USA: Academy Award winner Charlize Theron continues with strong female roles in "North Country"

Hollywood was a buzz at the premiere of "North Country" starring Academy Award Winner Charlize Theron on Monday (October 10). The film is inspired by a true story and stars fellow Academy Award winners Frances McDormand as Theron's co- worker, Sissy Spacek as Theron's mother, and Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson as Theron's lawyer. The movie follows Josey Aimes (played by Theron) as she returns to her hometown in Northern Minnesota after a failed and abusive marriage. A single mother with two children to support, she turns to the predominant source of employment in the region: the iron mines. "It is very recent history. It was the first sexual harassment case that was ever filed and was only settled in 1998 and it was a long and lonely journey for this woman and she never gave up. Not only did she have the men against her she had the women against her. Just incredible. A really incredible powerful story that a human being went through all of that. Not only her self-sacrifice so much but also her family and her kids," Theron said at the Hollywood premiere. When Aimes speaks out against the treatment she and her fellow workers face she is met with resistance not only from those in power but from a community that doesn't want to hear the truth, her disapproving parents and many of her own colleagues who fear she is only making things worse. Director Niki Caro, who Theron wanted to work with after seeing her acclaimed film "Whale Rider", sang high praises of the actress. "She (Charlize Theron) is more than an actress in that she understands from her producing experience from "Monster" what making a film really means. She has made 30 of them. She is very smart and she is very responsible so I really felt that I had in her a real collaborator and somebody who is really on the side, on my side, and the side of the film and the story and we cared about it in the same way," she said. "North Country", which opens October 21, shows Aimes' inspirational journey leading to the nation's first-ever class action lawsuit for sexual harassment.

ITN Source | October 15, 2005

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