Charlize Theron profiled

SOUTH AFRICAN-BORN Charlize Theron won the Oscar for best actress for the drama Monster, in which she masked her beauty to play real-life female serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

The 28-year-old blonde used heavy make-up, liquid resin and embarked on a doughnut diet to add 30lbs for her portrayal of the disturbed prostitute who turned serial killer.

The actress' own life has had a huge share of drama as a teenager she witnessed her mother shooting her drunken father dead in self-defence.

Theron embraced her mother before ascending to the stage to take the gold statuette from last year's Best Actor award winner Adrien Brody. Her composure cracked when she looked at her mother who had given her a one-way ticket to America to pursue an acting career when she was a teenager.

"You have sacrificed so much for me to be able to live here and make my dreams come true and there are no words to describe how much I love you," she said, weeping. "And I'm not going to cry."

The former model might have seemed an odd choice for the role of Wuornos, the first known American female serial killer who was executed in 2002. But while the physical transformation was breathtaking, it was Theron's disturbing and intense, yet oddly sympathetic, portrait of the troubled woman that won Oscar voters over. She has now joined the ranks of Hollywood's leading ladies.