Trailer
Plot summary
In 1989, Aileen Wuornos has left Michigan for Daytona Beach, Florida, where she works the highway as a prostitute. In a bar one night she meets Selby Wall, a young woman staying in town after her religious parents sent her away. Aileen is hostile at first and says she is not a lesbian, but the two keep meeting and fall in love. To pay for a date, Aileen goes back out on the street, where a client named Vincent Corey drives her to a wooded area, beats her and rapes her. She frees her hands, shoots him, takes his car and decides to quit prostitution. She asks Selby to leave town with her, and they take a motel room to start over.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Monster (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the role Theron gained 30 pounds (14 kg), shaved her eyebrows and wore prosthetic teeth; critics called her performance, and her makeup, a "transformation".
- Film critic Roger Ebert named Monster "the best film of the year", gave it four stars out of four, and wrote that Theron's role is "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema".
- The film premiered at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival on February 8, 2004, where it competed for the Golden Bear and Theron won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.
- However, several people who knew Wuornos criticized the movie for portraying her as a victim and her victims as villains.
- In 2014 Charlize Theron made a self-reference to her role as Aileen Wuornos on Saturday Night Live: in the sketch Pet Rescue Commercial, Kate McKinnon asked her to play a cat lady whose image and behavior are based on Wuornos from Monster.
