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She should have driven herself tonight. Who needs a limo, anyway? She never takes them. That was the magazine people. They wanted the limo. And now the limo has vanished, so she's stuck here with this guy,
this writer she's never met before, and, oh, my, God. People are asking for her autograph, which is always creepy, and the loudspeaker is blaring that the park will be closed in fifteen minutes, that everybody
should go home, which, frankly, she'd love to do, but she can't. She's stranded.
Plus, she's hungry. She was supposed to be seated favorably at some swanky restaurant on Sunset Boulevard by now, some phony place she doesn't even like. But she agreed to go just to be a good sport,
except now she can't even be a good sport about it, because they're stuck on top of this mountain, because they've spent the past forty minutes looking for the fucking limo, and it's starting to feel like a bad
date, when everything goes wrong, which is ... You know what? You know what you'd do if you were on a miserable date, like in high school, before you could drive, if you started getting restless and
uncomfortable, if you wanted the whole thing to end? "Okay," she says, digging into her bag. "I'm just going to call my mom and have her pick us up.'
YOU HAVE SEEN CHARLIZE THERON, of course. You probably saw her in 2 Days in the Valley or maybe The Devil's Advocate. Or if you haven't seen those, then you've seen her in magazines or on Leno or
Letterman or Conan. And if not there, then you've seen her in the trailers for The Cider House Rules and Reindeer Games. Honestly, it doesn't matter where. Let's just say that you've seen her,
and by seeing her, you have formed a few impressions of her. Vague, general ideas about how she might be.
For one thing, she seemed like California incarnate, with her platinum hair and preternaturally lineless tan. Then there was the way she spoke, the "Like, I think so" and the "Oh, my, God."
You know about girls like that. And finally, her irresistible presence, five feet ten, frequently unclothed, with a classic face, Marilyn-meets-Katharine-meets-Rita. She was it, she was that thing, she
was the quintessential Hollywood trinket. She was baseball, she was apple pie, and when you looked at her roles, all those smiling cheerleaders and femmes fatales, you couldn't help thinking that this was just
another model standing around. It seemed obvious to you that Charlize Theron was not going to be the next Meryl Streep or even Susai Sarandon, that she would probably be just another flash in th, pan-here this
morning, gone by noon. And if you thought all that, if you suspected that Charlize Theron was nothing but another pretty California face, then you've made her a very happy woman. Because that's what she wanted
you to think. She was acting.
"KAWO W MAI! UND DI KAR WUT VACHARAI. DI KAR WUTun si cum aflai et peri Griffith Observatory!" This is the sound of Charlize Theron speaking to her moth et in Afrikaans, the language in which she was
raised. This is the sound of Charlize Theron speaking to her mother, who is as she listens to her daughter's call for help, waking up, looking for something to wear. This is the sound of Charlize Theron in a
time of upset, not calling her assistant or a car company but calling her mother, who is neither the overzealous mother of a starlet nor the discarded mother of a star, bu who is something much more like a
confidante, a counterpart the only other member of Charlize's immediate family.
Her father died when she was fifteen, leaving them to fend for themselves in Benoni, South Africa, to manage the farm and the road-construction company, the employees and vvork contracts and bills. Gerda and
Charlize clung together, plucking the chickens, wading in mud, surviving. And when she won a local modeling contest at age sixteen and was escorted frorn the farm to a glamorous
in Milan, then New York, her mother was there grounding, soothing, encouraging her. When she grew weary of modeling, her mother was there again, supporting her decision to leave the industry, to try her luck at ballet. When her knees gave out and she could no longer dance, it was Gerda who believed in her future, who pointed her even farther west, saying simply, "hollywood," And when Hollywood wasn't saying "Charlize", when she was auditioning her heart out and failing, when ulcers were forming in her stomach, Gerda was still there.
So now, when Gerda arrives at the observatory in her white SUV with sleep in the corners of her eyes, she is utterly unperturbed, beaming at her daughter, and her daughter at her, until Charlize leans through the
open window and cries, 'Ma, are you naked in there?'
"Yah," says Gerda, in the accent that Charlize has toiled to disown. She is, in fact, wearing little more than a T-shirt, but Charlize just shrugs and enters the car, which roars off, away from the
woods, slipping past Beverly Hills and speeding down Sunset, until at last they arrive at the swanky hotel restaurant, where Gerda stops to let Charlize out, then waits as her daugh- ter comes around to the
window for a kiss goodnight.
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