On Aeon Flux [a sci-fi adventure due in December, in which Theron plays the 25th-century assassin of the title], we had a lot of those kind of rehearsals. Then we shot for nine days and I had the injury—I slipped doing a back handspring and landed on my neck—and we had seven weeks off, which was a really great time for me to do a lot of internal work.

[When I hurt myself], I had already trained for five months so it wasn’t the first time I’d felt some severe pain. I lay down for a second and I thought, it’s a spasm and it will go away. And it just got worse. Our medic said, “We should have an X-ray and really make sure.” An hour later I lost all feeling in my hands and feet, and I kind of thought, that’s probably not good.

Even after I knew that it was a herniated disk, I took four days off. I was in the hospital for three days getting all these treatments, and then I just didn’t want to give into it. Six days later I went back to work; I had the brace on and I thought, “We’ll just do all the acting stuff. I’ll wear the brace in between takes.” I really couldn’t move my neck. Then I was on set for two hours and I lost all sensation in the right side of my body and that’s when we did some neurological tests. There was a lot of nerve damage. I talked to my doctor in L.A. and he really put things in perspective for me: (a) you’re lucky, because the disk didn’t slip far enough to touch or compress your spinal cord, but (b) you have to know that if you have any bad bump, that disk just needs to move two millimeters and you could be paralyzed. I went, okay, I have to come home and heal from that.

[Shooting Aeon Flux] was such an out-of-body experience. It was the biggest movie in every sense that I’ve ever tried to tackle. And it was completely foreign to me. A friend of mine who educated me on the whole Aeon world [the film is adapted from a 1990s MTV animated series], told me that she went onto the website and that the fans are a little bit disappointed that I’m not wearing the original outfit. And I thought, how could a human actually wear that—and shoot in it? I mean, it was a cartoon! Seriously, it would be an NC-17 film—what she had was a couple of strings and a patch of fabric. We had a really great costume designer who understood how far to celebrate the original, but with something that we knew that I could do a lot of the stunts in without strangling myself. And exposing all my bits.

Even in the original, Aeon’s a very dark girl, and in every way. Her dominatrix aspect is a quality of someone who’s tired of being looked upon as just a woman who should listen and do as the government says. And she uses everything in her body to fight that. I’m going to be completely honest: If I had a choice between seeing a great dramatic film versus something that has science fiction in it, I’d probably go and see the dramatic film. I grew up watching Kramer vs. Kramer or Sophie’s Choice versus [seeing] Star Wars. It’s like a gap—I always think of it that way, like there was a giant generation gap by the time things came to us in South Africa. I just didn’t grow up with those kind of films, and I think it left a mark on me somehow. The funny thing is, when I am forced to go and see them with a friend or something, I actually quite enjoy them.

I was in production for almost a year with Aeon Flux and then went straight into North Country [a drama, directed by Whale Rider’s Niki Caro, based on a true story about a Minnesota miner who in the early ’90s filed a class-action sexual harassment suit against her male coworkers]. What I love about the film is that it’s about a community, its social structure, and its people. And as Niki said, it happened in their community but it could have happened, and did, anywhere. Everywhere. You kind of find yourself in the middle, going, who do you really stand with? Sure, women should have the right to work here, but at the same time these men have families to feed. That kind of struggle is always interesting.

By the time Josie [Theron’s character] got to the mine, the women working there had become numbed to [the harassment]—that was partly why they didn’t side with her. They didn’t even think it was wrong anymore. They just dealt with it. Josie wasn’t a superstrong character; she wasn’t one of these women who walk into a room and own it. That’s why it was so fascinating that she ended up standing up against all of these people.

There are stories out there that I really feel should be told. I started a production company [Denver & Delilah Films—named after her two dogs], and it wasn’t like, “Oh, I just want to develop things for myself.” If something came along that was right for me . . . but at the end of the day, it’s just things that I’m interested in. We’re in postproduction right now on Our Song, a documentary about the Cuban hip-hop movement. I think people don’t know that this kind of alternative lifestyle exists in Cuba—it’s the youth movement, the future of Cuba, people trying to change their society. We tried to veer away from being too politically heavy, because these kids rap about these things. You don’t have to underline anything. And we’re in development on the life story of the late Edward Bunker, a crime novelist, a great character actor—he was Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs—and a [criminal]. He was, like, seventeen when he went to San Quentin. He was deemed to be a lost cause, and he found himself, and found an art form to express himself. It’s just a great redemption story.

We have another project, Ice at the Bottom of the World, that I bought the rights to about six years ago. The author, Mark Richard, wrote the script. It’s about a family reuniting in a very witty and unsentimental way—but very hard-hitting; it deals with euthanasia. So hopefully that will be my next thing, and after that, we’ll see. I can’t plan that far ahead.

It is really important to stop sometimes and go and live life a little bit, just to have something to draw from. I’m at that place right now where I feel I’ve kind of emptied my resources. There’s a giant world out there, and I sure want to see it all. I live with a man [Townsend] who’s a traveler at heart; we both just love throwing some backpacks together and really living life in whatever situation we find ourselves in.

I’ve been very blessed. I could never get jaded or blasé about that. I know I’ve been extremely lucky. I also feel like I have been given this great gift, which is what pushes me to not just take it for granted. It’s really given me this kind of hunger to go and challenge myself to be even better at it.