize Theron, stepped when she walked through an inconspicuous door in Greenwich Village, up a narrow staircase, to the offices and studios of the Joffrey on the third and fourth floors. She was following in the footsteps of at least two well-known dancers-cum-actors who had also done their training at the Joffrey: Patrick Swayze and Ronald Reagan Jr, son of ex-president Ronal Reagan, a former Hollywood actor himself.
Charlize found accommodation in a cold, windowless basement room. Like most other students, she would have been grateful for all the tips about inexpensive eating and shopping venues.
At the beginning of 1993, Charlize was dedicated to ballet. The training began with basic ballet techniques for artistic expression, pointe work, with exercises in arabesque, fouetté and pirouette for strength, balance and lyricism, and pas de deux, teaching harmony of movement and artistic communication with a partner. She spent up to eight hours per day en pointe at the barre and in front of the mirror. And she dreamed of a pas de deux with the Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who had featured in the romantic box-office hit White Nights (1985) a few years before. It was also the first time that she fell seriously in love.
But after only a few months at the Joffrey, she injured her knee and it brought an end to her ballet career. In 2006 she told a London newspaper: “What I valued most about ballet, was the storytelling. Once I lost ballet, I had to step back and evaluate it in order to find something to replace it. At least I could do without eight hours of training every day, and blood poison from blisters on my toes not being able to heal, and all of those things. But that moment when the curtain goes up and the music starts to play . . . it’s magical. I used to always say that ballet was my theatre.”
In New York she survived by doing commercials, and she earned enough with modelling to pay the rent. “There was a lot of money in commercials. I was like ‘Give me a pimple cream commercial – I’m ready!’” But she began to feel increasingly unfulfilled.
In August 2008 she told Elle: “I was completely depressed, miles away from home and totally on my own.”
Could it not have led to a dalliance with alcohol and drugs?
The question seemed to astonish her. “Where does that get you? Nowhere. And for me it would have been complete insanity.”
The same impatience and frustration that she had experienced during the time she’d spent modelling full-time, intensified by the cold, depressing New York weather, got the better of her, and in desperation she phoned her mother. Gerda flew from Benoni to New York to support Charlize. “My mom said, ‘Either you figure out what to do next or you come home, because you can sulk in South Africa.’ She reminded me that I loved movies. She said, ‘They make them in Hollywood.’”
It was a time in her life when she felt like giving up everything and going back home. So she used the last of her money and bought a one-way ticket to Hollywood.
Typical of Hollywood and its notorious gossip columnists, the distinction between truth and fiction is not always clear. Fancy phrases are given preference over facts, buzz words become myths. The legend goes that Gerda scraped together her last cents to buy Charlize’s ticket to Hollywood. (About the “last of her money” the final word has not been spoken yet.)
Years of ballet training had given Charlize grace and a posture that immediately caught the eye. In Hollywood she stood out above the throng of aspiring young actresses, all hoping to be noticed. There was a refreshing charm in the supple, lean way she stood and walked that was the result of the demanding ballet exercises. Her back was straight, her chest pushed forward, her neck slender like a swan’s. Hours spent in front
