Charlize Theron opens up to Louise Gannon about love, marriage and the pursuit of happiness...

Charlize Theron is something of an enigma. As a young, beautiful Oscar-winning actress who just happens to be John Galliano’s muse and one half of a Hollywood golden couple, we should feel we know her in the same way we do Cameron Diaz, say, or Jennifer Aniston.

But we don’t. She has never wanted us to. Her own story is so dramatic (her mother, Gerda, shot dead her drunken, raging father after he threatened to kill her and the then 15-year-old Charlize) she has the perfect excuse for a celebrity car-crash lifestyle, yet she remains defiantly quiet and scandal-free.

Charlize has never sobbed her way on to chat shows to recount her troubled past in South Africa (there have been countless offers), posed naked, partied with bad boys or checked into rehab. This makes her – for the let-it-all-hang-out Britney Spears generation at least – a rather difficult, unusual sort of star.

Unlike many actresses, she relishes the opportunity to disguise her looks. She piled on two stone and wore blotchy, ugly make-up for her Academy Award-winning role as a serial killer in Monster and her Oscar-nominated role in North Country again saw her stripped bare of cosmetics playing a miner.

The 32 year old is aware that she doesn’t play the celebrity game, but she doesn’t care in the slightest. She shakes her head and laughs. ‘Oh my God, is it so strange that I don’t buy into all that? Actually, it upsets me the way a lot of so-called celebrities just completely exploit themselves. I don’t get it.

‘There is a decorum that I believe in that just doesn’t exist in Hollywood any more. I point-blank refuse to be part of the way it is now. My whole life is about trying to move away from bad things and be happy. You have to work for that and, once you have it, you have to guard it as the most precious thing, because nothing lasts forever.’

Charlize is in the mood to talk. We are sitting in an empty restaurant at the chic Gramercy Park Hotel in downtown New York. Even in the unflatteringly bright morning light, Charlize looks effortlessly beautiful. She is wearing jeans, high-heel navy pumps and a soft cream cashmere coat. This close, this private, Charlize is totally relaxed. The girl who usually shies away from personal subjects is, for once, happy to talk life, love, death, fear and joy and why she refuses to marry the man she adores – her boyfriend of seven years, the Irish actor, Stuart Townsend (even though he calls her his ‘wife’).

To subscribe to ELLE magazine click here...