Charlize. Chris Karsten
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Gert Kachelhoffer, who later became headmaster of Putfontein Primary School, says that the letter serves as an inspiration to the pupils. The school is so proud of their former pupil that articles about her life are often used as comprehension tests in class.
True to the advice she gave to the children of Putfontein Primary, Charlize herself decided at a young age never to stop believing in her dreams. These were not the pipe dreams that usually fill the heads of young people. In 1992, when she left for her modelling contract in Italy, she had her eyes on a specific dream.
There has often been speculation about whether Charlize would have become a full-time model at sixteen if her father had still been alive. The question is academic, but in 2008 she expressed the following opinion in GQ: “If circumstances were different maybe I could have waited, finished high school. But this was my chance, my only chance.”
She had understood at the time that those shots fired in her parental home had changed everything irrevocably. Her childish innocence was gone, just like her father. Reality had taken the place of fantasy. She could not delay, she had to grab hold of her dream and live it.
Model
By the time Charlize entered the merciless world of modelling in the nineties, being a so-called supermodel was the height of fame, of glamour in all its translations and inflections – even more desirable than being an A-list Hollywood actress.
The supermodel performed in public, earned millions, was followed everywhere by paparazzi, and married a Hollywood actor or an Italian count. Linda Evangelista said in Vogue that she refused to get out of bed for less than $10 000 per day. At the beginning of 1991, Christy Turlington signed a contract for $800 000 to work two weeks per year, and a few years later Claudia Schiffer signed a contract for $12 million. Fashion designers like Karl Lagerfeld have stated that a supermodel is more fascinating than any top actress.
In 1992, when Charlize’s modelling career was taking off, this was the world waiting for her: The “top five” ruled the catwalk – Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford (once married to Richard Gere), and haute couture was the name of the game. But things changed. Because ready-to-wear collections have a higher turnover, by the late nineties and in the new millennium haute couture appeared on the ramp chiefly to promote the status of fashion houses. By the time Charlize arrived in Los Angeles to look for work as an actress, the status of models was diminishing. It seemed that their very success was also the models’ undoing. The flamboyant and over-the-top fashions of previous decades were scaled down, and fashion houses were now looking for models who would not overshadow the clothes with their big names and personalities. With a few exceptions, the superstars disappeared off the catwalks, and the superstars of film took up their rightful place once more – and nobody’s timing was more perfect than Charlize Theron’s.
Charlize had the face and the full lips of a star from Hollywood’s Golden Era, the lean figure of a model, and the grace and sensuality of a ballerina.
As a model, she had also learned the fine art of dressing well, whether in jeans and sneakers or in haute couture. “I learned my greatest fashion advice as a teenage model in Milan,” she said years later when she played model again for a photo shoot, this time in a red halter-necked dress of Oscar de la Renta. “Your blacks must match; fabrics can differ, but shades must match. To me, sexy isn’t a short skirt and your tits hanging out. A nice pair of pumps, a skirt that goes to your knees, that Vargas-red-lipstick glamour – to me, that’s what a girl is. I think old-time glamour will never go away, and I’m glad about that,” she said, showing off a gold beaded-and-fringed Gucci halter top, and a plunging Marc Bouwer halter dress.
The director-actor Robert Redford noticed this “old-fashioned” glamour in Charlize and chose her for the role of Adele Invergordon in The Legend of Bagger Vance, a costume drama set in 1931. “Beauty can be a hindrance,” Redford said. “It can make you too much aware of yourself. But she just dives into a role with a kind of abandon and a surprising amount of craft.” She reminded him of the stars of his own younger days, he said, like Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard.
In 1998 she spoke to InStyle about her brief modelling career, stating that she had enjoyed the freedom it had given her. “We had to wear a uniform and no make-up [at school], and every Monday there was a nail check. But I didn’t mind it that much. There’s so much pressure on you at that age that it was great not to have to wake up and think, What am I going to wear?
“As a model it was great to have all that independence and I loved learning about designer clothes like Armani. But coming from dance, where the discipline was about needing to dance for eight hours a day, suddenly I was thrown into this career where the discipline was about what I eat. That whole mentality of ‘Lose five pounds and you’ll be a superstar’ was not something I ever wanted to strive for.
“I never thought of myself as this exquisite thing. Like any human being I see flaws in myself – crooked teeth, pigmentation, a round face [a “Dutch-doll face”, she has also called it]: if I gain weight it goes right there. Certain days when I’ve got some weird rash on my face and I’m not looking very great, I just want to buy some toothpaste and go home.
“But I learned early on, the less you try [to be beautiful] the more your better qualities will come through.”
But how did she really feel about modelling?
In February 1997 she told the South African magazine Huisgenoot that she had found the first few months very exciting, but modelling was not for her. She took her hat off to the girls who really enjoyed it, she said, but she couldn’t understand how someone could pose for a photographer all day long. In the end she hated the modelling world. It was very frustrating to feel that she was not achieving anything with her life.
In December 1998 she told the Calgary Sun: “I only modelled as a means to an end. I hated every minute of it.”
To tread water like that had to be very unsettling for Charlize. She was on the way to her grand adventure, the adrenalin was pumping, she could see her name in lights. But as a model, her engine was idling. It was not the way she had planned it, and she was impatient.
Later she mitigated the pronouncement that she had detested modelling, but she still insisted on her frustration with the tape measure: “I loved every moment of modelling,” she said in an interview with Glamour in 2000, “except when they measured me. I vowed that no one would ever measure me again. Whenever designers want my measurements, I always say, ‘No, ya don’t. I’m an 8.’”
In July 1992 she returned to South Africa from Europe for a brief visit to her mother, but flew to Hamburg in Germany for a fashion show on 6 August, the day before her birthday. In October she crowned her New Model Today successor in Italy, then left for Miami for a three-month stay. Gerda came to Miami to visit her daughter in December 1992. (Few birthdays or Christmases passed without mother and daughter being reunited, regardless of where Charlize found herself in the world.)
In Miami, Charlize befriended Jauretsi Saizarbitoria, who worked with her at the modelling agency Michelle Pommier. Jauretsi’s family were members of the large Cuban expat community in Miami and opened their hearts to Charlize. Years later Charlize and Jauretsi’s paths would cross again.
In February 1993 she was back in Italy for an Armani show, but important decisions had to be made. She was no longer happy doing full-time modelling, she was at the end of her contract and had not received any offers from Hollywood, as she had hoped. Having flown to New York for a final three-day photo shoot before her contract expired, she decided to stay and study ballet. She hoped to finance her studies through part-time modelling and commercials, and she convinced Gerda that she wanted to be a ballerina.
Later she told the New York Times Style magazine: “I always thought of myself as a dancer. I had the capability to be a bigger model than I was. But I saw modelling like waitressing – it was a way to pay for another career, and that career was dance.”
In the end her decision to do ballet, like modelling, was an interlude rather than a final goal. If she