By Tan Shzr Ee

FORGET the blonde bombshell-ness of it all: Charlize Theron, 33, is a tough cookie.

Swanning into a hotel room crammed with reporters and translators at London's Mandarin Oriental hotel, she crosses those unbelievable legs - upholstered in strappy black Louboutin platforms that make her taller than she already is - seating herself down in a hard-backed chair, ready and willing to be asked a million questions.

'Hello, hello everyone...' she coos, before interjecting - almost as an afterthought, but not quite: 'Is that a video camera?'

An embarrassed reporter fumbles with the offending object, sneaked behind a chair. Theron effortlessly uncrosses her legs and surveys the table once more.

Her dazzling green eyes bear a steady, quizzical look, demanding that everyone get down to business immediately. Another equally dazzling smile beams genuine love around the table.

We are here to talk about Hancock, Peter Berg's anti-superhero blockbuster movie, opening in theatres around the world this month. In the film, the actress stars as the wife of a public relations guru (Jason Bateman) who has an affair with her husband's client, a superhero (title character Hancock) played by Will Smith.

Someone asks her what would be her special power if she were a superhero. 'You know - it's really strange, but no one has ever asked me this question yet.' she says.

'I'm boring and old-fashioned. I'd love to fly - everybody wants to be able to fly. You know, Will, at the press conference in Berlin, said he wanted to have the power to read minds,' she adds.

'But that's just horrible. I'd never want to know what's going on in people's minds. That's just too much information. I'd be traumatised.'

Born in Beroni, South Africa, Theron grew up on a farm, daughter of a French father and German mother. Enough that living through apartheid was hard, Theron was raised in a single-parent family after her mother shot her alcoholic father in self-defence when the would-be actress was in her teens.

For years, the budding talent would tell friends that her father was killed in a car crash. Today, she doesn't talk about the past, but is happy to muse about existential issues.

'I don't believe in a charmed life. The human condition is just always remembering that life is hard,' she says.

'What's comforting is to know that you are not alone. My mother always said: 'If you have no shoes, you will find someone who has no feet'.'

Thankfully, though, the actress had a good enough pair - whose fabulous pointe work, in pink ballet slippers, led her to pursue an early career in dance.

It took her out of South Africa to New York - via modelling in Europe - as a trainee performer at the celebrated Joffrey Ballet.

Disaster, however, struck six months into the game in the form of a bad knee that prematurely cast Theron offstage.

Her mother made her try her luck in Hollywood, buying her a one-way ticket and willing the girl to carve out her own niche in life.

From there onwards, Theron began to nail her big breaks. An early audition landed her a small role in a C-grade Stephen King flick, but led to a breakthrough role in That Thing You Do (1996). Today, Theron has helmed everything from the damsel in distress (Devil's Advocate; The Cider House Rules) to a leotarded sci-fi agent (Aeon Flux) to man-like cop (In The Valley Of Elah) and serial killer (Monster).

That last role - for which she put on 15kg to play a convicted murderer - garnered her an Oscar in 2004.

'As an actor, I'm more interested in lifting the surface up, especially people like Aileen Wuornos,' Theron says.

'We just kind of label them, it's fascinating to not jump at that and judge them. There's always this Mother-hooker syndrome going on, especially in the depiction of women: You're either a Madonna or a whore,' she adds.

'But women are much, much more complicated - and not celebrated enough. Life is not black and white.'

One is also tempted to think this of Theron's latest screen incarnation in Hancock as Mary, the too-good-to-be-true wife of a PR guru who ends up seduced by Will Smith's Hancock.

A dramatic plot twist midway through the film sheds new light on her character, giving the role's initial one-dimensionality a new ring.

While the role is light as air compared to Monster's Aileen Wuornos, it allows for a more 'layered' interpretation that will hopefully put all the cheese in an earlier flop, Aeon Flux, behind Theron for a while.

In Hancock, Theron's character, Mary, pretends.

On the silver screen, this is something the actress does all the time - inhabiting different personae in different movies.

'Don't ask me how I do it. I'm an actor. It's like asking a banker how he counts money every day.'

Offscreen, however, the actress will be glad to let you know that what you see is what you get.

'I'm hardly like that in real life. I'm a human being. I'm not for pretending for the sake of pretending. When you are vulnerable, you should be vulnerable. When you are strong, you should be strong,' she says.

'These are the things that make us who we are. We accept who we are. Life's not always easy. Time heals. Years later, you reflect.'

A reporter who has been ribbing her for unlikely comments about suicide rates in Japan ventures an even more bizarre question: 'If you were a colour, what would you be?'

With the slightest hint of irritation masked by an elegant bout of serious consideration of the issue, Theron laughs archly: 'I think I'm going to start calling you Freud. Do you remember when Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn what tree she would be? She said she would be an oak.'

An awkward silence descends as everyone leans in to hear what she has to say next.

'I'm not sure what I would be. It's an odd question,' she says, slowly preparing to leave while uncrossing her legs and rising from the table.

'But you can't pin me down to one colour. I'd be a mix of colours - I'm like one of those children's paintings with every hue in a mish-mash of strokes.'

» Hancock is showing in cinemas here.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on July 9, 2008.