Charlize Theron for Esquire UK July 2014

On living the life she wants to live: “I’m sure some people would be like, ‘I would never want to have that life.’ I’m sure there’s a lot of aspects to my life that a lot of people wouldn’t want. Like the fact that I’m single at 38. That’s not necessarily what a lot of women want. I mean unmarried. But I’m just saying, a life is good if it’s the life that you want. I am living my life in a way that if tomorrow it ended–and I hope not because I have a kid–but if it did, this was the life that I really wanted to live.”

On splitting with longtime love Stuart Townsend: “In his defense, it was not that he didn’t want to have children—it was just something that never worked out.”

On having a boyfriend: “I wasn’t in any place that I even wanted something like [a boyfriend]. Then one day you go, ‘Oh, [Jackson's] almost 2 now, and he has his little activities that he goes to and he’s got a bedtime now, and you have more time again.’ And it’s like if you are open to something, if you just let it happen, it will happen. When you least expect it. It was nice to be single and now it’s nice to be not single.”