Wicked Good

Charlize Theron keeps her beauty skin-deep as arch-villain of Snow White.
By Shep Morgan

Photo Courtesy of Alex Bailey/Rankin/©2011 Universal Studios

Charlize Theron flipped her glamorous image once again to earn Golden Globe and SAG nominations for her devastatingly real portrayal of a blowsy, psychotic, binge-drinking writer of teen romances in Jason Reitman’s dark indie comedy Young Adult.

In her next movie, she’s back to flaunting her stunning beauty as the iconic Evil Queen in Snow White and the Huntsman. Of course, the wicked monarch is bent on destroying the fair princess played by Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame.

The tall, willowy, vivacious blonde admits that the royal wardrobe of ornate gowns made her feel queenly, but also a little trapped. “I could barely move in some of the costumes because they were so heavy, not to mention the corsets I had to wear,” she remembers. And then there was that crown. “It was intimidating,” she says with a grin. “You had to be careful of the sharp points. I realized that if I bent down, I could poke somebody’s eyes out with it.”

The toughest challenge came on Theron’s first day of filming. “I had to say those words that everyone in the world knows,” she says. “‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ But I got through it, and then it was on to torturing little birds and eating their tiny hearts out. And I can’t tell you what I do to poor Kristen Stewart.”

After deliberately playing a string of plain or downright ugly women, getting royally glammed up is a change of pace for Theron. Her portrayal of physically and emotionally scarred prostitute Aileen Wuornos, the murderous subject of Monster, earned her an Oscar for Best Actress.

Looking back, she reveals that playing unattractive roles was part of her game plan to make a mark in Hollywood. “When the emphasis is on your physical assets, you can get typecast as a sexpot,” she says, “and then people have a hard time seeing you as anything else. I am who I am. I can tell you right now, on my top 200 list of what’s important in my life, beauty doesn’t make it.”