Charlize theron quotes

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.

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

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

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?

I really love having an awareness.

I'm happy for people who want to get married but it's not my thing. I'm extremely happy in my relationship and I would love to have kids.

I think I have a real interest in filmmaking, and it's nice when I can go and do that sometimes. Then it's also great to not do it and not have the responsibility .

I've tried most of my career to transform myself towards characters.

If they ever do my life story, whoever plays me needs lots of hair color and high heels.

I do think that when you're specifically working in a country like South Africa, you have to be able to be aware of the cultural truth of what people are raised in and believe in and how they function within their society.

What I know in my heart is that women and girls on the ground are powerful and that they are leaders.

I've always been comfortable with my sexuality. I'm blessed to have been raised by a woman who never made me feel ashamed about what's underneath my clothes. That's a part of me and I don't run away from it.

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

We don't live the lives of Eskimos. We don't need to kill animals for fashion.

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

I hate actors who come and quote Nietzsche.

My interests still are my interests. That doesn't make me a bad mother. I think that makes me a really good mother, because when I go and creatively satisfy myself and those interests, I come home satisfied.

I have OCD, which is not fun. I have to be incredibly tidy and organized or it messes with my mind and switches off on me.

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

I make a real effort to try and live in the real world and not just the dream world.

I think there is a part of me that's always a little bit like, "Why would I torture myself? Just in case you forgot how big the shoes are you're walking in, take a look again"

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

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

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

I've never been driven by box office.

I was raised in a country [South Africa] with a lot of political turmoil. I was part of a culture and a generation that suppressed people and lived under apartheid regimes. I don't know how you can come out of that and not have an awareness for the world. I think that if my life had turned out any other way and I was working in a bank, I would still feel this way about it, because there's a connection to humanity that to me is really important.

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.

've had good friends who got married after they've been together for years and they've said that it was the "next step" for them. Or, they've said, "You just can't bail out anymore." And I've wondered, What made you think you could just bail out before [the wedding]? You don't invest that kind of time and energy with somebody and then just go, "All right, see you later."

I don't like rehearsal.

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

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.

Of course you want your son, your children, to be proud of you.

My whole concept in life is if you're not using it, you should give it to somebody else so they can use it.

I think of myself as a highly sexual creature.

Think bigger than society lets you think. And find mentors. My life is filled with people who knew me when I was 19 and had a horrible South African accent and bleach-blond hair and who believed in me in a way that was brutal. They were just unbelievable and consistent and smart. Find mentors who, every time you're with them, you're being schooled. Just absolutely schooled.

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.

One thing can make many other things happen.

I love that old glamour look. I think it's because I grew up on it.

I'd rather put on a pair of jeans and get on my Harley and act like a guy.

I think good filmmaking is when you really hold the mirror up truthfully, and you don't angle it and you don't hide things with smoke and mirrors.

I havent lost my culture, just my accent.

I know what I'm capable of wearing in one lifetime and what I really need.

So far I'm not surprised by anything about being a mom. It's all pretty great - but that's what I expected.

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

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?'"

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.

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.

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

You just don't know if you'll be around tomorrow. You just don't.

I know that I'm only as good as I am because of the things that I allow into myself and into my soul, because that's the stuff that I project back out.

I'm very attracted to characters who don't necessarily make it easy to be loved.

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."

Marriage equality is about more than just marriage. It's about something greater. It's about acceptance.

I don't want to live in a world with blinders on.

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.

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.

You can live vicariously through the characters you play.

We value men more than women... straight love more than gay love... white skin more than black skin... and adults more than adolescents.

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

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.

I can't live in a bubble and expect to come and work with Dior or go work on a movie and not have some kind of an evolution within myself and my own thought process and a passion about things or what's happening in the world. All of those things are the elements that make you who you are, and those are the things that sincerely come across in a photo or a commercial or in an interview. That's a constant thing for me.

My mother is one of those very unusual, superb human beings-she's innately strong and incredibly smart. She created an environment for me to explore who I was.

I don't believe in charmed lives. I think that tragedy is part of the lesson you learn to lift yourself up, to pick yourself up and to move on.

You're either a really good hooker or a really good mom. That kind of conflicted nature is very much a part of being a woman.

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.

Oh my God I am so cool.

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.

I think that luxury is to be used when you are in your jeans and your T-shirt and you want to feel a little extra special, and you want to go and walk into a store and have somebody go, "Wow, what is that?" Maybe that's the one and only thing you give yourself that day, but I think women like to give that to themselves.

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

There's an instant access to luxury that I think women really appreciate.

When a person lives a very happy life they become beautiful.

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.

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].

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.

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.

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

I always knew I would adopt. Always.

Countries and states which have capital punishment have a much higher rate of murder and crime than countries that do not, so that makes sense to me, and the moral question - I struggle with it morally.

At the end of the day, I'd much rather do a piece about people in a story that I find riveting and intriguing and moving, versus really carrying some kind of heavy political agenda on my sleeve. That's not who I am.

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

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.

That's why I like my job so much, because at the end of the day they're fruits of labor that you don't pick very easily. And I love that.

You get yourself out there and you work hard, and you hope that word of mouth carries and one day somebody will actually step up to the plate and say, 'I believe that you can do this.'

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.

I grew up during apartheid; there was never a day in South Africa that was just great. I love that I've had success as an actor and producer, but I know the thing my children will know most about is the work I've done with HIV. Success in life is all about humanity.

I am human, and, yeah, I have very bad days.

I don't think you can create anything interesting from a comfort zone. You have to work from a place of fear and failure.

I am South African and I am so aware, even as a white, privileged South African, that even within our community of privilege the idea of talking about sex or sexual preference or sexual identity or anything like that was just, nobody ever did that and nobody ever felt comfortable doing that.

It's in the eyes, mostly. Don't listen just to the other actor's lines. Look at - and listen to - their eyes. That's where the emotion comes through.

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.

Well, life is dark. We live in a very dark world. When they call them "dark films" it annoys me, because they're very real stories. They're stories I have seen or experienced or witnessed, and coming from that place, that is the hope of humanity.

Women are not allowed to be [complicated] in our society. We're comfortable seeing women as great mothers, and then we're comfortable seeing them as hookers, but there's no in-between.

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.

I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to.

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.

Beauty is more than skin deep.

Men are like fine wines - the older they get, the better they get.

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?’

I'm an Academy Award winner. I'm serious.

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.

I think that women find their strength and power in their sexuality, in their sensuality within, [through] getting older and being secure within that.

Pride comes from a place of real acknowledgment that somebody's actually living their life for themselves, and I want to be that example for my son.

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

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.

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.

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.

We value some lives more than others.

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

I think people say women come into their prime in their 40s. And then for some reason our society just wants to go... it's like a dead flower.

It's ironic that we've built the beauty world around 20-year-olds, when they have no f - kin' concept about wisdom, what life is about, having a few relationships below [their] belt and feeling hardships, to grow into [their] skin and feel confident within [themselves] and to feel the value of who [they] are, not because of a man or because of something like that. And I think that's such a beautiful thing.

I think today women are very scared to celebrate themselves, because then they just get labeled.

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

[If you want to] ask the question what is beautiful? It's the life that you lead. It's the life that all women lead.

When I'm working I don't have room to think about myself and my own issues. It's really freeing. There is no room for me, which is really nice.

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.'

I love being a woman and I love being feminine.

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.'

I've never been the kind of actress that just likes to show up and say my lines. I'm fascinated by what the crew does.

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

You have to keep evolving.

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.

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.

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

Life is what you make it... and nowhere close to making mine the best it can be.

I want my son to grow up with a mom that he could see and look at her life with all the mistakes and with all the failures and all the flaws and say, "My mom lived an authentic life. That was the life she wanted to live."