Theron a different species in a strange world

Charlize Theron does not talk during photographs - odd things could happen. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Inside the celebrity-sustaining machine that surrounds Charlize Theron we go first to a room on the 19th floor of the hotel. Then we go up to the 20th floor where we have to sit in rows to await the arrival of the celebrity.

We have been given a 19-minute interview slot, with one minute at the end for a photograph of the celebrity not talking. "Absolutely no photos while's she's talking." Why not? I asked the day before. "You can get some odd photos," is the answer. Odd as in doing something natural like talking, is, I suppose, what they mean and as opposed to something unnatural like posing. The media has to turn up 45 minutes before their allocated slot.

The celebrity has two minutes in between sessions. The celebrity will laugh later when I ask if she spends the two minutes rolling her eyes at what she has just been asked. You would never guess in the lead-up that the celebrity will turn out to have a sense of humour. We spend the time waiting in a hallway, being hushed. The celebrity is nowhere in sight but we are not allowed to speak too loudly. This is possibly because celebrities are such sensitive petals that their ears must not be submitted to the rude, rough sound of the voices of mere mortals.

The ridiculous, manufactured tension of all this is, I decide, designed to make the media feel like cattle. As are the terms the PR people use. They talk about "media pens" and how they are "media wranglers". This is supposed to put us in our place. All it does is make you grumpy about the celebrity before you clap eyes on her.

And, already, the idea of going to see Theron does not exactly set my heart fluttering with joy.

There is the little problem of what she looks like. There are also the stories from her stopover in Australia to promote the Niki Caro directed North Country, before her over-nighter here. There was a shoving scene with a photographer; a sulky bag-over-the-head scene, also involving a photographer. When talking to journalists, the Australian reported, "she was stony-faced and measured: she has an obvious disdain for the media".

But in we go and there she is - poised in that way models are poised, on a chair. She looks as though she's been placed there, positioned by a stylist and this may well be so given what happens later. She doesn't get up but when I stick my hand out she takes it. When I stuck my hand out to Nicole Kidman she looked at it as though it was something the cat had sicked up.

I had already heard that Theron isn't a difficult celeb to look after. She has none of those silly dietary requests. All she wanted, thank you, was a crate of New Zealand red. This is encouraging, as is the little flower tattooed smudgily on her right foot. But when she puts out a long, cool, elegant hand which flutters over mine like a particularly rare butterfly, you think: goodness, what intimidating glamour.

She seems a different species: perfectly coiffured, radiant, gorgeously groomed. But there is that tat, and she does appear to be smiling although it is a slightly wary, waiting-for-the stupid-question sort of smile.

Well, fair enough. Her face is her fortune but can also be a sort of prison too. I tell Theron that I've been reading her clips and, honestly, it's enough to make you spit the number of times people go on about how she has - shock horror - played less than beautiful women. She plays a miner in North Country (it's "inspired" by a true story) who takes on the company over the appalling sexual harassment the women miners are subjected to.

IN Monster she played serial killer Aileen Wuornos and, real shock horror, she played her ugly. "It's just after a while it gets a little tiresome, you know, there's this little bandwagon that people like to jump on. As soon as you play anything real, it's a transformation." You'd think she might find this a little insulting because she is an actor and what actors do is play characters. She says: "God, I don't ever want to see myself up there. That would be incredibly boring."

Some journalist in Australia expressed amazement that Theron had never been sexually harassed. Which manages to be both rude and stupid because, I tell her, it implies that she can't act a character unless she's experienced what the character has. She says she doesn't get insulted but it is "yeah, very strange because I feel that it surpasses the work and that's what an actor's supposed to do. Our job is to use everything you have as a vehicle to tell the story [but] it has absolutely nothing to do with me."

We're talking, or I am, about beauty and the complicated relationship women have with it. When did she know she was beautiful? She puts her head down, embarrassed and I say "that's a hard one, isn't it? "It is, because: who's judging it? The one thing I'm incredibly grateful for is that I never grew up in a house where there was any emphasis put on beauty. I don't think my mother ever said 'what a beautiful girl'. What she did say was, 'oh my God, you should hear, she just wrote a poem', or 'let her do a little dance for you'. It was always geared towards doing something. And then when I came to America [from South Africa] it was really shocking to me how much emphasis gets put on what you look like and that was very strange for me, very strange."

"Strange" was the recurring word in our 19 minutes. That fame thing, for example. Now that is strange. "Yeah, it is tough because there's this weird expectation that if you're going to be an actor that is how it's supposed to be. I mean I can't imagine my life without having this kind of creative outlet, but there are certain days where you do go: Is it really worth it?"

Certain days, I'd hazard, like this one, spent in hotel rooms talking to strangers and wondering when the question about your mother shooting dead your father is going to come up. I've already decided it's not. But I do ask about what director Luis Mandoki said of her which is that because of the way she's "dealt with ... pain over the years, she's able to go to physical and emotional distances as an actress that others can't". This sounds like nonsense to me - we're back to the acting - but I want to know what Theron thinks. "Umm, you know what? I think everybody has pain and everybody deals with it differently and I do think that through this job it's been very cathartic. I often say 'some people go to therapy; I go to work'."

She can do the "dark issues and to kind of go into that dark place because I'm healthy, not because I live in some kind of pain or mourning".

Which is a good, and generous answer, and now there is a minute left.

This is the minute in which she is transformed from the interesting, interested woman back into the celebrity we first glimpsed.

The make-up artist rushes over. The stylist wants to change her earrings. She's been in the room for 19 minutes which must mean she was last primped half an hour ago at the most. I don't know how she can stand it. I can't stand it.

I say: "What's wrong with those earrings?" Theron says, "what is wrong with these earrings?" and brushes the stylist away. She does her pretty poses beautifully and she seems once again totally remote, unlike other women. Until she pops out of her top, just a bit, and she says "oops, just about gave you an X-rated picture. Better put the kids in".

Her sense of humour has, so far, survived in her strange world. She says she's healthy and happy. And once she loses that wariness she's warm and funny and nice. I'd wait in a hallway and put up with being hushed to spend 19 minutes with her again, any day.