By Charles de Olim
South African-born star Charlize Theron is currently the talk of Tinseltown after her performance in Monster, for which she won the best drama actress Golden Globe.
Now the talk has turned to the very real possibility of her winning Hollywood's most prestigious accolade: the Oscar (nominees are to be announced on Tuesday).
Theron's career is littered with fame clichés: a childhood in which ballet played a major role; a lucrative international modelling contract at the age of 15; a model-turned-actress transformation; then the boeremeisie (small-town girl) made good in the cutthroat film world when spotted, by chance, by agent John Crosby at a Los Angeles bank.
With fame and fortune also came the inevitable probing by the media into her private life.
For years, Theron had claimed her father had passed away in a car accident. It was only later revealed that her father had, in fact, been killed by her mother.
On June 21, 1991, a few weeks before she went on to win the Rooi Roos pageant and make her international debut in the New Model Today competition, Theron (15 at the time), was threatened by her drunken father, Charles, who shot at her through a door in their Benoni home. Her mother, Gerda, intervened and fatally shot her husband.
Locally, in January 1998, a furore erupted when, during primetime slots, an advert promoting The Devil's Advocate (in which Theron co-starred) featured a split-second semi-naked frontal view of a woman.
Hundreds of prudish viewers called in to the SABC to complain, and the advert was dropped. It was discovered later that the advert featured lesser-known actress Connie Nielsen, not, as it was claimed, Theron.
In 1999, the US edition of Playboy featured Theron on the cover of its May issue. The spread had been taken years before she hit the Hollywood spotlight and was published in Playboy without her knowledge.
But the most controversial incident which South Africans will remember was Theron's involvement in the "real men don't rape" campaign, a project in collaboration with Femina, Nicro and Rape crisis.
In one of the adverts, she stated: "People ask me what I think about men in South Africa. When you consider that more women are raped in South Africa than anywhere in the world... and most men don't think that rape is their problem, it's not easy for me to say what I think about men in South Africa... there don't seem to be many of them out there."
The advert was banned when a group of 28 men, as well as five individuals - who failed to recognise a rhetorical statement aimed at encouraging debate and awareness - complained to the advertising authority that the advert labelled all South African men as rapists. The authority performed what it believed was its public duty and gave the ad the chop.
This was at a time when the high incidence of rape had sparked much scandal. An outcry followed and, on appeal, the ad was successfully reinstated.
It is Theron's South African background that will surely invoke a patriotic one-of-our-very-own-making-it media blitz here should Theron win the Oscar.
In itself, the local public reaction will make for an interesting social study. Will the traditional inferiority complex of South Africans take a back seat if we can claim to have a worthy member of the entertainment oligarchy? No doubt pats on the back and the pursuit of childhood friends for the inside scoop will follow.
Credit, however, must go to the determined Benoni girl who, at 28, has received one of the greatest acknowledgements in her relatively young career.