Charlize Theron with the Monster make-up...

...and without it at the movie’s premiere

Los Angeles, Dec. 31 (Reuters): For actress Charlize Theron, turning ugly for her role in Monster was reasonably easy: a little make-up to freckle her clear complexion, a set of crooked teeth to yellow her pearly smile and a diet of potato chips to bulk up her slender frame.

The statuesque beauty of The Italian Job is transformed in the new film into Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who was executed in Florida in 2002 for murdering six men. But to focus on Theron’s make-up and weight is to miss Theron’s portrayal of Wuornos, which is being praised as one of the best pieces of acting this year.

“There’s not enough fat or prosthetics in the world to hide a bad performance, and she is incredible in the movie,” Theron’s co-star, Christina Ricci, said.

In fact, what is most transforming is not the make-up or the weight gain, but the physical posturing — the swagger — that Theron, a trained ballet dancer, used to portray the tough exterior masking Wuornos’ wounded and conflicted interior.

“In court, she was kind of like a blow fish. She blew herself up in order to survive,” Theron said of Wuornos. Theron has already earned several film award nominations for the year’s best actress, and critics are raving. “Charlize Theron pulls off the year’s most astounding screen makeover...,” wrote New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden.

For her part, Theron is worried the talk about her make-up and weight will obscure the themes in the $5 million movie that went on released in parts of the US over the Christmas holiday.

“The greatest thing I can hope for, which is an impossible thing to hope for because so much emphasis has been put on the transformation, but it’s that people can go see it and get past all that,” she said.

Monster, from first-time film maker Patty Jenkins, is told from Wuornos’ point of view, starting with her girlhood dreams of being swept off her feet by a Prince Charming who would see her inner, as well as outer, beauty. Wuornos’ dreams, however, led only to sexual abuse, and by the age of 13, she was working as a prostitute on Florida’s highways. As Monster opens, she is sitting under a freeway overpass, out of the pouring rain, contemplating taking her life with a pistol.

But her dreams of a better existence, of finding someone who will rescue her, save Wuornos from suicide. She puts away the gun and wanders into a local bar where she meets Selby Wall (Ricci), who has been sent to Florida to live with relatives because her parents believe it will help cure her lesbianism.

Wuornos is not homosexual, yet she is drawn to Wall because the woman offers comfort and makes her feel as if her life is worthwhile. Wall gives love and companionship.

The prostitute tries to straighten out her life, but her efforts to get a regular job are rebuffed. After Wall convinces her to go back to prostitution, Wuornos is brutally raped and that sets off her killing spree.

In the end, Monster asks audiences to look at the monster inside all of us, and it exposes society’s warts — the kind make-up doesn’t cover. “She was just a human being,” Theron said. “That was one thing that I think people missed.”