Theron and All That “Jazz”

Rumors have been flying fast and loose lately concerning the possibility that 32-year-old actress Charlize Theron (2 Days in the Valley, The Italian Job, North Country, etc.) will play Howard Hughes movie starlet Glenda Bledsoe in the pending film adaptation of James Ellroy’s 1992 novel, White Jazz. The film is already slated to star George Clooney as 1950s Los Angeles vice cop Dave Klein, who--suddenly realizing that the police commissioner and others have set him up for a fall--determines to expose the LAPD’s well-established corruption. In an interview on Clooney’s studio site, director “Smokin’ Joe” Carnahan” says that “I’m a huge Charlize fan. I would love her for that [White Jazz]. I was taunting her at an Oscar party that I was gonna come chasin’ her, so I really like Charlize. But there are so many wonderful, amazing actresses that could blow that thing out of the water, that you never want to limit yourself ... but she would be, like, an early favorite.”

Crimespree Cinema’s Jeremy Lynch warns, however, that talk of Theron’s involvement should be taken “with a grain of salt.” After all, there have been more than a few wrong turns and stumbles in the way of making a film based on White Jazz, the final book in Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet.” You may remember that all systems seemed go for a late ’90s version, starring Nick Nolte and John Cusack, with either Winona Ryder or Uma Thurman in the Glenda role. Didn’t happen.

But if Theron does take the part of Bledsoe in White Jazz (which Carnahan says is now “much bigger role than it was in the book”), it could be just the latest good exposure for this versatile, South African-born actress. Not that she really needs any more exposure, as she’s already being declared this year’s “Sexiest Woman Alive” in the November issue of Esquire magazine.