Charlize Theron

Born in South Africa on 7 August 1975, Theron arrived in Hollywood in the 1990s and spent her first years as the leading lady in studio films like The Devil's Advocate and The Cider House Rules. In 2003 she played Aileen Wuornos in Monster, a performance that won her the Academy Award for Best Actress and made her the first South African to win an acting Oscar. Two more nominations followed - for North Country in 2005 and Bombshell in 2019 - while she built a parallel track in action, headlining Mad Max: Fury Road, Atomic Blonde, The Old Guard, and three Fast & Furious installments. She has also worked steadily with Jason Reitman on smaller, thornier portraits of women unraveling, in Young Adult and Tully. Since the early 2000s her production company Denver and Delilah has backed many of her own projects, and in 2007 she became a U.S. citizen while keeping her South African passport.