10 Things You Probably Didn't Know about Charlize Theron

Charlize Theron is a South African-born actress, best known for her roles in such films as North Country and Monster, for which she won an Academy Award.

1 Charlize Theron was born in Benoni, Transvaal Province, South Africa, on August 7, 1975.

2 Charlize was named after her late father, Charles Theron.

3 She's an only child.

4 She attended a local primary school where she has said she did not feel she fitted in. "I wore really nerdy glasses because I was blind as could be and the boys didn't like [me]," she told People magazine in 2011. "I actually got a lot of the mean girl stuff from the ages of 7 to 12. I was pretty much a mess in primary school."

5 Charlize is a mixture of French and German heritage.

6 She grew up on a farm and she enjoyed being outdoors and being together with nature.

7 Her pet goat Bok "was like my best friend," she said in an interview.

8 She loved dancing and started taking ballet lessons at the age of 4.

9 She had a huge crush on Tom Hanks growing up after seeing him in the movie Splash. As luck would have it, she later starred in Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do!

10 Her first language is Afrikaans. It is an offshoot of several Dutch dialects spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers of what is now South Africa, where it gradually began to develop independently in the course of the 18th century.